Archivo de la categoría: Microsoft

Amazon Cloud Storage, Box, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Storage as a Service

Amazon follows Box, Microsoft in removing cloud storage caps

Amazon, Box and Microsoft are also offering unlimited cloud storage plans now

Amazon, Box and Microsoft are also offering unlimited cloud storage plans now

Following a move to give unlimited cloud storage to Amazon Prime customers the company has now announced unlimited cloud storage plans for its Amazon Cloud Drive service. The move comes some time after a number of the company’s competitors in the cloud storage space made similar moves.

The company announced two new cloud storage plans – Unlimited Photos Plan, which allows users to store an unlimited number of photos and includes 5GB for other file types, and an Unlimited Everything Plan, which includes unlimited storage for any file type.

The Unlimited Everything Plan costs $60 per year; the Unlimited Photos Plan, $12 per year.

“Most people have a lifetime of birthdays, vacations, holidays, and everyday moments stored across numerous devices. And, they don’t know how many gigabytes of storage they need to back all of them up,” said Josh Petersen, director of Amazon Cloud Drive in prepared remarks.

“With the two new plans we are introducing today, customers don’t need to worry about storage space—they now have an affordable, secure solution to store unlimited amounts of photos, videos, movies, music, and files in one convenient place,” he said.

The move may be a sign Amazon is starting to feel the heat from competitors in the cloud storage space. Box, which recently went public, had last year announced that it would remove storage limits for enterprise users of the popular storage suite, with Microsoft following suit with its Unlimited OneDrive storage offering soon after.

data privacy, data protection, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Public Sector

Microsoft, civil liberties renew calls for Patriot Act reform

Microsoft and close to 50 tech companies and civil liberties assocaitions have renewed calls to reform the US Patriot Act ahead of the expiry of the law's provisions governing bulk data collection

Microsoft and close to 50 tech companies and civil liberties associations have renewed calls to reform the US Patriot Act ahead of the expiry of the law’s provisions governing bulk data collection

Microsoft, along with nearly fifty other technology civil rights associations and technology firms have signed an open letter to senior members of the US government calling for reform of the Patriot Act, a cause célèbre for Microsoft among other cloud firms in recent years.

Microsoft has previously criticised the US government’s bulk data collection practices, and the ability of its authorities to act on warrants beyond US soil (particularly when such acts contradict local laws where those businesses operate).

In an open letter to very senior members of the US government including Michael Rogers, director of the NSA, senate minority leader Harry Reid, and US president Barack Obama, the organisations reaffirm the need to end the US government’s bulk data collection practices, and make government and corporate reporting on any Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court decisions more transparent.

The US Patriot Act Section 215, which currently serves as the legal basis for the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata, is due to expire in June this year.

“We the undersigned represent a wide range of privacy and human rights advocates, technology companies, and trade associations that hold an equally wide range of positions on the issue of surveillance reform. Many of us have differing views on exactly what reforms must be included in any bill reauthorizing USA Patriot Act Section 215,” the letter reads.

“That said, our broad, diverse, and bipartisan coalition believes that the status quo is untenable and that it is urgent that Congress move forward with reform.”

“It has been nearly two years since the first news stories revealed the scope of the United States’ surveillance and bulk collection activities. Now is the time to take on meaningful legislative reforms to the nation’s surveillance programs that maintain national security while preserving privacy, transparency, and accountability.”

Microsoft is among a range of technology companies in support of reforming how American legal entities treat data, both within the context of surveillance activities or general legal proceedings. But US lawmakers have signaled they are prepared to act on longstanding promises to reform the legal landscape. Last month American lawmakers introduced two bipartisan bills that seek to limit the reach of US courts over data stored in cloud services located outside the US, a move welcomed by a broad coalition of technology and telecoms firm – including Microsoft.

Cloud computing, Featured, Microsoft, Windows Server 2003

Upcoming Live Events – Windows Server 2003…Does the Cloud Make Sense for Your Migration?

I just wanted to take a quick minute to let the readers of our blog know that GreenPages is holding a series of live events around migrating Windows Server 2003 Workloads. The events are free and will be held in Cambridge, MA, Portland, ME, Tampa, FL, and Alpharetta, GA. David Barter, our Practice Manager of Microsoft Technologies, will be hosting the events.

