Using Azure DNS with Office 365

One of the tasks that you need to perform when you adding a custom domain to Office 365 is to firstly verify that you actually own the domain name.

The Office 365 domain setup wizard, as shown above, will give you a TXT record you need to insert into your DNS zone so ownership can be verified by Office 365 before proceeding further.

Azure has the ability to host DNS records for you rather than using a hosting provider, so let’s see how you configure this.

Open your Azure Resource Manager Portal and select to add a DNS Zone from the market place.

The name of your new DNS zone has to match the domain you wish to host. Here azlab01.net. I have also elected to place this new DNS zone into a Resource Group for easy management.

After a few moments, the new DNS zone will be created and you can navigate to it in the Azure Resource Manager Portal to manage it.

Simple select the new DNS Zone to view its details.

You should see something similar to the above

You will notice two DNS records have already been created shown in the lower half of the screen.

In the top right of the blade you’ll find the name servers as shown above.

You’ll need to update the domain registration for that domain to point to these name servers instead of where they are currently pointing as shown above.

In top left of the blade select Record Set to create a new DNS record in this zone.

A new blade will appear, as shown. To verify our Office 365 domain we need to add a TXT record with the string provided as shown above.

When complete, save the new record.

If we now look at our DNS zone we see an additional TXT record as expected.

If we return to Office 365 and select Verify, our domain should successfully be verified thanks to Azure DNS. We can now proceed onto managing the individual domain records ourselves in Azure DNS. To do this select the option I’ll manage my own DNS records and select Next to continue.

As expected, and shown above, we get a long list of DNS records to add to our zone. Now here’s were the benefits of using Azure DNS shine through.

We can use PowerShell with Azure DNS to set all our records using a script. Thus, instead of adding them manually one by one via a browser, we simply run a script that does all the work for us.

get-azurermdnsrecordset –zonename –resourcegroup

To view the existing Azure DNS zone information run the above command once you are connected to Azure.

As you can see from the above, one of the entries is the TXT record entered into the Azure DNS zone manually via the portal.

To add an MX record for instance to the zone, execute the following command:

New-azurermdnsrecordset -name “@” -recordtype MX –zonename –resourcegroupname -ttl 3600 -DNSrecords (new-azurermdnsrecordconfig –exchange domain-com.mail.protection.outlook.com -preference 0)

That should produce the following record in your zone:

If you now execute the appropriate commands that add the remaining records to your zone, you can then return to Office 365 and complete the wizard.

If everything is in order you should now get confirmation that your domain has been successfully configured for Office 365 as shown above.

The huge benefit here that Azure DNS provides is the ability to totally script this. Most of the DNS records you need to add for Office 365 are identical or derived from the custom domain you wish to add. Thus, all you need to do is set some parameters at the top of your script and the remainder remains identical. Thus, you can use one PowerShell script to set the DNS Zone records for EVERY custom domain you wish to add to Office 365! How much time is that going to save you if you need to set up lots of custom domains?

Another benefit Azure provides is that ability to assign different rights to different users in you Azure portal. Maybe only a few users can update records, while other can only view them.

As you can see from the Azure pricing calculator above, Azure DNS is not a free service. There is a small fee based on the number of zones and DNS queries on those domains you have. In this case, for 1 zone with 1 million queries the cost is AU$1.15 per month, which is really pretty cheap.

I think Azure DNS has a lot of benefits for IT Professionals managing domains. They could aggregate them all under their own partner tenant and become like a hosting business. They could also host the zone records in the individual customer’s Azure tenant, which of course could use the same logins as Office 365 because Office 365 comes with a free Azure tenant. I also like the idea of bringing this sort of thing back to a single supplier rather than using multiple hosting providers.

However, I think the real killer benefit is simply the ability to script everything thanks to PowerShell. This alone is going to save me so much time when I set up test domains and labs. It also means I won’t make spelling mistakes when entering the records for Office 365. All I’ll need to do is change the variable at the top of my script to match the domain I want to work with and then the script is good to go. How easy is that?

