CIAOPS Online training special offer

With 2016 drawing to a close, I thought I’d do a special offer on the Complete Course Catalogue for my online training academy you can find at:

www.ciaopsacademy.com

The Complete Course Catalogue is an annual subscription that gives you access to every course I have created (including courses on Azure, Office 365, Yammer, SharePoint and more) and will create. Thus, if you sign up today you get access to the 25+ courses I have already created PLUS you’ll also get access to all the new courses I have in the works for 2017.

So the deal until December 25 and for a strictly limited number of takers is:

– 10% discount off the first year’s subscription ($60 value)

– a 1 hour remote consulting call with me that you can use for training, business mentoring or the like ($275 value)

– access to the private CIAOPS Facebook tech community to discuss and ask your questions in and share with other members ($120 value)

– free Getting Started With Skype for Business eBook ($10 value)

– free Beyond the Basics with SharePoint Online eBook ($10 value)

That’s over $450 in value plus what you’ll get from the online courses that include video lessons, downloadable notes, links and more.

As I said, this offer is strictly limited until the 25th of December 2016 or until sold out, so don’t delay. Sign up today to take advantage of this strictly limited learning opportunity.

To take advantage of this deal use the code MERRY2016 at checkout or click this link:

http://ciaops-academy.teachable.com/p/complete-catalogue/?product_id=153214&coupon_code=MERRY2016

I look forward to seeing you in the CIAOPS Academy and Facebook Tech group.

Software will eat the world

This is the fifth part 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

If you consider all the trends in the changing IT environment the next questions that results is ‘Where should I invest for the future?’. Luckily, the answer to that is pretty simple. Software.

Marc Andreessen wrote an article back in 2009 entitled:

Why Software Is Easting the World

that I encourage everyone to read. In essence, it is saying the the IT world of the future is all about software. Every business, whether they are in IT or not will effectively become a software company given the amount of data it needs to analyse. Software provides automation, reducing costs. Software provides efficiency and a competitive edge, etc., etc..

Some other articles that echo this are:

Hardware is sexy, but it’s software that matters

from Seth Godin

Software is still eating the world

from Techcrunch

How robots, drones and artificial intelligence will change everything

from the Financial Post.

Those who only have on premises IT skill sets are fast being left behind by those who have embraced the world of IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) thanks to Azure, AWS and the like. However, the journey does not cease there. It will continue from IaaS to Platform as a Service (PaaS) and to Software as a Service (SaaS).

The reasons for retaining a complex system such as an email server on premises are pretty minute these days in the face of the pricing of global services like Office 365 Exchange Online. It makes more sense for the creator of something like Exchange to set it up, manage and maintain the system then sell it as a demand based service per user per month. Global corporations like Microsoft can get economies of scale that no one else really can, effectively making many computing services simply a utility much like electricity.

That trend means there is less need for Exchange engineers and technicians on premises. What happens to these people? Simple. If they don’t skill up they are going to struggle big time.

IT Professionals increasing face an environment that is all about DevOps. That is the intersection between being a developer and managing operations of computing resources. However, the key skill for that role is clear. It is software and more so coding. If you can’t code to some extent going forward you are not going to have a skill set sought by employers or businesses.

The classic example I see in the Microsoft eco-system is the lack of skills IT Professionals have with basic tools such as PowerShell. You should be using PowerShell to manage your on premises networks TODAY. You should be using PowerShell to manage Office 365 TODAY. You should be using PowerShell to manage Azure TODAY. Write once, run many should be the mantra of today’s IT Professionals but sadly it isn’t. The excuse is normally that ‘I don’t have the time to learn PowerShell’ to which my response is ‘your problem is NOT a time issue, it is a priority issue’.

The world of DevOps doesn’t mean you have to spend your whole day writing code or diving deep into APIs. What is does however mean is that you need to have a balance of skills in the software world, whether that is PowerShell, JSON, Visual Studio, or whatever. Software skills are mandatory for the future of the IT industry because that is the basis on which our future is built on. Software.

Just about every system we interact with today is done via the web. HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc are again key technologies I see few IT Professionals actually possessing or seeking to develop. Even automation tools as simple as If This Then That, Zapier, Microsoft Flow, etc are things most IT Professionals have NEVER seen, let alone used. These tools are the future of the IT Professional and a key skill that must be acquired because they are all the solution of some business problems simply created by connecting available software services together. You don’t need to writing C sharp code to be considered a developer by any means!