We decided to put these events together because of the impact Windows Server 2003 End-of-Life is having on IT professionals across the globe. As you are probably already aware, the End-of-Life date is July 14th. Needless to say, that is coming up pretty quickly. There are perceived, and often real, challenges involved in upgrading applications. However, there are some serious drawbacks if you do not migrate. First, no new updates will be developed or released after end of support. Not migrating could also cause compliance issues for various regulatory and industry standards. Furthermore, staying put will cost more in the end. Maintenance costs for outdated hardware will increase and there will be additional costs for security measures that need to be taken.

On the flip side, benefits of migrating include reducing operational costs and increasing efficiencies, improving employee productivity, the ability to be cloud ready, and increasing business agility. There are different paths you can take, such as migrating to Windows Server 2012, Azure, or Office 365 as an individual product or as a Platform as a Service.

During the events, David will cover:

  • Developing an action plan and ways Azure and Office 365 can be part of it.
  • Potential migration pitfalls
  • Determining which applications will run “as is” on new platforms and which won’t
  • The areas of your infrastructure that will be affected by End of Life.
  • Examples of GreenPages’ customers going to the cloud, including how they approached the decision process and what their experiences were like.

You can register here. If there isn’t an event near you but you’re interested in learning more on the topic, I would highly recommend downloading David’s whitepaper.  These should be great events (plus you get a free lunch and entered to win an Xbox One)! Below is some more information on event locations.

Portland, Maine

  • March 26th from 10am-11am at the Portland Harbor Hotel

Tampa, Florida

  • April 1st from 10am-2pm at the Microsoft Campus

Alpharetta, Georgia

  • April 2nd from 10am-2pm at the Microsoft Campus

Cambridge, Massachusetts

  • April 7th from 10am-2pm at the Microsoft Campus

 

If you have any specific questions about event logistics, feel free to reach out to Kelsey Barrett, our Marketing and Event Coordinator.

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

 

connected car, Ford Motor Co., Internet of Things, Microsoft, MyFord, News & Analysis, Sanjay Ravi, Vendor

Ford deploys connected car platform on Microsoft’s cloud

Ford plans to roll out the Azure-based service later this year

Ford plans to roll out the Azure-based service later this year

Ford Motor Company and Microsoft have teamed up to create the Ford Service Delivery Network, a cloud-based connected car platform for Ford vehicles the companies said would make it easier and faster to add more in-car digital services.

Microsoft said the service will provide Ford a global platform to enable over-the-air software updates and expand availability of MyFord and MyLincoln Mobile connected services, which ships with features like scheduled remote start, vehicle finder, and vehicle status (fuel or charge level, tire pressure).

The connected car platform will be hosted on Azure-based technology in a combination of Azure and Ford datacentres.

“As consumers shift toward more cloud-based services, the Ford Service Delivery Network architecture is a strategic approach to keep vehicles up-to-date and relevant throughout the vehicle ownership period by making it easy to add or evolve services. Microsoft Azure provides a global common cloud platform that allows Ford to deliver services worldwide and scale quickly to reach its broad customer base,” explained Sanjay Ravi, senior director of worldwide manufacturing at Microsoft.

“This means that Ford can send updates as they become available, ensuring customers will have the latest technology as it becomes available,” Ravi said.

Customer deployment will begin later this year, the companies said.

Microsoft is among a growing fleet of technology firms looking to capitalise on growth of the connected car market. According to global telecoms association the GSMA the size of the market will nearly triple over the next four years to $53bn.

Delve, Internet of Things, IoT, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Office, Satya Nadella, Software as a service, Vendor

Microsoft reveals Office 2016, Skype for Business, Azure IoT services

Microsoft chief exec Satya Nadella previewed a number of new services at Convergence this week

Microsoft chief exec Satya Nadella previewed a number of new services at Convergence this week

Microsoft revealed a slew of new cloud offerings and updates to its productivity offerings at the company’s annual Convergence conference this week, including a developer and enterprise preview of Office 2016, a re-branded Microsoft Lync (Skype for Business), and an Azure-based suite of Internet of Things services.