You should also add internal value

I recently wrote about how important value is when it comes to an IT reseller’s business. However, that is only half the story when it comes to value. That initial post focused on providing external business value. That is, value to your customers. What I want to focus on here is about why it is just as important to focus on adding internal value to your business.

What do I exactly mean by internal value? I mean focusing of making your business a more valuable entity by boosting to its culture, knowledge, experience, professionalism and so on. Doing so makes your business more attractive to your target market, allows you to charge more for your services and spend less time chasing business.

How is such value added? It certainly isn’t added by having a commodity business model. It also isn’t certainly added by doing what everyone else is doing. It certainly isn’t added by merely looking at the short term returns from customers by just selling ‘stuff’.

Let me give you a practical example. Let’s take one of my favourite tools, PowerShell. PowerShell allows you to add value to your business in many ways. The more your use PowerShell the more automation you are able to achieve. This improves the speed at which you can get tasks done. It makes you more competitive than your peers. It also provides a benchmark skill level that everyone in your business can aim to aspire and live up to. This provides a goal for staff to develop their skills. It provides a commonality between your staff that binds them together as a team and helps them stand apart, thus building esprit d’corp. It helps their professional development, thereby building their career skills, and so on and so on.

Let’s take another example. Yammer. I constantly hear resellers saying that because they can find no use for Yammer in their own business they don’t see any reason to look at it. Wow! Talk about leaving value on the table! Remove your blinkers and take a look at the market outside your business for a change. How widespread is Yammer in your market? Not much right? How many businesses are overloaded with emails and want a simple collaboration solution? All of them. You can show them something that they probably have never have seen before, will solve many of their pain points and is simple to configure. So skilling up on Yammer will give your business a skill set most competitors don’t have. It will differentiate you from your competition. It will give you access to customers you never would have previously. Value, value and more value.

Just about every Office 365 business has access to Yammer, yet how many have actually implemented it? Even if a business doesn’t have Yammer there is also a free Yammer service you can build offerings around. So, if you made Yammer a focus of your business model how much value do you think that would add to your business? Heaps. How many more people would seek you out as a Yammer ‘expert’ because they can’t find one? Heaps and heaps. How many happy customers would then refer you onto others happily? Heaps and heaps and heaps.

The added value you should focus on for your business is not merely reselling Office 365 as I have said previously. The value focus should be on the unique services you provide on top of the platform. The more unique services you can provide the more valuable your business becomes to your target market. This value directly translates into customers seeking you out. It means business literally walks in the door.

However, it will not just walk in your door unless your business is attractive and this attraction comes solely from adding value. Adding new skills, refining skills, retaining the best staff and so on. Your aim should be to become so attractive that your target market just can’t ignore you. At that point you begin to reach the rarefied status of being ‘aspirational’ and turning away more business than walks in the door. You are the luxury brand of your segment. Achievement unlocked.

If you currently have high staff turnover it is because your business is not an attractive or valuable place to work in the eyes of staff. If you have high customer turnover, again, your business is not attractive to this audience in their eyes. Remember, value is in the eye of the beholder, not the provider.

Again, everyone understands value but few are actually disciplined to put in place systems that promote and enhance such value. Most are looking for the easy option. They are looking for the option that everyone else is doing. Such laziness relegates them to the back of the pack in a commodity market with next to no chance of success.

Yes, understanding value is easy, creating it? No so much. However, the secret to constantly adding value to your business is systems. You need a value system for all aspects of your business. If I ask you how you added value to your business today, you should be able to show me a system. Likewise, if I ask you to show me how you added value to your staff, you should be able to show me a system. An so on and so on. Systems are the manifestation of your discipline. No systems? No discipline. No hope. It’s that simple.

So now you hopefully appreciate that adding value is both an internal and external part of your business, but let me leave you with one final question to ponder. What value have you added to YOURSELF personally today? Being value driven is not something you do, it is something you live, in every nook and cranny of your being. That, my friends, is the secret of success!

