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Strategic partnership announcement between J.P. Morgan and Microsoft to drive enterprise adoption of Quorum

Strategic partnership announcement between J.P. Morgan and Microsoft to drive enterprise adoption of Quorum

In a recent announcement from Microsoft, an enterprise-variant of the Ethereum blockchain, Quorum, is to be powered by Microsoft Azure. Earlier this month, J.P. Morgan and Microsoft Corp. signed a memorandum of understanding to partner together in order to increase adoption of enterprise blockchain. With this announcement, Quorum, that is J.P. Morgan’s platform for enterprise blockchain will be officially the first distributed ledger platform utilizing Azure Blockchain service. In this way, both partners will be able to scale blockchain networks in the cloud. This partnership also highlights that both partners will continue to work together for development of common enterprise, independent software vendor along with addressing developer needs.

Microsoft executive vice president of Business Development, Peggy Johnson, said: “Together, we’re taking a truly transformative technology like Quorum and making it available through the Azure platform to accelerate innovation for our customers.”

Quorum will continue to power Microsoft blockchain programs and first-party apps along with J.P. Morgan.

Microsoft Build

Microsoft Build: Microsoft introduces new cloud experiences and developer tools for all creators

Microsoft Build: Microsoft introduces new cloud experiences and developer tools for all creators

In order to facilitate AI-driven collaboration and hybrid-cloud innovations, Microsoft has showcased a set of new tools to create innovative and intelligent solutions earlier this month at Microsoft Build 2019, Microsoft Corp.’s annual developer conference. Many of Microsoft Partners showcased their new solutions that revolve around the latest approach for development: Intelligent and customer-centric. The advancements are seen for collaboration amongst Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure to make customers and developers come up with innovation and productive solutions.

Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft mentioned in the event: “As computing becomes embedded in every aspect of our lives, the choices developers make will define the world we live in, Microsoft is committed to providing developers with trusted tools and platforms spanning every layer of the modern technology stack to build magical experiences that create new opportunity for everyone.”

Some of the tools showcased included the general availability of Microsoft Graph data connect, Microsoft Edge, and Fluid Framework.

Office 365 for Mac

Good news for Mac users: Office 365 for Mac is available on the Mac App Store

Good news for Mac users: Office 365 for Mac is available on the Mac App Store

Attention Mac Users! Microsoft has made Office 365 available on the Mac App Store. Now, Mac users can download Office 365 and stay cloud-connected and updated with the latest versions of the Apps. The complete Office Suite includes full installs of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, OneDrive and Outlook. In addition to this, there are features like providing user experience to Mac users especially tailored for macOS and the Mac. The combo of Office 365 and the user experience for Mac on all platforms like Mac, iPad, and iPhone is totally exciting.

Now, Mac users can stay connected to their storage and other Office Apps through their smart devices. In addition to accessing content, users can coauthor docs in real-time, utilize AI to create better content.

Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing says:

“We are excited to welcome Microsoft Office 365 to the all-new Mac App Store in macOS Mojave. Apple and Microsoft have worked together to bring great Office productivity to Mac users from the very beginning. Now, with Office 365 on the Mac App Store, it’s easier than ever to get the latest and best version of Office 365 for Mac, iPad, and iPhone.”

How cool is that!

Microsoft OneDrive and SharePoint with Autodesk AutoCAD

Microsoft integrates Microsoft OneDrive and SharePoint with Autodesk AutoCAD

Microsoft integrates Microsoft OneDrive and SharePoint with Autodesk AutoCAD

After Adobe and SAP, Microsoft has done collaborations with Autodesk AutoCAD and provided integration capabilities between Microsoft OneDrive and SharePoint and Autodesk AutoCAD.  Microsoft’s visions in this regard are to create a secured file transaction hub where customers can store critical content without any security apprehensions. Integrations with AutoCAD are just the next episode to fulfill this vision.

