Archivo de la categoría: Microsoft

Microsoft, Office 365

Pitfalls of Microsoft O365 Migrations Part 2: 3rd Party Utilities, DNS, & Management Tools

Here is the second part of my video series around issues & operational considerations of Microsoft O365 migrations (you can watch part one here). In this video, I  cover 3rd party utilities, DNS, and other management tools. Keep your eyes peeled for part 3 coming soon!

If you’re looking for more information around O365 migrations, I recently held a webinar with a couple of my colleagues that takes a deep dive into the topic. If you have any questions or comments, be sure to leave them in the comment section below.

Microsoft O365 Migrations Part 2

 

Or click here to watch the video.

 

Interested in learning more about Microsoft O365 Migrations? Download David’s recent webinar, “Microsoft Office 365: Expectations vs. Reality“

 

By David Barter, Practice Manager, Microsoft Technologies

Microsoft, Office 365

Pitfalls of Microsoft O365 Migrations Part 1: Mailbox Size, Spam Filtering, & Address Change

There are several pitfalls that organizations experience when doing Microsoft O365 migrations. This is the first part of a three part video series where I outline some of the most common pitfalls I’ve seen organizations run into. A lot of people don’t fully understand how much your IT deficit has impact on your ability to migrate data. In this first video, I discuss Mailbox Size, Spam Filtering, & Address Changes. If you’re looking for more information around O365 migrations, I recently held a webinar with a couple of my colleagues that takes a deep dive into the topic.

 

Microsoft O365 Migrations Part 1

 

Interested in learning more about Microsoft O365 Migrations? Download David’s recent webinar, “Microsoft Office 365: Expectations vs. Reality“

 

By David Barter, Practice Manager, Microsoft Technologies

Big Data, Database, M&A, Metanautix, Microsoft, News & Analysis

Microsoft acquires Metanautix with Quest for intelligent cloud

MicrosoftMicrosoft has bought Californian start up Metanautix for an undisclosed fee in a bid to improve the flow of analytics data as part of its ‘intelligent cloud’ strategy.

The Palo Alto vendor was launched by Theo Vassilakis and Toli Lerios in 2014 with $7 million. The Google and Facebook veterans had impressed venture capitalists with their plans for more penetrative analysis of disparate data. The strategy was to integrate the data supply chains of enterprises by building a data computing engine, Quest, that created scalable SQL access to any data.

Modern corporations aspire to data-driven strategies but have far too much information to deal with, according to Metanautix. With so many sources of data, only a fraction can be analysed, often because too many information silos are impervious to query tools.

Metanautix uses SQL, the most popular query language, to interrogate sources as diverse as data warehouses, open source data base, business systems and in-house/on-premise systems. The upshot is that all data is equally accessible, whether it’s from Salesforce or SQL Server, Teradata or MongoDB.

“As someone who has led complex, large scale data warehousing projects myself, I am excited about building the intelligent cloud and helping to realize the full value of data,” said Joseph Sirosh, corporate VP of Microsoft’s  Data Group, announcing the take-over on the company web site.

Metanautix’s technology, which promises to connect to all data regardless of type, size or location, will no longer be available as a branded product or service. Microsoft is to initially integrate it within its SQL Server and Cortana Analytics systems with details of integration with the rest of Microsoft’s service portfolio to be announced in later months, Sirosh said.

The blog posting from Metanautix CEO Theo Vassilakis hinted at further developments. “We look forward to being part of Microsoft’s important efforts with Azure and SQL Server to give enterprise customers a unified view of all of their data across cloud and on-premises systems,” he said.

Microsoft, News & Analysis, Storage as a Service

Microsoft launches hybrid physical and cloud storage service

Hybrid CloudMicrosoft has announced new data storage products that it says will simplify management and cut costs in complex hybrid clouds.

The StorSimple Virtual Array and StorSimple 8000 Series Update 2 are designed to simplify the task of storing data across on-premise IT equipment and the cloud. The new additions to the StorSimple range are necessary because the range of enterprises using hybrid storage is widening, according to Microsoft.

In a beta testing exercise, aviation giant Textron claimed the new systems helped it save a million dollars a month, while car maker Mazda claimed the StorSimple additions helped it lower its overall costs by 95%.