There is only do or not do. There is no try. May the value be with you.

Focus on adding value

This is part eight of my presentation “Making money from the cloud”. You can find the full slides at:

https://doc.co/LyrxvF/qcihGm

and the previous parts are at:

We live in exponential times

Consider the following

Major Trends

Macro Trends

Software will eat the world

The phone is the desktop

Build a tailored service

In a world of common cloud services like Office 365 and Azure, that anyone can buy at any time from the web, how do you make your IT reseller business stand out from the crowd? Simple. Add value.

As with many things, the answer is simple but executing on that is challenging. This is because the traditional model for IT resellers was basically, buy from distributor, add some margin and resell. That worked until the products became commodities where margins were driven to zero. Strike one.

The next ‘solution’ that resellers adapted was managed services. Basically, for a flat monthly free, a reseller agreed to fix any broken IT issues. Exactly the same thing then happened. Managed services became something that everyone was offering. Thus, with no point of real differentiation it became a commodity and once again margins were driven to zero. Strike two.

For small providers in the cloud world both the traditional reseller and managed service provider model are fading into oblivion. If you keep pursuing them you are going to go down swinging. The reason is that few providers can, or are, differentiating themselves from their competitors. Many providers are still locked into these old world models and trying to apply them to products like Office 365, Azure, etc and unsurprisingly they are failing to make them profitable. In short, they are striking out.

The reason for this is they are failing to add value in what they do. If you migrate emails from on premises to the cloud, what real value have you provided the customer? To their mind, nothing. What point of differentiation can you create with email migrations? Generally not much thanks to automated tools like Migrationwiz and Skykick. The only way to be profitable going forward is to focus on providing value.

Specifically, it must be value to the customer, not the IT reseller. Simply moving emails to the cloud doesn’t provide much value in the customers mind as I have highlighted. However, showing customers how to create rules to filter emails, enable enhanced security like encryption and data loss prevention certainly do. Again, value in the customers mind, not your own.

This means IT resellers needs to focus on what matters to the business. The hardest technical challenge may indeed need to be solved but it may not provide much perceived value to the business. Conversely, the simplest thing technically can provide enormous business benefit and value to a business. In short, you need to look using the customers eyes and understand what they see as valuable.

For most customers, value is added by making things simpler. Less steps, less choices, less options and so on. Less also means that there is less than can break and go wrong. Many technical people believe that being simple is somehow being inadequate. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Simplifying something is far more challenging than adding unwanted overhead. Complicating things just because you can doesn’t add value, in many cases it destroys value in the customers mind.

Apart from simplification, customers are looking for end to end solutions. This, to me, is one of the standard out features that Office 365 brings to the table that sets it apart from its competition. For example, there is one Azure AD user login for Office 365, Azure, Intune, CRM, Project Online, etc, etc. One end to end user identity to access everything. When you also combine that with Windows 10 on the desktop, where you can again login to machines using the same identity, life becomes a whole lot simpler for the customer. Value added.

I continually harp on the fact that Office 365 is more than just hosted email, yet the vast majority of installations I see are email only enabled even though they have paid for the full Office 365 suite. That isn’t the customers fault, it’s the reseller who has implemented something they don’t know enough about!

If all you are doing is simply lifting and shifting emails and or files then:

1. You aren’t really adding any value from the way things currently are and

2. You are potentially allowing someone else to easily add value and push you out of the equation.

Not a smart or sustainable strategy at all.

As the above slide indicates, there is just so much more that can be done with Office 365 email alone, not to mention SharePoint, Yammer, Skype, Teams and so on. Yet all I see, time after time, is resellers focused on simple email migrations. Lift and shifting while adding no value. Doing so adds zero value to the customer OR to the reseller’s own business. Why? Because just about anyone can do an email migration to Office 365 these days. Where’s the point of differentiation there? And of course, no differentiation means its a commodity and being a commodity means the only way you make money is in large volumes. And that is something a small reseller can’t do. They can never scale to a size that it becomes economically viable. So why limit your options to those that won’t help you win? Strangely, many resellers do.