The company was keen to show off Office 2016, which will be available later this year and ship with a few new services – notably Office Delve, which uses machine learning algorithms to surface corporate Office 265 documents and files that are relevant to specific users in a cloud-based collaboration environment.

“You know how Facebook has a newsfeed? Think of this as your work newsfeed,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “It’s about enabling anyone in the organisation to find useful information without having corporate hierarchies get in the way.”

Microsoft also announced the general availability of PowerBI, it’s analytics and dashboarding platform, which will come with new connectors for Google Analytics, Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, Zuora, Acumatica and Twilio – with connections for other analytics platforms coming in the near future.

Microsoft Lync, the company’s enterprise collaboration and communications platform, has been re-branded to Skype for Business and been given a noticeable facelift.

The company also unified its Azure-based analytics and machine learning offerings into what Microsoft is calling the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite. The suite combines Azure Stream Analytics and Azure ML (machine learning) and is being aimed at developers creating real-time data services.

“Devices will come and go. But the most interesting thing is the data being collected,” Nadella said, adding that the rapid increase in the volume and velocity of data requires better and more unified tools for developers.

“We’re going to have something like 26 billion internet-connected devices and 44 zettabytes of data in the cloud by 2019,” Nadella said. “How do we make sure that the ability to have access to that data, the ability to act on the insight – those small patterns that, we as humans, recognise in data? The real power comes from our ability to act on those insights.”

Desktop virtualization, Microsoft, Parallels Desktop, Parallels Desktop for Mac, run windows on mac, Virtual machine, Windows, Windows Install, Windows Updates

Things You Can Do While Waiting for Windows Updates to Install

It’s the end of the day. Sighing, you start your daily ritual of closing any programs or tabs on your computer. Finally, you go to shut down your Windows virtual machine on Parallels Desktop—you’ll see the happy little Windows flag again in the morning—when the worst happens: The dreaded Windows updates have struck once again! […]

The post Things You Can Do While Waiting for Windows Updates to Install appeared first on Parallels Blog.

Microsoft, Parallels Desktop, Parallels Desktop 10, Parallels Desktop for Mac, run windows on mac, Windows, Windows 1, Windows 10, Windows 2, Windows 2000, Windows 3, Windows 3.1, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows Vista, Windows XP

From Windows 1 to Windows 10 in 30 Years

Featured images courtesy of Microsoft. Believe it or not, it’s been 30 years since Microsoft introduced Windows, arguably the most popular operating system in the world. Since its debut in 1985, a lot has changed in the world of the PC—but a lot has also stayed the same. See for yourself by clicking through our […]

The post From Windows 1 to Windows 10 in 30 Years appeared first on Parallels Blog.

Featured, Microsoft, Miscellaneous IT

Migrate-Gate: What to do with Windows 2003 End-of-Life

windows 2003Deflate-Gate was the topic of conversation the past few weeks. Now that the Patriots are Super Bowl champs we can put this made-up, fake controversy to bed. What isn’t fake, however, is Windows 2003 support ending. What to do with End of Life approaching is a big topic of conversation now. It’s Migrate-Gate!

Tick…Tick…Tick. Does this sound familiar? Tick…Tick…Tick…Windows 2003 Servers support is ending. Tick…Tick…Tick 6-months to go and now it’s time to tick…tick…talk about what you need to do.

Assuming that you haven’t gotten sucked into Cats on Glass photos, many of you are probably aware that support for Windows 2003 Server ends on July 14th 2015. That’s this year…that’s this July! Oh wow, it’s coming faster than another Expendables movie!

Windows 2003 is so old, it knew Burger King while it was still a prince, yet many are still using it. It’s been a reliable and pretty stable product that may give you fits from time to time, but at the end of the day gets you where you need to go. Another way to look at it is that it’s a 1989 Honda Accord (both took CDs). Now, your mechanic is telling you that you’ve dumped too much time, money and energy into your car, except in this case it’s Microsoft telling (eh…forcing) you to upgrade your server.

 

Why Upgrade?

 

The big thing starting on July 14th is that there will be no more updates or patches from Microsoft, which can result in a less secure and less stable infrastructure for your business. So what does it really mean?

