Microsoft

Just a quick FYI in this post… Exchange Online allows for a fair amount of customization however there are still a few items here and there that can be done in on-premises Exchange but not in the cloud. Recently, I’ve had a couple clients interested in blocking their users from using Outlook or a specific […]

Office ProPlus has done a great job of getting many organizations in a position where they’re running a fully patched and current version of Microsoft Office. It’s a component of Office 365 that really brings great value to organizations that previously didn’t have a solid deployment or patching process for Office. Quick Aside: If you’re […]

PowerShell has existed within Windows for some time now, providing much superior scripting / automation abilities than the old command line. Although, you can use the Azure Xplat CLI from the command line on Windows, Linux or Mac, the Azure PowerShell cmdlets provide a better environment to create, test, deploy and manage your Azure solutions […]

If you’re an administrator for Office 365, you’re likely very familiar with the fact that while some tasks can be performed in the portal, many need to be done via PowerShell. If you’ve managed to get this far in your IT life without using PowerShell, Office 365 is going to force you to learn it. […]

Row-Level Security (RLS) for Azure SQL Database is now generally available. RLS simplifies the design and coding of security in your application. RLS enables you to implement restrictions on data row access. For example ensuring that workers can access only those data rows that are pertinent to their department, or restricting a customer’s data access […]

Background I was recently working on an engagement where the customer was migrating from Exchange 2010 to Office 365 Exchange Online. The customer had been a long time Enterprise Voice customer (OCS, Lync 2010, and now Lync 2013). As the customer grew over the years, so had their Lync environment. The customer originally deployed OCS […]

Recently, Kate Tuttle, my colleague and healthcare marketing guru, wrote a post over on Perficient’s Healthcare Industry Trends blog, describing the shift from a fee-for-service based model to a value-based care model and the subsequent need for a 360-degree patient view. Many healthcare organizations are facing challenges around transforming data into meaningful information – information […]

A recent press release from the University of Washington Tacoma provides a great example of how Big Data and Advanced Analytics are having a direct impact on the Healthcare industry. Readmission rates are a hot topic for hospital and health care systems across the country, so the application of cutting edge data science to the […]

A topic that seems to be surrounded with much confusion in Exchange Online is the concept of “Retention Policies”. While the feature itself is not new to Exchange, for many organizations it seems that establishing their first email retention strategy is coupled with their migration to the cloud. Even for organizations that have a well […]

According to Gartner, companies that prioritize customer experience generate 60% higher profits than competitors. And more than ever before, web content management is viewed as mission-critical across an organization – whether your focus is on IT application, digital experience, marketing or merchandising. As we work with many of our customers on their digital transformation journey, […]

By now you’ve heard the term DevOps. (If not, Wikipedia’s definition works.) So what tools are available to me in the Microsoft Azure environment to support DevOps? Azure Virtual Machines have a variety of built-in extensions that can enable configuration management. There are two extensions for Windows Powershell. The custom script extension allows you to […]

According to Computerworld, 42% of IT decision makers planned to increase spending on cloud computing in 2015. While companies are adopting cloud technologies at rapid pace, migrating from existing technology to the cloud can still be a challenge. For an optimal (read: as smooth and quick as possible) move to the cloud, it’s critical to […]