You need to turn the whole model around and put value at the forefront of everything you do. My aim with this blog post is to provide value to readers in lifting their knowledge. My aim when doing a demo of Office 365 is to show customers how Office 365 services could help their business get things done better and more profitably. When I follow up with someone about Office 365 I send them a list of links with further information about the product. Value, value, value. In short, what can I do that adds value at every transaction point?

Value is your unique differentiation point. You need to understand and develop what you can bring to the table for the customer. Not just at installation time, but at every point through the engagement process. The act of adding value is a process that is never complete. There is always more value you can add. Importantly, no matter how small you are, you can still add value.

You know that you are getting your value offerings right when customers seek you out. The point at which people start asking you to provide your offerings without you even telling them is a clear indication that what you have is unique and is something they want. Perfect.

To have a successful value proposition you need to move beyond the technology. As an IT reseller you have to help the customer transform their business with technology. You have to help them do things better, faster and cheaper using the technology. Technology needs to be the centre piece of the way they run their business and at that centre is you guiding them and adding value every step of the way. You need to understand their business rather than merely selling ‘stuff’ to it as the old model dictated.

Take a look at what existing processes a customer may have that can have technology applied to it in order to improve it. Where are in inefficiencies? Where are the opportunities to help your customer reach more customers and serve their customers better? With tools like Office 365 and Azure there are virtually an unlimited number of opportunities to do just that for customers.

Changing your business model from that of a traditional IT reseller and managed services provider into a business that is focused on adding value through technology won’t happen overnight. It takes discipline and dedication as well as constant focus but the rewards are tremendous. Once you commence down the value path you’ll find that the world starts beating a path to your door step. Why? Because customers buy on value not on price, and you have the products that are most valuable to them.

Build a tailored service

This is part seven of my presentation “Making money from the cloud”. You can find the full slides at:

https://doc.co/LyrxvF/qcihGm

and the previous parts are at:

We live in exponential times

Consider the following

Major Trends

Macro Trends

Software will eat the world

The phone is the desktop

The problem with those delivering IT services, especially in the SMB market, has been the constant growth of offerings. This has been driven by the commoditisation of the IT market in general. The prevailing belief is that to add more to the bottom line you need to offer more services to more people. That is playing a game you can never win. That is playing a game that can never scale for small providers. That is playing a game with the rules set by the largest players. That is playing the game dumb!

You simply cannot be everything to everyone the smaller you are. Trying to be everything to everybody means you end up being nothing to nobody. That is simply a path to mediocrity and ruination. You need to focus on providing tailored products and services.

There are plenty of examples of this in operation today in the business sphere. A great example is business frequent flyer programs. The more you fly the more benefits you get but unless you fly enough, you don’t qualify. Airlines typically generate far more revenue from their business frequent flyers and importantly, they lock them into their own brand. Their programs don’t attempt to qualify for all, they target a specific demographic and reward that handsomely. This is the model smaller IT providers should be aspiring to.

The important thing therefore, in a market that is restricted to a certain set of customers, is what provides value in their mind? If you simply migrate email from on premises to the cloud and do no more, what value have you added? The customer sees no difference at all. They had email before, now they have email again? Why did you charge them so much? Is what is really going through their mind. Why? Because you haven’t added value to the equation, in their minds.

Likewise, if you simply move files and folders data from on premises into something like SharePoint, in exactly the same structure, what real value have you added? Zero! No added value means you are a commodity and the smaller you are the more likely you are to be squeezed out. Also importantly, you have left value on the table that a competitor can take advantage of. You have in fact made it easier for a competitor to gazump you by doing after doing the hard migration work for them and failing to take the high value offerings such as automation, enhanced security, training, consulting, etc..

