The Cloud Architects Podcast

Azure AD business-to-business (B2B) collaboration allows organizations to securely share applications and services with guest users from any other organization, while maintaining control over their data. In this episode we chat to returning guest Elisabeth Olson about some of the improvements in the B2B experience, the new bring your own identity functionality and she even helps Warren solve his viral account problem. Elisabeth Olson is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft with over a decade of varied experiences, including contributing directly to SharePoint, Windows, and Microsoft Identity. Elisabeth is passionate about creating great features that remove obstacles and empower users, and she believes that considering the end-to-end experience for all users is critical to a successful product. You can connect with Elisabeth on Twitter (https://twitter.com/ElisOl) Here are some links to the admin take over process discussed during the episode: * Take over an unmanaged directory as administrator in Azure Active Directory (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/users-groups-roles/domains-admin-takeover) * Perform an internal admin takeover in Office 365 (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/misc/become-the-admin?view=o365-worldwide)

docs.microsoft.com is the new home for all Microsoft documentation and Microsoft Learn is a free, online training platform that provides interactive learning for Microsoft products - There has been significant investment in these platforms in recent years. We caught up with Erin Rifkin to talk about these platforms, the success of Microsoft Learn and how they've grown from 80 to over 700 modules in one year. Erin Rifkin is a General Manager at Microsoft where she leads a team responsible for the architectural guidance, documentation and training for several Microsoft products and platforms. Erin has over 15 years of demonstrated experience in program and product management, leadership in technical and non-technical environments, enablement, documentation, and training. You can connect with Erin on Twitter (https://twitter.com/erinrifkin) Here are some links discussed during the episode: * Microsoft Learn - (https://microsoft.com/learn) * docs.microsoft.com - (https://docs.microsoft.com/)

A move to the cloud is almost always accompanied by change. Sometimes these changes are pretty obvious and easy to grasp while other times they are more of paradigm shift - one such shift is in the way we monitor out deployments. Monitoring your tenant and supporting services won't prevent a service problem, but it will help you to respond proactively when one occurs and let your users know about the problem before they start alerting you. In this episode we'll talk to Justin Harris, CTO of ENow Software about how monitoring cloud services is radically different from monitoring traditional on-premises infrastructure and why it is important to get it right. We'll also delve into the built-in tools you can use in your own Office 365 tenant and why you may way to consider augmenting those with some third-party monitoring tools. Justin Harris is a 20+ year technology veteran with a wide range of vertical industry exposure that has a knack for understanding how market trends introduce market needs. Justin directs functional and technical teams in working towards a common goal as Chief Technology Officer for Enow Software. Duties include working with a global partner and customer base, identifying relevant industry trends, identifying gaps in the market, pinpointing urgent problems that need to be solved, designing targeted solutions, crafting go to market messaging, educating internal and external customers and providing support for the sales and marketing teams. You can connect with Justin on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-harris-40b11/) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/ntexcellence) and be sure to check out ENow Software (https://www.enowsoftware.com/)

Outlook for Mac has come a long way since it's humble beginnings as Microsoft Entourage. As avid Outlook for Mac users ourselves, Nic and I were excited to sit down with Alessio and Jessica to talk about the history, the much anticipated new version of the product and how important your feedback is to the team building it! Alessio Roic is a Group Program Manager and 23-year veteran at Microsoft where he leads the product management team for Outlook for Mac. Alessio is passionate about driving the adoption of agile methodologies, data driven design, growth strategies and customer focus. You can connect with Alessio [on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alessioroic/) or via email (listen to show for email address). Jessica Wilczek is a Outlook + Exchange Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft focusing on Outlook Mobile, Outlook for Mac, and Bookings. Jessica is driven by challenges, loves to think outside the box, and has a passion for analytical problem solving with creative solutions. You can connect with Jessica [on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicawilczek/) or via email. Here's a link to Outlook for Mac on UserVoice: * Outlook for Mac - Business (https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/335538-outlook-for-mac-business)