• Goodbye Updates – Say adios, au revoir, sayonara and beannacht (Gaelic) to updates for fix bugs, performance issues and security vulnerabilities. 2013 saw the release of 37 critical updates for Windows Server 2003/R2. Past the end of life date, these critical issues will remain unfixed, leaving you open to cybersecurity dangers such as malicious attacks or electronic data loss.

• Maintenance Costs – Running legacy servers is not cheap. Intrusion detection systems and advanced firewalls are required to protect a now vulnerable Windows Server 2003 platform. Also, think about all the increasing cost for maintaining aging hardware.

• No Compliance – So once support ends, you’ll still need to meet industry wide compliance standards. Regulations such as HIPAA and PCI require regulated industries to run on supported platforms. Those rules are tougher than the NFL’s PSI policy.

• Software and Hardware Compatibility Issues – New software and hardware devices are no longer being built to integrate with Windows Server 2003. By staying with Windows 2003, you could run into compatibility issues and may not be able to run new instances of software or communicate with the latest devices.

{Whitepaper: Windows Server 2003 End-of-Life Action Plan}

Before July you’ll have three options:

  1. Do nothing
  2. Move to an on-prem Windows 2012 environment
  3. Move your workloads into Azure. Sounds easy, right? Before you do anything here are some tips to consider

Three things to consider:

Analyze your environment: Understand the interaction of the servers in the data center environment. Moving one thing can impact another. Map out what is interacting with what and which users are interacting with which applications. Many reasons why Windows 2003 is being used is because of application dependency due to niche and custom applications.

Migration Licensing:  Review short-term and long-term costs of licensing. If you are considering an on-prem solution, understand what your licensing options are. Depending on quantity, customer type and physical vs. virtual there are several licensing programs to consider. Also, with licensing, Microsoft provides backwards compatibility, so Windows 2012 doesn’t necessarily have to be installed. If your application is compatible with an older edition like Windows 2008/R2, volume licensing allows you to run older platforms, so it’s important to work with your application provider to see how these applications can be transitioned to another server operating system. If you are looking to move into the cloud, it’s important to know what your workloads look like to size your Azure service appropriately. Lastly, you need to compare on-prem vs. Azure costs.  Do you want to purchase and own the SW with volume licensing or do you want to subscribe to using it in the cloud?

Consider professional services:  Who tries to make a soufflé without following a recipe? This is a big deal, so why do it alone? There are many pre and post migrations issues to consider so it would be beneficial to speak with experts who know what they are doing. i.e. GreenPages.  (Come on it’s our blog so we can include a plug!)

I would highly recommend registering for our upcoming webinar, “How to Approach a Windows Server 2003 Migration: Key Steps for a Better Transition” for more information. The webinar is being hosted by our Practice Manager of Microsoft Technologies, David Barter on February 19th.

If you haven’t had a discussion about Windows 2003, don’t wait until the last minute as 6 months will come faster than you think.

photo credit: www.cbssports.com

By Rob O’Shaughnessy, Director of Software Sales & Renewals

Featured, Microsoft, Miscellaneous IT, Office 365

Microsoft “Office 365 Video” Release – Common Questions Answered

Office 365 VideoIn late November, Microsoft announced that first release customers would have access to Office 365 Video – a YouTube type video service in Microsoft 0365. Previously, video in O365 has pretty much been a load it to OneDrive and/or SharePoint online and “let ‘er rip” service. Customers could use the local video tool of their choice to watch their own videos but were not able to treat it as a viable social media entity like YouTube. For many users, the biggest detriment originally was that there was no organization or even ways to spawn that video online, let alone share or comment on it, so it really was not a great alternative to YouTube. But if I want a Microsoft-centric solution to promote my business within the ever expanding Microsoft Cloud model, then what do I use for a native solution without a ton of development time? Microsoft believes Office 365 Video is the answer.

Below, I answer some common questions around Office 365 Video:

 

Which Office 365 plans are required to get use this new offering?

Office 365 Video is included in the Office 365 E1, E2, E3 and E4 subscription plans (and the corresponding A2, A3 and A4 plans for Academic customers). To date, this is only for commercial customers and does not apply to SLED or FedGov (yet).