For engineers and architects, CAD drawings are critical. Now they can store their DWG files in OneDrive and SharePoint to get the best benefits of mobile and desktop applications, innovative collaboration capabilities and enterprise-grade compliance. In this way, task management gets simplified and flows are smoother in a workflow. The new integrations also allow for connection between SharePoint, OneDrive and drafting tools of AutoCAD. With these integrations, DWG files can be edited on the go in mobile app and AutoCAD latest new web app.

With these capabilities, architect and engineers are facilitated with team collaborations and their tasks have become easier than ever.

Azure Active Directory Password Protection

Announcement: Azure Active Directory Password Protection is now generally available

Announcement: Azure Active Directory Password Protection is now generally available

With hacking techniques gaining popularity, it takes less than a week to guess a password by any hacker and the user is hacked.  Corporate resources demand higher security pertaining to the sensitivity of the data and services of corporate sectors.

Microsoft introduces Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Password Protection for users so that they are safe from comply guessed passwords that lead with vulnerabilities. This feature prevents users from creating password that can be guessed easily. The feature is available for both cloud environments and hybrid environments.

The feature is easily configurable from the Active Directory Portal. Password protection can be configured from Authentication methods blade. Password protection is also enabled for Windows Server Active Directory. This feature can be enforced throughout the company and hence it will prevent employees to select commonly guessed passwords for their accounts related to the company and ensure protection from hackers who try to intrude using password guessing technique.

Azure-native-Firewall

Announcing new capabilities in Azure native Firewall

Announcing new capabilities in Azure native Firewall

We covered the Azure Backup feature a while ago. Today, let’s dive into exciting news about 2 latest features of Azure native Firewall that Microsoft has recently announced:

  1. Azure Firewall Threat intelligence based filtering: this feature of Azure Firewall supports Microsoft Threat Intelligence and provides threat intelligence based filtering. It logs all matching indicators. With the Microsoft Intelligent security graph, it facilitates Azure Security Center and Azure Sentinel. It makes firewall management easier.
  2. Azure native Firewall Service tags filtering: Service tags confines a group of IP address prefixes to specific services like Azure Key Vault, SQL Azure, and Azure Service Bus. These service tags can be used in destination filed in network rules. A few more tags include AzureConnectors, AzureCosmosDB, MicrosoftContainerRegistry, and AppService. A whole list of tags along with their details is available on Microsoft Docs.

With such features, Azure native Firewall continues to stay a strong entity in providing native firewall-as-a-service which provides rules for application level filtering and network level filtering.

digital-ecosystem

Who will dominate Digital EcoSystems?

Who will dominate Digital EcoSystems?

Digital Platforms

Digital Ecosystems rapidly became a multi-billion dollar industry. Last year Hyperscalers invested over $120 billion in Digital Ecosystem platforms. Disruptive innovations provide simpler or more elegant solutions to existing problems, enabled by new technology and often at a lower cost. Many businesses recognizes the limitations of their existing platform while exploring opportunities that tap into emerging technologies and new delivery models who will have the best chance of thriving in the fast-approaching disruptive future. Collaborative Ecosystems should exponentially elevate the value it creates and deliver. They will revolutionize business for some time to come.

Hyperscalers

Hyperscalers such as Apple, Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and others are gearing up for battle. Misleading information is convincing businesses to migrate to these platforms without understanding the long-term impact and liabilities. Moreover, entire industries are making decisions based on studies and reports, influenced by the very same Hyperscalers. Many businesses think if they do not keep up they will eventually fail.

Client Operating System

Dominating Digital Ecosystems will require an even more dominating end-user Operating System. The end game is controlling the entire value chain in addition to recurrent subscription lock-in, and preventing you the customer from ever migrating. In other words, easy to get in but difficult to get out.