The StorSimple Virtual Array creates a hybrid cloud storage system using a virtual machine running on Hyper-V or VMware hypervisors and can work with either a Network Attached Storage (NAS) or Storage Area Network (SAN). It integrates primary storage, data protection, archiving and disaster recovery duties into one easy system for small environments with minimal IT infrastructure and management. The addition of the StorSimple Virtual Array means users don’t need to centralize data protection and disaster recovery at the company’s main data centre but can have a simple and upgradeable system they can manage themselves with StorSimple Manager.

Meanwhile the StorSimple 8000 Series Update 2 introduces local volumes and a new high performance StorSimple Cloud Appliance. Local volumes allow the client to use primary storage without the data being tiered to Azure. This gets better performance from applications that cannot tolerate cloud latencies. A local volume is apt for on-premises workloads that have high Input-Output requirements, such as SQL Server. It’s also better for Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware virtual machines. These additions don’t stop customers from being able to use Azure for data protection and location independent disaster recovery, the vendor says.

Enterprises can now adopt a hybrid storage strategy based with StorSimple, said Mike Neil, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Cloud and Enterprise. “It will transform their businesses by cutting costs, simplifying IT and helping increase IT agility in support of business goals,” he said.

Azure, Backup, Enterprise IT, Microsoft, News & Analysis

Azure Backup gets fine tuned with speed, cache and retention improvements

AzureMicrosoft’s Azure has promised more speed, lower cache demands and better data retention among a range of improvement to its cloud backup services for enterprise data.

Azure Backup now uses a technology called Update Sequence Number (USN) Journal in Windows to track the files that have changed between consecutive backups. USN keeps track of these changes to files and directories on the volume and this helps to identify changed files quickly.

The upshot of this tweak is a faster backup time. “We’ve seen up to a 50% reduction of backup times when using this optimization,” said Giridhar Mosay, Azure’s Program Manager for Cloud and Enterprise. Individual file server backup times will vary according to numbers and sizes of files and directory structure, Mosay warned.

A new algorithm that computes metadata has slashed the amount of cache space needed for each Azure Backup by 66%. The standard allocation of 15% cache space per volume size being backed up to Azure has proved prohibitive for volumes greater than 10TB. The new algorithm makes the cataloguing of the file space to be backed up a much more efficient process, which creates so much less metadata that it demands only 5% cache space, or less. Azure is now modifying its requirement for cache space to a third of the old level.

Meanwhile the resilience of the system has improved as Azure Backup has increased the number of recovery points for cloud backups. This allows for flexible retention policies to meet stringent compliance requirements such as HIPAA (the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) for large enterprises. The new maximum number of recovery points has increased from 366 to 9999.

Other tweaks include more timeouts across the various phases of backup process to ensure that long running jobs complete reliably. Cloud backups will also run a bit more efficiently as a result of a decoupling of the processes of cataloguing and uploading the backup data. Intermittent failures, in the service to handle incremental backups, have also been identified and resolved, according to Mosay. “We are continuing our journey to make Azure backup enterprise grade,” he said.

Chakra, Edge, Javascript, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Open Source

Microsoft goes open source on Chakra JavaScript engine

Microsoft is to make the Chakra JavaScript engine open source and will publish the code on its GitHub page next month. The rationale is to extend the functions of the code, used in the Edge and Internet Explorer 9 browsers, to a much wider role.

The new open source versions of the Chakra engine are to be known as its open sourcing ChakraCore. Announcing the changes at Java development show JS Conf US in Florida, Microsoft now intends to run ChakraCore’s development as a community project which both Intel and AMD have expressed interest in joining. Initially the code will be for Windows only but the rationale behind the open source strategy is to take ChakraCore across platforms, in a repeat of the exercise it pioneered with .NET.

In a statement, Gaurav Seth, Microsoft’s Principal Programme Manager, explained that as Java Script’s role widens, so must the community of developers that support it and opening up the code base will help support that growth.

“Since Chakra’s inception, JavaScript has expanded from a language that primarily powered the web browser experience to a technology that supports apps in stores, server side applications, cloud based services, NoSQL databases, game engines, front-end tools and now the Internet of Things,” said Seth. Over time, Chakra evolved to fit many of these and this meant that apart from throughput, Chakra had to support native interoperability, scalability and manage resource consumption. Its interpreter played a key role in moving the technology across platform architectures but it can only take it so far, said Seth.