The great thing about software is that is all about the creativity of the human mind. That’s why software skills will always be in demand, because it is hard for a ‘machine’ to be artistic. Good software is an art and there is a shortage of good artists because so many have failed to update their skills and embrace the new world of software. Those that have now have a vehicle they could potentially use to develop mobile applications that could be sold to just about everyone on the planet with a mobile device, all without stepping outside their office. You can’t do that with hardware!

The take away here is that our world today and increasingly of tomorrow, is going to be dominated by software. If you can’t do software then you are going to be consigned to an unskilled role that it isn’t even worth a machine doing. There has never therefore been a better time than now to invest in software skills. Learn PowerShell. Learn how to deploy Azure JSON templates via scripts. Go and develop a mobile app using Microsoft PowerApps and Flow for starters. There has never been more opportunity for those who are willing to embrace the tenant that ‘Software is eating the world’ and a greater warning for those who ignore it.

Need to Know podcast–Episode 123

Marc is joined by Daniel Apps to talk all about the differences between the Microsoft monitoring products of System Center Operations Management and Operations Management Suite. Which is better? Is OMS replacing SCOM? Listen in for insight from Daniel Apps.

Marc and I also cover the latest Microsoft Cloud news in what will be out finale for 2016. Merry Christmas to all our listeners. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll see you all again in 2017.

You can listen to this episode directly at:

https://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-123-scom-vs-oms/

or on Soundcloud here:

or subscribe via iTunes at:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/ciaops-need-to-know-podcasts/id406891445?mt=2

The podcast is also available on Stitcher at:

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ciaops/need-to-know-podcast?refid=stpr

Don’t forget to give the show a rating as well as send us any feedback or suggestions you may have for the show.

Resources

Calendar help preview

SharePoint smart filters

Need to Know Podcast–Episode 122

Marc and I run through all the latest cloud news in the wind down to the holiday season. Still plenty of things happening, especially around Azure so listen in for the latest.

You can listen to this episode directly at:

http://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-122-cloud-news/

or subscribe via iTunes at:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/ciaops-need-to-know-podcasts/id406891445?mt=2

The podcast is also available on Stitcher at:

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ciaops/need-to-know-podcast?refid=stpr

Don’t forget to give the show a rating as well as send us any feedback or suggestions you may have for the show.

Resources

@marckean

@directorcia

New Skype for Business Mac Client

Azure AD PAss through authentication

New capabilities for EMS

Clarification on Azure SMB file share transactions

I have previously written about the flexibility of Azure SMB file shares:

Creating an SMB file share

Azure SMB file shares – price and performance

Upon revisiting the Azure price calculator I now note there are three options when it comes to calculating operations costs on these file shares.

Each operation consists of units of 10,000 transactions. However, my questions was what actually constitutes a transaction? If I copy 10,001 files into an Azure SMB file share, is that 10,001 transactions or just one because it is a bulk operation?

So the answer (as I understand it) is that ANY file operation constitutes a transaction. For example, copy 10,001 file to Azure SMB file share = 10,001 transactions (cost = 2 operations = $ 0.0382 (put operation)). For example, do a directory listing of those 10,001 files once they have been copied to the Azure SMB file share = 10,001 transactions (cost = 2 operations = $ 0.0382 (list operation)). The only thing that won’t cost you a transaction is a delete operation.

With this in mind let’s try and cost out a generalised scenario. Let’s say you set up a 1TB Azure SMB file share for 50 users. That will cost you A$114.78 in storage. Now let’s say that your 50 users work on an average of 50 files a day. This means, your business is working with 2,500 files per day. Let’s now say that on average there are 4 transactions per file (list, open, put, list) per day. Thus, we now have an average of 10,000 transactions across your organisation for this Azure SMB file share per day. Thus, that means we get about 300,000 transactions per month on average. So this means we get 300,000 divided by 10,000 operations per month = 30. The total cost of these transactions over the month is then 30 x $ 0.0191 = A$0.57.

That means the cost of such an Azure SMB file share is: storage + operations = A$114.78 + (300,000/10,000) x A$0.0191 = A$114.78 + A$0.57 = A$115.35 per month. Remember, that this price also EXCLUDES any bandwidth costs to an on premises location.

That equates to about A$3.85 per month per user cost for such Azure SMB file storage.