Message transport in Office 365 "Just works" and is often considered to be the plumbing of the service. Despite the rise in popularity of social messaging apps, 62% of business professionals prefer email for business communications and the number of emails delivered daily worldwide is forecast to grow 18% by 2023. In this episode we chat to Kevin Shaughnessy about some of the message transport enhancements and innovation announced at Microsoft Ignite recently. Kevin Shaughnessy is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft and leads the M365 Exchange Transport team's efforts to address customer mail flow challenges and requests. A 23-year Microsoft veteran, Kevin's breadth and depth of experience across multiple disciplines (Technical Support, Technical Marketing, Analyst Relations, and Engineering) makes him uniquely qualified to transform existing customer experiences into new email innovations and solutions that target the needs of the modern mail flow admin. You can connect with Kevin on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-shaughnessy-a9b0a31/) or via email. Here are some additional links discussed in the episode: * Me Too! - The story of “Bedlam DL3” on Tech Community (https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/me-too/ba-p/610643) * Exchange Team Blog You Had Me at EHLO.. (https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/bg-p/Exchange) * Ignite Session: BRK3312 (https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/79364?source=speakerdetail)

Ever heard of Microsoft FastTrack? FastTrack helps customers deploy Microsoft cloud solutions - customers with eligible subscriptions can use FastTrack at no additional cost for the life of their subscription. We sat down with Jennifer Burdett from the FastTrack Team to talk about what FastTrack is, how you can make the most of this benefit and how partners can compliment this offering. Jennifer Burdett is a Senior Program Manager on the FastTrack Team at Microsoft, her area of focus is on email and endpoint security. In her spare time, she enjoys volunteering her time to many causes such as hosting a Microsoft DigiGirlz event each year, being part of the Women@Microsoft group, and improving diversity in the industry. Feel free to connect with Jennifer on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferb...) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/jburdett7) Check out Jennifer's community work here: * DigiGirlz Winnipeg on Twitter (https://twitter.com/digigirlzwpg) * Women in Communications & Technology Manitoba on Twitter (https://twitter.com/wctmanitoba)

If you're like me, your Outlook Calendar is the first thing you look at every morning and the last thing you look at before heading off to bed - days seem to get more and more busy and we need some way to organize and schedule our daily lives. For many of us though, the calendar functionality built into Outlook is something we all take for granted. In this episode, we'll talk to Julia Foran who is a Program Manager on Outlook Calendar and works on the server-side features that are consumed by the Outlook clients. We talk about Ignite announcements and some of the improvements coming to Outlook Calendar. Julia Foran is a Principal Program Manager on the Office 365 calendar platform and is responsible for maintaining service quality and innovating new calendar scenarios. A core objective of her team is to identify existing features that can be improved, and do the necessary backend work to improve the experience. Feel free to connect with Julia on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliaforan/

With the explosive growth of cloud services, many organizations suddenly find themselves having to manage multiple cloud environments, either intentionally or by coincidence due to mergers, acquisitions or other such events. With Azure and AWS being two of the most popular choices, we talk to Azure MVP Mike Pfeiffer who is also AWS certified about the parallels between the two services, things to consider when running two clouds and discuss if multi-cloud makes more sense as a transitional state or long-term mode of operation. Mike is a twenty-year tech industry veteran and entrepreneur. He's worked for some of the largest software companies in the world, including Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS), and has launched two successful consulting businesses since 2003. Today, Mike is founder and Chief Technologist at CloudSkills.io, a cloud training and consulting firm. Feel free to connect with Mike on LinkedIn(https://www.linkedin.com/in/mpfeiffer/), Twitter (https://twitter.com/mike_pfeiffer) or at https://cloudskills.io

Data warehousing is a massive topic! We've all heard of data lakes, data swamps and big data in general, but what does it all mean? We sat down with Melissa Coates (a.k.a SQLChick) in an attempt to gain an understanding of this complex topic and definitely learned a thing or two in the process. Melissa Coates is a data architect with a focus on data warehousing, data lake, and business intelligence solutions in the cloud. Melissa is the owner of Coates Data Strategies, she produces training courses to help data professionals be successful deploying technologies with the Microsoft data platform. She also provides technical writing and consulting projects related to Azure and Power BI. You can follow Melissa on Twitter at https://twitter.com/SQLChick)

Adoption is top of mind for many organizations at the moment - be it adoption of a particular workload (like Microsoft Teams) or cloud services in general. Warren and Nic sat down with the always entertaining Tracy van der Schyff to talk about the difference between adoption and consumption and the concept of user empowerment. Facilitating the evolution of human capabilities – Tracy's passion is to empower people and therefore training and change management lie close to her heart. Her Mission is to positively impact WHAT and HOW people create, she believes that what we design or create, designs / creates us back (Ontological Design). It is about enabling others to serve themselves better, expand their possibilities, increase their capacity to learn, act more effectively and better design their future.. You can follow Tracy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tracyvds