RunAs Radio

Does Windows still matter? Richard and Paul Thurrott spend the better part of an hour debating back-and-forth about the state of Windows and the need for Windows. Microsoft has split the Windows team and largely concealed its revenue from reporting, so we don't know how Windows is actually doing. What do we want from Windows today? Is it just part of the plumbing now?

Ready for a new Windows administration console? Richard chats with Haley Rowland about Windows Admin Center, a browser-based administration tool that puts a graphical console over top of PowerShell commands to your on-premises servers and workstations - and your Azure-based resources as well! Haley talks about making hybrid cloud easier, using Windows Admin Center to provide coherent connections between on-premises servers and their Azure-based backup solutions. Doing the same task in Windows Admin Center repeatedly? You can grab a copy of the PowerShell script it uses and automate!

Is it time for a new Windows Terminal? Richard talks to Richard Turner about the announcement at Build of the new Windows Terminal. The conversation starts with: Why? Richard explains that the ConHost.exe based console of Windows has hit its limits - the need for backward compatibility exceeds the ability to make changes to it effectively anymore. A new open source project has been developed to allow all the features you've always wanted in a terminal, like tabs, font choices, customization per environment and more - take a look!

Is DevOps only for startups? Rosalind Radcliffe says no! The largest enterprises can benefit from DevOps practices, the challenge is finding the right approach to changing practices. Rosalind talks about getting buy-in from senior leadership by focusing on reducing waste and improving efficiency. Picking the right project is important also - you want a project that is important, but not the crown jewels of the company. Understanding how work actually gets done in the enterprise helps lead you to where you can find improvements in deployment, testing and more. DevOps in the enterprise is possible - and worth it!

It's 2019 - what's new with the Internet of Things? While at the Build conference in Seattle, Richard sat down with Sam George to talk about the latest initiatives Microsoft is taking to bring IoT to the mainstream of business. As Sam explains, its starts with instrumentation - knowing what is happening in your business in more detail. That informs ways to make improvements and further roles for IoT. It's a digital feedback cycle, and it can transform your business!

What can PowerApps do for you? Richard chats with Sandy Ussia about her work with PowerApps and Flow to help organizations build custom applications that run in the browser, on the tablet and phone. On the backend, Flow provides access to many Software-as-a-Service platforms, including all of Office 365 and all sorts of other third-party services. Sandy calls PowerApps a low-code solution, and the code you write is more algorithmic like Excel than C++.

The cloud-based distributed database is a product you can buy by the minute! While at Build, Richard chats with Mark Brown about CosmosDB, Microsoft's high performance distributed database. The conversation turns to the modern thinking around storage - you have lots of space, you need speed and reliability. So what does your data storage architecture look like? Mark talks about how CosmosDB reflects this modern thinking, utilizing the cloud to provide fast data services anywhere you need them.

Machine learning has brought new terms and language to data - do you speak it? Richard chats with Jen Underwood about how machine learning has added capabilities to data analytics, but also a number of new terms that need to be understood to take this capability into the business. If you're coming from the DBA role and adding machine learning to your skills, you need to know the language well enough to teach it to others!

How do you maintain Windows Server Update Services? Richard chats with Adam Marshall about all the maintenance that WSUS needs over time - and the toolset he has built to automate it. This leads to a conversation about Windows Update in general... which hasn't been great lately. Can you really count on Windows as a Service? What about InTune? Adam also talks about Windows Update for Business which is a free option for managing updates without having an on-premises update server. Lots of choices!

Microsoft Teams is popular, but is it effective? Richard talks with Melissa Hubbard about how to get the most of out of Teams. Melissa talks about the natural chaos that comes from adding a new collaboration tool and how that can be a good thing for adoption but ultimately needs some governance. At the same time, too much governance up-front can stop people from using a new tool - so allow a little chaos! Teams is all about collaboration, and works with other Microsoft products like Yammer and SharePoint, offering a great combination!