 

Do you have to incur additional costs for Azure Media Services consumption?

The integrated Azure Media Services usage does not incur additional cost to customer; videos stored in Office 365 will count against SharePoint Online team sites pooled storage. This is a doubled edge sword. Video format is key here, and without an education on what is a good frame rate to upload versus another you can easily run through your space allotted in those team sites.

 

What Office 365 workloads do I need for Office 365 Video to work?

Office 365 Video requires SharePoint Online. Once Office 365 Video has been rolled out to your users per the license model above, Office 365 Video will be enabled.

 

When will Office 365 Video be available in my cloud environment?

Customers who have opted into First Release should have seen, or will start to see very soon, Office 365 Video appear. Deployment beyond First Release, to standard deployment tenants, is targeted to complete worldwide by early 2015.

 

Can I turn off Office 365 Video for my subscription?

Yes. You can disable and enable it from within the SharePoint Online admin center.

 

Will Office 365 Video be available for the Office 365 Business SKUs (formerly the Small Business plans)?

No

 

Will Office 365 Video be available for the Office 365 Dedicated plans?

No

 

Hopefully this helps clarify some of the details around this announcement. If you have any other questions, reach out and I will be more than happy to answer them for you. socialmedia@greenpages.com

 

By David Barter, Practice Manager, Microsoft Technologies

Azure, Backup, Cloud computing, Featured, Microsoft, recovery, Storage

Fun Facts about Microsoft Azure

facts about Microsoft AzureLooking for some helpful facts about Microsoft Azure? For those out there that may be confused about the Microsoft Azure solutions offered to date, here is the first in a series of posts about the cool new features of the Microsoft premium cloud offering, Azure.

Azure Backup, ok… wait, what? I need to do backup in the cloud? No one told me that!

Facts about Microsoft Azure

Yes Virginia, you need to have a backup solution in the cloud. To keep this high level below I attempted to outline what the Azure backup offering really is. There are several protections built into the Azure platform that help customers protect their data as well as options to recover from a failure.

In a normal, on premise scenario, host based hardware and networking failures are protected at the hypervisor level. In Azure you do not see this because control of the hypervisor has been removed. Azure, however, is designed to be highly available meeting and exceeding the posted SLAs associated with the service

Hardware failures of storage are also protected against within Azure. At the lowest end you have Local Redundant storage where they maintain 3 copies of your data within a region. The more common and industry preferred method is Geo-Redundant storage which keeps 3 copies in you’re region and 3 additional copies in another datacenter, somewhere geographically dispersed based on a complex algorithm. The above protections help to insure survivability of your workloads.

Important to note: The copies in the second datacenter are crash consistent copies so it should not be considered a backup of the data but more of a recovery mechanism for a disaster.

Did I hear you just ask about Recovery Services in Azure? Why yes, we have two to talk about today.

  • Azure Backup
  • Azure Site Recovery

Azure Site Recovery – This scenario both orchestrates site recovery as well as provides a destination for virtual machines. Microsoft currently supports Hyper-V to Azure, Hyper-V to Hyper-V or VMware to VMware recovery scenarios with this method.

Azure Backup is a destination for your backups. Microsoft offers traditional agents for Windows Backup and the preferred platform, Microsoft System Center 2012 – Data Protection Manager. Keeping the data in the cloud, Azure holds up to 120 copies of the data and can be restored as needed. At this time the Azure Windows backup version only protects files. It will not do Full System or Bare Metal backups of Azure VMs.

As of this blog post to get a traditional full system backup there is a recommend two-step process where you use Windows Backup which can capture a System State backup and the enable Azure Backup to capture this into your Azure Backup Vault.

There are 2 other methods that exist but currently the jury is out on the validity of these offerings. They are VM Capture and Blob Snapshot.

  • VM capture – which is equivalent to a VM snapshot
  • Blob Snapshot – This is equivalent to a LUN snapshot

As I said these are options but considered by many too immature at this time and respectfully not widely adopted. Hopefully, this provides some clarity around Azure and as with all things Microsoft Cloud related, Microsoft issues new features almost daily now. Check back again for more updates on what Azure can do for your organization!

 

By David Barter, Practice Manager, Microsoft Technologies