RunAs Radio

Ready to automate? Richard chats with Sandy Ussia about Power Automate, formerly known as Flow (although the term flow is never far away). But Power Automate is exactly what you think it is - a no-code/low-code solution to providing automation in Azure between Office 365 and a whole host of other platforms including Google, Salesforce, and so on. Sandy talks about the array of templates that already exist for Automate, so that rarely do you need to start from scratch - there's always a template for your idea that can at least get you started. And the Starter Kit helps you get started right, with good governance!

The Black Hats are targeting your users' fears - are you prepared? Richard talks with Susan Bradley about the focus of attackers on COVID-19 topics. Susan talks about how many security exploits depend on convincing users to click on something they shouldn't. You can train to resist those clicks, but nothing is ever perfect. The question is, what happens next? The conversation digs into multifactor authentication, resisting lateral security breaks, and more. You can keep your remote workers secure!

We all have a hybrid cloud solution - how do you manage it? Richard chats with Thomas Maurer about Azure Arc, a tool in the Azure suite for managing virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, and data services in Azure, your on-premises servers, even other cloud providers! Thomas talks about how IT folks end up with an array of tools for managing servers depending on the location and how Azure Arc ends that. Arc provides location-independent access to all your resources, and it's in preview now, so free to use (although you may have to pay for additional Log Analytics data)... check it out!

You've got everyone working from home - how is their WiFi holding up? After the initial rush to get folks working from home, there's the need to work effectively from home. Having bandwidth and connectivity problems seriously impacts productivity. Richard talks to Ryan Woodings, the CEO of MetaGeek about getting WiFi working well. MetaGeek has made products for tuning enterprise WiFi for years, but the need for getting better performance out of home WiFi has had them refocusing on different tools - including the free inSSIDer WiFi analysis tool!

What can Azure Synapse do for you? Richard chats with Jen Stirrup about Microsoft's Azure Synapse Analytics. Jen talks about how most companies have structured and unstructured data, typically stored in different locations. If you're all in on Azure, you have an Azure Data Warehouse for structured data ready for analytics as well as an Azure Data Lake that holds your unstructured data. Azure Synapse brings those two data sources together, along with other SQL data sources, to help you do comprehensive analytics. The conversation turns to the idea of answering business questions as opposed to exploring business mysteries - both are valuable, but need different tools and techniques!

Are you ready to have employees back in the office? As part of the Pandemic Series, Richard talks to Cynthia Milota about what preparations need to be made for using office space during the pandemic. In some places in the world, the initial wave of the pandemic has passed and the number of cases stabilized. Where authorized, folks can go back to the office - but with certain restrictions. What makes sense for your office? Can you maintain physical distance? How much cleaning is required? How do you give the staff the confidence that working from the office is safe?

Two old guys bicker about Windows! Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about the current state of Windows Desktop, and the cycles that keep recurring - put more things into Windows, then take them out. Update more frequently, then less frequently. Client software deployment problems - use the web instead. Web doesn't have enough features, build more client apps. There are lots of cycles around Windows, which ones affect you?

How do you stop the company email from being compromised? Richard talks to Niall Merrigan about the sophisticated level of hacks going on in business email. Niall describes how business email systems get compromised, typically through a weak password, then monitored to understand the business well enough to inject email in to steal money or compromise the business. In these challenging times, no one can afford this - and multifactor authentication and strong confirmation policies can help!

Windows Terminal 1.0 is shipped! Richard talks to Kayla Cinnamon about the open-source project that is Windows Terminal. The conversation starts with a bit of a history lesson on updating the Windows Command Prompt - and why it turned out to be a bad idea. Folks depended on the exact behavior of the command prompt so heavily that any changes broke things and spread sadness. But what if you could start over? Windows Terminal brings together all the things you never knew you wanted in a terminal client, as well as a bunch of features you definitely knew you wanted. Check it out!

Could Windows Virtual Desktop be your organization's Work-From-Home solution? Another episode in the Pandemic Series, Richard talks to Grant Becker about the latest version of Microsoft's virtual desktop tools. Grant talks about Windows Virtual Desktop as Remote Desktop Services in Azure - you have a minimal installation on the workstation, all of the security policies live in the Azure-hosted virtual machines that run your templates. And it works on mobile devices as well! While certainly a useful solution during the pandemic, WVD could be a common way to work going forward!