The hardest thing about determining such pricing is clearly the number of operations (i.e. number of 10,000 transactions) that will take place on the data in the Azure SMB file share. However, what is important to remember here is that if you have a very active Azure SMB file share with lost of users ensure you need to keep a close eye on your operations (i.e. file transaction) costs because they can become quite expensive if you have lots and lots of them. For example, if we say we got 1,000 times more transactions a month (i.e. 300 million per month) that equates to 30,000 operations per month (i.e. 300,000,000/10,000), which is A$573 in transaction costs alone. Suddenly the Azure SMB file share option becomes a tad expensive.

Azure SMB file shares are a great solution but like everything in Azure they may not be appropriate in all situations. In the case of high volume file transactions perhaps an Azure VM with a traditional file share would be more cost effective. Of course, there are other cost factors to consider with an Azure VM including the compute monthly cost, maintenance, etc. To provide a true comparison you need to ensure you consider all the relevant costs.

A future blog post will compare the costs of doing a file share from a traditional Azure VM so that you have a comparison to what’s been discussed here. So stay tuned for more on that real soon.

Need to Know Podcast–Episode 121

After getting through all the cloud news, Marc and I have a chat to an old and frequent podcast guest, Technical Solution Specialist, Enterprise Mobility and Security, Jeff Alexander. We hope this will be the first in a series focused on the Enterprise Mobility and Security Suite from Microsoft. We kick off the discussions with Jeff telling us all about Azure AD and role that it plays both on premises and in the cloud. We dig deep in how Azure AD is being used to secure the growth of mobile devices and the demands of users to have full access to their information at all times.

You can listen to this episode directly at:

http://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-121-jeff-alexander/

or on Soundcloud here:

or subscribe via iTunes at:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/ciaops-need-to-know-podcasts/id406891445?mt=2

The podcast is also available on Stitcher at:

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ciaops/need-to-know-podcast?refid=stpr

Don’t forget to give the show a rating as well as send us any feedback or suggestions you may have for the show.

Resources

@marckean

@directorcia

@jeffa36

Microsoft Enterprise Mobility and Security Suite

EMS blog

Start and Stop Azure VM’s using autmation

Announcing auto VM shutdown from the portal

Azure news from Marc

Office 365 group guest access available to all tenants

Two day Azure deep dive from me

On the 6th and 7th of December 2016 I’m running a two day intensive, deep dive, hands on training for SMB Partners in Sydney around Azure. This will hopefully be the first of the roll out of this program to Microsoft partners around Australia in 2017.

The training is basically broken up into two days, IaaS and PaaS. It it also unique in that it will provide attendees with not only technical training but also business training on how to cost and sell Azure solutions to customers.

You’ll be expected to work through a typical scenario of moving on premises SMB workloads to Azure. This means you’ll be learning how to set up and configure things like Azure virtual networks and virtual machines. You’ll create site to site VPNs and learn best practices for migrating data to the cloud. You’ll also learn how to integrate Office 365 with on premises environments and with Azure. There will also be the opportunity to gain exposure to other Azure services such as Logic Apps, Machine Learning, Web Apps, Azure SQL and more. Best of all you’ll be working in teams with your peers to complete challenges which also provides a huge networking opportunity. If you want to grow your cloud business and gain real world hands on experience with Microsoft Cloud technologies for SMB, this is not a session to miss.

Now because this first course is a bit of a test, if you are interested in attending then you’ll need to send me an email directly (director@ciaops.com) with your reasons for wanting to attend. I’ll forward these requests directly to Microsoft for inclusion in the course as attendance is strictly limited by number but also by desire to really get serious about deploying Azure.

This course is going to challenge both your technical and business abilities but you’ll walk away with a wealth of knowledge on Azure and Office 365 that I don’t believe is available elsewhere. Perhaps more importantly, you’ll walk away with the ability to confidently quote, sell and implement Azure/Office 365 solutions to your customers.

Thanks to Microsoft, this course is free to attend but you’ll need to send me your details as I have mentioned above to get a shot at attending.

Once again, places are strictly limited so hurry if you want to accelerate your business using Azure!

Need to Know Podcast–Episode 120

Marc and I chew the fat over the latest updates from the Microsoft Cloud. No guest for this episode just us giving you the latest news. Don’t worry we are buys teeing up some great guests for future episodes but we thought we’d get this update out for everyone.

You can listen to this episode directly at:

http://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-120-cloud-update/

or subscribe via iTunes at:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/ciaops-need-to-know-podcasts/id406891445?mt=2

The podcast is also available on Stitcher at:

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ciaops/need-to-know-podcast?refid=stpr

Don’t forget to give the show a rating as well as send us any feedback or suggestions you may have for the show.

Resources

@marckean

@directorcia

Satya’s Australian visit

Azure N Series machines available