“Now we’re taking the next step by giving developers a fully supported and fully open-source JavaScript engine available to embed in their projects, innovate on top of, and contribute back to ChakraCore,” said Seth. The modern JavaScript Engine must go beyond browser work and run everything from small-footprint devices for IoT applications to high-throughput, massively parallel server applications based on cloud technologies, he said.

ChakraCore already fits into any application stack that calls for speed and agility but Microsoft intends to give it greater license to become more versatile and extend beyond the Windows ecosystem, said Seth. “We are committed to bringing ChakraCore to other platforms in the future. We’d invite developers to help us in this pursuit by letting us know which other platforms they’d like to see ChakraCore supported on to help us prioritize future investments, or even by helping port it to the platform of their choice,” said Seth.

developers, Microsoft, News & Analysis, powerapps, Software as a service

Microsoft launches PowerApps for programming in the cloud

Microsoft powerappsMicrosoft has unveiled a new DIY programming system called PowerApps and new features for Office 365 and Dynamics CRM 2016 at its annual Convergence EMEA conference in Barcelona.

The new features in Microsoft Office 365, include meetings and voice services in Skype for Business while there’s a new customer engagement option in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016. Meanwhile Microsoft PowerApps is a new enterprise service that helps employees to create apps and share them with co-workers.

Office 365 now has options for a Skype Meeting Broadcast, Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) Conferencing, PSTN Calling and Cloud Private Branch Exchange. In addition Office 365 customers now have one platform for calling, conferencing, video and sharing, Microsoft claims.

There are new analytics and data visualization tools in the cloud package too. Delve Analytics promises interactive dashboards that tell users who they are spending their time with and how. This, says Microsoft, will help employees to prioritise better. The cloud package will have greater levels of security and compliance, it claims, through a new Customer Lockbox feature which allows each user to set access control limits. A new eDiscovery option makes it easier to manage large quantities of data and find information.

These new features, along with new Power BI (business intelligence) and Advanced Threat Protection are available in a new premium enterprise suite, Office 365 E5.

Meanwhile the new Dynamics CRM 2016, Microsoft promises, will be a more intelligent, mobile and productive system, thanks to new data and intelligence components. Among the features is a new ‘intelligent product recommendations’ mode for sales reps to personalize up-selling.

Dynamics CRM 2016 can also simplify everyday jobs, like meeting follow-ups.

On that same theme PowerApps is a system for creating apps for everything from a simple survey to something more ambitious and mission critical, according to Microsoft. These can connect to line-of-business systems and cloud services and run on any device. They can be used by everyone from employees through IT staff to Professional developers.

Enterprise IT, HP, Microsoft, News & Analysis

New Microsoft Trust Center aims to offer stability in shifting cloud industry

MicrosoftMicrosoft has aggregated all the information about its cloud services into one single point of reference, in an attempt to clarify and simplify the increasingly ethereal nature of the cloud.

The announcement, in a blog on the company web site, comes in the same week that one of the new incarnations of HP, Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE), repositioned itself as a reseller of Microsoft’s Azure public cloud services.

With the onset of the cloud industry reshaping both the IT industry and companies, the software company turned cloud service vendor has moved to clarify the picture for enterprise buyers.

The new Microsoft Trust Center aims to unify all the different strands of its enterprise cloud services, as confused customers customer began to clamour for a single version of the truth, instead of having to choose between multiple references issued by a choice of Microsoft trusted resources. In the new scheme, the Microsoft Trust Center will be a consistent source of information about all its enterprise cloud services, such as Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Office 365.

The Microsoft blog post says the Trust Center will be built on security, privacy and control, compliance and transparency. To this end it will advise cloud buyers on how Microsoft’s cloud services will observe international and regional standards, privacy and data protection policies and security features and function.

On Tuesday it was announced that HPE was to become a Microsoft Azure reseller partner, while in return HPE will become a preferred cloud services provider when Microsoft customers need help. The new arrangement, revealed by HPE CEO Meg Whitman in a quarterly analyst call, illustrates how the IT industry is being reshaped around the new hybridisation of computing services. The arrangement means HPE can sell its own hardware and cloud computing software to companies for the private, ‘on-premise’ part of the private-public combination. Meanwhile, the public cloud will be provided by Microsoft’s Azure computing service.