The key point here is to provide value in the customers mind not your own. That could be something as simple as automating a time consuming process of the customer or providing more flexibility. It doesn’t have to be solving a difficult technical problem. Again, it is important not to confuse value in the customers mind versus your own.

Many would claim that customers want the same thing. If they did, why are we all driving different cars? Why isn’t there a single functional car on the road that everyone has? Why? Because people want different things when it comes to driving experience. Some simple want a functional devices to move them from point A to B. Others want something that is more an experience or a statement of who they believe they are. In today’s market, why do people buy luxury cars like Aston Martin’s, Lamborghini’s, etc? Because they provide value in their minds.

Sure, the number of people actually buying up market sports cars is small, however those marques are targeted at a specific market segment and aim to provide value there. If they didn’t then they wouldn’t still be in business now would they? Recent stats show that most high end luxury goods providers do very well no matter what the economic conditions. Why? Because they know their market and focus on value not price. Here’s the key. No matter what, customers buy on value not price.

Another piece of the puzzle here is that luxury good have an aspirational value don’t they? Few can actually afford that level of luxury but most still aspire to having it right? That is how you need to look at building your products and services in the tailored market space. They need to be inspirational. They need to move to the point where price isn’t even a consideration. They need to move to a ‘must have’.

One of the most common complaints I hear out there from resellers is that their customers complain about the cost of technology. You know what? If any customer ever complains to you about the cost of your goods or services I would contend that it’s your fault! It’s your fault because you’ve failed to have then understand the value of that item. It is you who have failed to take price out of the equation and make the offering something they aspire to, not just pay for. It is your problem to fix, not theirs.

This value concept is so key to success in the smaller space. It is something that requires time and effort to develop and understand, however the benefits reaped are enormous. Success in the smaller business space is define by becoming more specialised, having a deep understanding of that customer demographic and providing value beyond expectation. And that is all doable by a business of any size, yet few actually do it. Why? Because it requires the discipline to actually sit down and make it happen. The discipline to sit down and actually change from the way things are today to a more focused and streamlined business model. In short, in means saying “No” far more than “Yes”.

So, in summary, another key investment businesses need to make to remain competitive in the future, especially when it comes to technology, is to get focused. To tailor specific services to specific customers and solve their specific pain points. The only players who can remain generalists are the largest of the large. Don’t play a game you can’t win. Stay small, stay focused and crush your competition by providing unbelieve value for your customers with outstanding offerings that no one can compete with.

CIAOPS Need to know Webinar – January 2017

Welcome to 2017. Our first webinar of the new year is ready to kick off shortly, so it’s time to register. As always, the event is free to attend and provides you with the latest news around Office 365 and the Microsoft Cloud as well as deep dive into a particular topic. This month we are going to have a close look at the automation options that are available to you in Office 365, including things such as SharePoint Designer and Microsoft Flow.

You can register now at:

January Webinar Registration

The details are:

CIAOPS Need to Know Webinar – January 2017
Thursday 19th of January 2017
11am – 12am Sydney Time

All sessions are recorded and posted to the CIAOPS Academy.

There of course will also be open Q and A so make sure you bring your questions for me and I’ll do my best to answer them.

The CIAOPS Need to Know Webinars are free to attend but if you want to receive the recording of the session you need to sign up as a CIAOPS patron (for only USD$10 per month) which you can do here:

https://www.patreon.com/ciaops

or purchase them individually at:

http://www.ciaopsacademy.com/

Also feel free at any stage to email me directly via director@ciaops.com with your webinar topic suggestions.

I’d also appreciate you sharing information about this webinar with anyone you feel may benefit from the session.

Joining Windows 10 machines to Office 365

One of the great things that Windows 10 Professional and above provide is the ability to connect directly to Azure AD. Hopefully, as you are aware Office 365 identity is built on Azure AD. Thus, if we connect Windows 10 to an Azure AD that is part of an Office 365 tenant we get simplified sign on. This basically means when users open Microsoft browsers (IE or Edge) and navigate to the Office 365 portal they are automatically logged on because their credentials are already part of Windows 10 thanks to Azure AD join. This simplified login also works with desktop applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc plus some third party applications. In short, users get logged directly into applications once they login to their desktop thanks to Azure AD join.

