Kurt Shintaku's Blog

We’re excited to announce that SQLCon 2026 is coming as part of the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference, March 16-20, 2026!

We’ve created a premier level conference for data professionals, featuring 50 breakout sessions and 4 expert-led workshops covering SQL Server, Azure SQL, SQL in Fabric, SQL Tools, migration & modernization, optimization, database security, AI Apps with SQL and much more.

• Same expo hall, same registration desk, same conference app as FabCon. 
• Registering for one gets you full access to the other. 
• Attend any of the sessions you want, hang out in the same community lounge. 
• Attend both keynotes in the State Farm Arena. 
• You’re invited to the same attendee party at the Georgia Aquarium.

This is going to be a BIG event so register for the conference & get into one of the hotel blocks NOW before it’s too late!

• Dates:
  March 16-20, 2026
• Location:
  Georgia World Congress Center
  285 Andrew Young International Blvd NW, Atlanta, GA 30313
  Building C
• Registration:
  http://aka.ms/sqlcon
  (Early Access Pricing Extended to November 14th and save $200 with the code SQLCMTY200)

Experts at the 2025 Power Platform Community Conference agree: Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Copilot Studio can help your organization move from legacy systems to modern, AI-powered solutions faster and with less risk.  

Dive deeper into the strategic insights and key takeaways from this year’s conference and discover how to uplevel your organization’s operations through new low-code or no-code solutions. Whether you plan to attend the Power Platform Community Conference and want to review the major updates or can’t make it and want to discover what was discussed, we invite you to attend this engaging post-conference webinar. You’ll get the opportunity to learn from featured speakers as they review important themes, announcements, and Power Platform success stories

You will also uncover: 

• How to accelerate development, reduce manual effort, and deliver automation without requiring deep data expertise
• Steps you can take to unify workflows across departments to help your teams implement AI collaboratively
• Practical tips for adopting low-code and no-code strategies at scale across departments 

Join today and explore how to drive innovation, modernize legacy systems, and implement AI for more powerful processes.  

• Date/Time:
  November 6, 2025 – 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM | (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time
• Registration:
  https://msevents.microsoft.com/event?id=3219314248

As organizations embrace the transformative power of AI, securing and governing its use becomes mission-critical. Join us for deep dive into how Microsoft empowers IT decision-makers, security leaders, and CISOs to confidently deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agents within their organizations.

In this session, we’ll explore:

• Microsoft’s commitments to data privacy, security, and compliance—including encryption, tenant isolation, and regulatory certifications like ISO 27001, GDPR, and HIPAA.
• The Copilot Control System: a comprehensive framework for managing data security, agent lifecycle, and measuring business impact.
• How to address top concerns such as data oversharing, insider risk, and AI misuse using Microsoft Purview and built-in governance tools.
• Real-world customer scenarios and outcomes, including how companies are achieving measurable ROI with Copilot.
• Strategies to mitigate Shadow AI risks and enforce lifecycle policies, legal holds, and ethical AI use.

Whether you’re just starting your Copilot journey or scaling enterprise-wide adoption, this session will equip you with the tools and insights to secure your data, govern AI usage, and drive responsible innovation.

• Date/Time:
  Tuesday, October 28, 2025, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Pacific Time
• Registration:
  https://msevents.microsoft.com/event?id=4133191796
• Microsoft Build 2025 Breakout (May 23, 2025):
  “Secure and govern your enterprise-scale agents with Copilot Studio | BRK159”
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v4cSWpUiKg

Datacenters are the critical backbone behind modern computing – that help make cloud, AI, gaming, more accessible than ever before.

Microsoft operates secure datacenter facilities spread across the world, creating a distributed infrastructure that supports thousands of online services. This globally distributed infrastructure is designed with sustainability in mind to bring applications closer to users, preserve data residency, offer comprehensive compliance, and resiliency options for customers. In this event:

• Go behind the scenes on how Microsoft designs, builds, plans and operates these datacenter facilities around the world
• Learn about Microsoft’s approach to ensuring the cloud infrastructure for Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, and new AI workloads help meet the varied needs of businesses, while increasing focus on sustainability.
• Understand what it takes for Microsoft to constantly improve the performance, efficiency, power consumption, in order to reduce cost of your cloud workloads.

We will also share some of the most promising R&D areas that we are pursuing that will help shape the future of cloud computing, AI and business technology in the years ahead.

• Date/Time:
  Tuesday, October 21, 2025, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Pacific Time
• Event Registration:
  https://msevents.microsoft.com/event?id=2250939603
• Self-guided Microsoft Datacenter Virtual Tour:
  https://datacenters.microsoft.com/globe/explore/datacenter/

Microsoft is converging Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence (MDTI) directly into Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel, which will provide world-class, real-time TI within a unified SecOps experience at no additional cost.

This convergence of MDTI value into Microsoft Sentinel and Defender XDR will take place over the course of several months and be completed by the first half of next year. It will grant customers access to Microsoft’s extensive repository of both raw and finished threat intelligence, developed from 84 trillion daily signals and backed by over 10,000 security professionals, eliminating the need for additional licensing and costly third-party solutions.

The following MDTI features will converge into Defender XDR and Sentinel:

Read the announcement post here:

• Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence is Converging into Microsoft Sentinel and Defender XDR
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/defenderthreatintelligence/mdti-is-converging-into-microsoft-sentinel-and-defender-xdr/4427991

We’re evolving our industry-leading Security Incidents and Event Management solution (SIEM), Microsoft Sentinel, to include a modern, cost-effective data lake. By unifying all your security data, Microsoft Sentinel data lake, now in public preview, accelerates agentic AI adoption and drives unparalleled visibility, empowering teams to detect and respond faster. With Sentinel data lake, you’re no longer forced to choose between retaining critical data and staying within budget.

Microsoft Sentinel Data Lake has a dramatically lower cost of storage, natively integrates with Sentinel querying & works with all existing Sentinel data connectors, including:

• All Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Sentinel data sources
• Microsoft 365
• Microsoft Entra ID
• Microsoft Resource Graph
• Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) platforms
• Firewall and network logs
• Cloud infrastructure and workload telemetry
• Identity and access logs (Microsoft Entra, Okta, etc.)
• DNS, proxy, and email telemetry

GET STARTED
Join us as we redefine what’s possible in security operations:

• Start saving money by implementing Sentinel Data Lake
• Learn more about the latest news in our Sentinel Data Lake Tech Community blog
• Explore Sentinel Data Lake pricing
• Learn more about our Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence news
• Sign up for next wave of innovation at the “Microsoft Secure” broadcast – Sept 30th, 2025

Read the announcement blog post here:

• Microsoft Sentinel data lake: Unify signals, cut costs, and power agentic AI
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2025/07/22/microsoft-sentinel-data-lake-unify-signals-cut-costs-and-power-agentic-ai/