Transparency, according to the Microsoft Trust Center blog, is to be one of the foundations of cloud services.

application development, Azure, Microsoft

Microsoft Blog: The cloud for any app and every developer

The below is an excerpt from a recent post on the Microsoft Azure blog by Nicole Herskowitz.

At Microsoft, our vision for Azure is to enable every developer to be able to create, deploy and manage any application in the cloud, regardless of the tools, technology, architecture or platform they prefer. We continue to innovate in delivering services on Microsoft Azure, often in close partnership with leading innovators across many technologies, to ensure open source and third party offerings have first-class support on Azure. Today we’re announcing new technologies and capabilities that advance our mission to make Azure the preferred cloud for any app and every developer — from back-end cloud services to higher level platform services, to the development process itself.

For building highly scalable back-end services in the cloud many developers are turning to microservice architectures. The independent nature of these microservices offers superior application lifecycle management, performance at scale, 24×7 availability and cost efficiency compared with traditional monolithic architectures for service based apps. Today, we’re announcing the public preview of Azure Service Fabric, Microsoft’s platform for developing and operating microservice-based applications. Service Fabric also brings new innovations to microservice development with support for reliable, stateful services for low-latency partitioned data access at scale, and the Actor programming model which drastically simplifies building high-scale microservice applications.

We’ve already seen strong interest in Service Fabric with over 300 customers and partners already building on the platform during the private preview. With the availability of public preview in Azure, you can now explore the scale-out potential of Service Fabric combined with dedicated Visual Studio tooling. Today, Service Fabric is available on Azure and will extend to Windows Server, Linux and other cloud providers next year providing application portability and hybrid scenarios. To get started, download the SDK, check out our getting started videos and documentation and deploy your application to a cluster live in Azure.

For developers who want to build powerful, enterprise grade web and mobile apps that connect to data in the cloud or on-premises, Azure App Service is a highly productive platform for building scalable apps in .NET, NodeJS, PHP, Python or Java as well as engaging mobile apps for iOS, Android and Windows. Azure App Service is one of our most popular Azure services used by more than 60% of customers to host over 700,000 apps. Building on this success, today we announced new capabilities in Azure App Service including:

  • Single sign-on using EasyAuth across all app types making authentication easy, everywhere
  • Code-free interface and data design for rapid development of data-driven Node.js apps
  • API app innovations extended to all app types, eliminating the need for an API gateway

 

To read the entire post, click here.

 

Interested in learning about common migration problems with Microsoft Office 365? Download our latest on-demand webinar.

 

Dynamics AX, ERP, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Saas, Software as a service

Microsoft moves Dynamics AX into the cloud

MicrosoftMicrosoft says the latest incarnation of Dynamics AX will mark its transformation from a packaged application to a cloud service.

On Thursday the vendor announced the latest release of its flagship enterprise resource planning (ERP) system will be generally available in the first quarter of 2016. The main difference, it said, is that the ERP is now a service designed for the cloud.

A public preview of the new solution for customers and partners will be available in early December. The new name of the release, Microsoft Dynamics AX, reflects a departure from branding that reflected the year or the version of the product, a characteristic of software packages, it said. From now on the branding will underscore that Dynamics AX is a cloud-based service that will be regularly updated, it said.

Microsoft said it will also implement a new, simple and more transparent subscription pricing model to make it easier for companies to buy the system as they need it. Dynamics AX will offer a new user experience that looks and works like Microsoft Office and shares information between Dynamics AX, Dynamics CRM and Office 365, according to the vendor. It will also combine near-real-time analytics powered by Azure Machine Learning with the ability to visualise data through Power BI embedded in the application, in order to give users more predictive powers.

In response to usability analysis, Dynamics AX will have a browser-based HTML5 client and a new touch-enabled, modern user interface. Now that it’s a cloud system it will adopt the principles of highly visual applications more akin to consumer applications, according to Microsoft.

The classic rigidity of ERP systems has been replaced, according to Scott Guthrie, Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise’s executive VP. “Our ambition to build the intelligent cloud comes to life with apps optimised for modern business. When you combine the hyperscale, enterprise-grade and hybrid-cloud capabilities of Microsoft Azure with the real-time insights and intuitive user experience of Dynamics AX, organisations and individuals are empowered to transform their business operations,” said Guthrie.