Now there are a couple of ways of joining Windows 10 to Azure AD. I’ve previously covered how to basically ‘add’ your Azure AD/Office 365 credentials to an existing Windows 10 installation here:

Connect Windows 10 to Azure AD

That method isn’t quite as full featured as if you set up your Windows 10 machine to join Office 365 during the setup of Windows 10.

The process for doing that configuration, is that during the installation of Windows 10 onto a machine you’ll receive a prompt like that show above asking you to Join Azure Active Directory or Join a local Active Directory domain.

So what I’m going to assume here is that I want this Windows 10 machine to be only joined to Office 365/Azure AD because there no local AD. So I select the Join Azure Active Directory option.

I’m then prompted to enter my Azure AD credentials. Remember, these credentials are what you use to login to Office 365.

I enter the user’s Office 365 details and select Sign in. Now it is also important to note here that this new user will also be, by default, an administrator of the local Windows 10 machine. If you don’t want to allow your users to be administrators of the local desktop then you’ll need to remove this account after setup has completed.

The Windows 10 setup process will continue and eventually you’ll be prompted to login to the machine. You should login with your Office 365 credentials as shown when prompted.

The Windows 10 desktop will then do a little more setup as shown above.

In this case I’m also then prompted to create a 4 digit pin for this machine. I’ll show you more about why this happens shortly but basically because I am joining this machine to Office 365 the Mobile Device Management (MDM) policies I have established are now being applied to this device. One of the policies I have configured is to require a PIN.

If we dig into the local machine name as seen above,

We now see that same machine in the MDM for Office 365 as shown above.

This means it will have the MDM security policies applied to it that I have configured. In this case, as you can see from the above configuration, I require devices to have at least a 4 digit pin password.

Don’t forget that Office 365 MDM is a free and included part of the service.

If I now look at the properties of the user on the directly joined machine just set up, I see the above, basically a single user with an Office 365 identity.

If I then look in the work and school account I see that it is connected to my Azure AD as shown above. Therefore, here I have only one account that logs me into the local machine and my Office 365.

Compare that situation to when I already have a functioning Windows 10 machines and I associate it to Azure AD. When I do that I only see the local user as the identity as shown above. Thus, I am actually logging into this Windows 10 machine with a local account rather than my Office 365 account.

When I look in the work or school account area I again see a connection to my Azure AD. Thus, I login to this Windows 10 device with a local account which is then associated to an Office 365 account. Therefore I have two accounts in operation now, a local account and an Office 365 account.

The big difference here is that by using an Office 365 login during the installation of Windows 10 I get an Office 365 login to my box, whereas if I connect to Azure AD after my Windows 10 is installed I only get a local account login.

In both cases, when I visit a site in an Microsoft browser (IE or Edge) such as the Office 365 portal, I am not prompted to login because these credential are furnished directly from Windows 10.

It is my experience that having just the one Office 365 login associated with a Windows 10 device is more reliable when it comes to this same sign on than if you merely associate an Office 365 login with an existing Windows 10 box. The trade off is, of course, that you only get this single Office 365 login to the box if you install Windows 10 from scratch, which may not always be possible.

So can you add an Office 365 to an existing Windows 10 machine and achieve browser and application same sign on? Yes. However, I would suggest a better option is to actually setup Windows 10 from scratch using an Office 365 account. You’ll get much better same sign on and be prepared for further integration down the track. You also remove the complexity of multiple accounts on the one desktop.

The main reason that you want to join your Windows 10 machines to Office 365/Azure AD is probably to eliminate the need for any local AD. This will also mean the elimination of on premises equipment and ensuing cost savings.

