Joe Crabtree

Azure Site Recovery now provides native support for SQL Server AlwaysOn. SQL Server Availability Groups can be added to a recovery plan along with VMs. All the capabilities of your recovery plan—including sequencing, scripting, and manual actions—can be leveraged to orchestrate the failover of a multitier application using an SQL database configured with AlwaysOn replication. […]

Azure Backup can now back up your on-premises application workloads, including Microsoft SQL Server, Hyper-V VMs, Microsoft SharePoint, and Microsoft Exchange. You can back up your applications to a local disk or to Azure, allowing you to eliminate local tape libraries and leverage the unlimited storage capability of Azure. You can also manage all your […]

Azure Mobile Engagement is a SaaS-delivered, data-driven user-engagement platform that enables real-time and fine-grain user segmentation, app user analytics, and context-aware, smart push notifications across all connected devices. You can maximize your app usage, retention, and monetization with this powerful platform. It allows developers, app owners, and line-of-business decision makers to directly contact app users […]

Exciting news for Linux customers! From today’s announcement – The partnership we are announcing today with Red Hat extends our commitment to offer unmatched choice and flexibility in an enterprise-grade cloud experience across the hybrid cloud. With more than 80 percent of the Fortune 500 using Microsoft’s cloud, for us to team with the leader […]

I wanted to share a few recent changes to Yammer that you may have started to notice. Some of them are small or effected features that no one used. Others, like External Groups, are rather major updates. In addition, Gartner has recognized Microsoft as a leader in the Social Software space for the seventh consecutive year!! […]

Do you have a Hybrid SharePoint environment, utilizing both SharePoint Online and SharePoint on-premises? Do you have a process for self-service site provisioning? Are you looking to optimize your SharePoint administration? Have you heard of Office PnP? Hopefully the answer to most of those questions is yes. Office PnP is community driven open source project […]

In case you missed it, AzureCon, a one-day virtual conference, was held today. There were 4 keynote speeches from different VP’s at Microsoft and 55 break-out sessions on various Azure topics. A really great idea to do this all virtually and it lived up to the hype! There were a number of key announcements, new services, and updates […]

Have you ever tried to schedule a meeting from your iPhone? Have you ever tried to look at a colleagues calendar to get their availability from your iPhone? If so, you’ll know that these tasks are basically impossible using the default apps. Introducing Microsoft Invite! You suggest times that work for you, and then invite attendees. […]

Exciting news in the world of IoT! Back in August, Microsoft announced the preview build for the Windows IoT Core operating system for the Raspberry Pi 2 and the MinnowBoard Max. Windows 10 IoT Core is a new edition for Windows targeted towards small, embedded devices that may or may not have screens. For devices with screens, […]

Last week, Microsoft announced native support for Powershell in Azure Automation. From the Azure blog – If you’re familiar with the Azure Automation service, you know it’s a wonderful tool for reliably automating all the manual, long-running, error-prone, and frequently repeated tasks needed to keep your IT infrastructure in the cloud and on-premises up and […]

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced support for 2 new debugging features: Console Output and Screenshot support for Azure Virtual Machines v2. When bringing your own image to Azure or even booting one of the platform images, there can be many reasons why a Virtual Machine gets into a non-bootable state. These new features enable you […]

Azure SQL Database now supports Azure Active Directory authentication in public preview. Azure Active Directory authentication is a mechanism of connecting to Microsoft Azure SQL Database by using identities in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). With Azure Active Directory authentication you can centrally manage the identities of database users and other Microsoft services in one […]