Enterprise Migration

It should not be a surprise that medium to large size Enterprises are having great difficulties adapting to Digital Ecosystems. Migration could be risky, complicated and expensive or just simply impossible. There are no standards or unification between competitive Digital Ecosystem platforms. Migrating from a Digital Ecosystem might not be possible without starting over again and paying a hefty fine.

Channel Partners

I have witnessed the destruction of privacy and the disruptive (dead-end) transition of the hosting industry. Next in line are Channel Partners, ISV’s and OEM’s. Overall, I am unpleasantly surprised businesses and governments ignore the risks by surrendering sensitive data to these Hyperscalers. It is time for new legislation to reveal the true intentions of those trying to dominate our digital world. If you think they are on your side think again!

Too Big to Fail

Eventually Hyperscalers will become too big to fail. If governments fail to regulate them, it will expose us to a global economic and systemic meltdown.

What led to today’s success will ultimately lead to tomorrow’s failure

FSLogix merges into Microsoft

FSLogix merges into Microsoft for improved cloud business and Office 365 virtualization experience

FSLogix merges into Microsoft for improved cloud business and Office 365 virtualization experience

Workplace transformation is the need of the today’s cloud business space as businesses continue to evolve. Microsoft has taken one big leap for further enhancement of Office 365 virtualization and has announced acquisition of FSLogix. The company, FSLogix’s virtualization advancements make it a next-gen app portioning platform. According to experts form Microsoft, the company plans to enhance virtualization experiences of companies from large enterprises to small businesses. It also works to reduce work load, resource consumption, labor and time.

With this news, Microsoft’s products like Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop and Office 365 virtualization experience and Office 365 ProPlus experience.  Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop is the only Microsoft 365 to provide customers with a modern desktop experience. It also offers built-in security and compliance. With the acquisition of FSLogix, we can expect lesser load times of user profiles in OneDrive and Outlook. In addition to this, Office 365 ProPlus experience in a multi-user virtual environment shall be improved too.

The future of virtual workspace is promising as Microsoft is eager to facilitate the customers and cloud business providers in every possible manner.

OMS Portal moved to Azure Portal

OMS portal deprecated: The Popular Azure Portal is the new norm

OMS portal deprecated: The Popular Azure Portal is the new norm

OMS portal has now moved to popular Azure Portal and Yet again Microsoft has sent the final reminder. Since last year, the capabilities offered by Operations Management Suite (OMS) like monitoring, management, and security have eventually are incorporated into Azure portal. In this way, the azure portal has seen many enhancements since the past 12 months. These new features and capabilities are making the Azure portal more popular.

It is a fact that Microsoft had plans to fully replace the OMS portal with Azure Portal since many years but this year, this is finally accomplished. All the features provided to customers through the OMS portal are now there in the Azure portal. Hence it is high time that you switch to Popular Azure portal.

Microsoft has provided detailed documentation regarding how to move to the Azure portal in its quite comprehensive documentation. There is new alert management experience, user access management is done through role-based access control, and cross workspace queries replace the Application Insights Connector. The OMS app for smartphones is being deprecated altogether.

IoT platform

Microsoft continues to facilitate IoT platform security solutions

Microsoft continues to facilitate IoT platform security solutions

Microsoft is taking huge leaps towards the contribution in the IoT platform security. This is because the massive growth in building intelligent devices is observed since past few years and with this rate of development a huge adoption of interconnected devices shall be observed 10 years from now.

For IoT security, Microsoft has announced two major advancements:

  1. Azure Sphere: it is a solution for the security of nextGen IoT devices at an intelligent edge. It includes three major components that work together for security of these devices. These include

    a. Azure Sphere-certified MCUs
    b. The Azure Sphere OS
    c. The Azure Sphere Security Service

  2. Security Maturity Model: This framework is proposed in order to integrate security into systems for long-term benefits. This gives IoT platform security providers a sustainable approach towards addressing IoT issues. This model is being built in partnership with and is based on Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) previously Microsoft’s “Seven Properties of Highly Secure Devices”.

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