The main reason for retaining a local AD these days is simply for group policy, but in my experience is that most of what needs to be done with group policy can either be done with Office 365 MDM (which is free) out of the box or upgrading to Windows Intune or Azure AD Domain Services. That, in essence, now suggests that there is no real need for a local domain controller on premises at all. It can easily be eliminated with the integration of Windows 10, Office 365 and Azure AD as shown.

Special access for CIAOPS Patrons

I have created a number of different levels that you can become involved in my CIAOPS community. You sign up using the CIAOPS patron page at:

https://www.patreon.com/ciaops

on which you’ll find the following support levels (per month)
:

$10 per month – Pledge ten dollars a month and you’ll receive access to my restricted Facebook support group that will answer your questions on Office 365, Azure and other Microsoft cloud technologies. You’ll also get 25% discount off any one of my online courses per month. You’ll get free access to the recording of each monthly recorded support webinar. You’ll also get 50% discount off any one of my existing paid publications.

$50 per month – Pledge fifty dollars a month and you’ll receive access to my restricted Facebook support group that will answer your questions on Office 365, Azure and other Microsoft Cloud technologies. You’ll get 50% discount off any one of my online courses per month. You’ll receive an invite to attend live my monthly support webinar that will answer questions and demonstrate Microsoft cloud technologies as well as receive access to the recordings. You’ll also receive free access to all my existing paid publications and any new paid publications I create.

$100 per month – Pledge one hundred dollars a month and you’ll receive access to my restricted Facebook support group that will answer your questions on Office 365, Azure and other Microsoft Cloud technologies. You’ll get 80% discount off an one of my online courses per month. You’ll receive an invite to attend my live monthly support webinar that will answer questions and demonstrate Microsoft cloud technologies as well as receive access to the recordings. You’ll also receive free access to all my existing paid publications and any new paid publications I create. You will also receive a monthly one on one remote consulting session for training or problem solving up to one hour (valued at over $250).

Not only will you get access to all the information that I regularly create, you’ll get access to a community of cloud focuses resellers who are digitally transforming their business and those of their customers. That is knowledge you can leverage when you become a CIAOPS Patron.

My Podcasts

Apart from my Kindle and Audible consumption I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts. Whether travelling in the car, on the train, out walking, taking a flight, wherever. I’m not usually far from a having a podcast in my ear.

So here’s my current listening list:

1. Windows Weekly

The latest Microsoft news with some fun and entertainment along the way. Paul Thurrott’s musing make this podcast alone.

2. This Week in Google

Always good to hear about the wider internet but of late has become too involved in US politics for me. May need to review my subscription is that continues.

3. The Tim Ferriss Show

Some really great advice and business insights. Also lots of life lessons that I have found work really well for me. A weekly must listen for me.

4. Microsoft Cloud Show

Can get a little deep into the developer weeds for me sometime but generally great information and insight into what’s happening with the Microsoft Cloud.

5. Hardcore History

Not a regular event but when these episodes drop I’m all ears. They are are deep dive into history told by a master narrator. If you love history, you’ll love these episodes.

6. Jocko Podcast

Probably too hard core for most. For me it is a great mix of military history and business mindset training. If you have a ‘fanatical’ tendency then give this one a listen.

7. Unbeatable Mind Podcast

A short format that hosts interesting people who have typically overcome adversity to succeed. Also some great mind and resilience training methodologies as well.

8. Ammo NYC

Another thing I’m fanatical about is my cars and especially detailing them. Here you’ll learn all the tricks and secrets to becoming a master car detailer. Why? Because there’s is nothing more satisfying than a shiny car.

I listen to all episodes at at least 2X speed to allow me to crank through most of these episodes in a week. I’ve added and deleted many podcasts over the time, and continue to do so, but the above is are the long term residents of my device.

Since 2010 I have published my own podcast:

Need to Know podcast

which covers the Microsoft Cloud (typically Office 365 and Azure) as well as business topics. I do these with my co-host Marc Kean and encourage you to have a listen and me know what you think.