The Cloud Architects Podcast

Nic and Chris catch up with Philip Griffiths about next-generation WAN being delivered over the internet, how perimeter security is not everything and the challenge of working in a global networking company.

Nic catches up with Darrell Webster (aka Darrell as a Service) to talk about cloud adoption messes, infrastructure challenges, people challenges, how to change rollout practices towards cloud adoption and so much more. Darrell is an Office 365 productivity and collaboration specialist for Adopt and Embrace. He relishes the opportunity to help individuals, teams and organisations to unlock the value in Office 365. He is active in the Microsoft Technical Community and firmly believes that the Community IS the expert. Darrell also helps to co-ordinate an online publication and Live show called RE:Office 365, where thought leaders share their stories, opinions and guidance regarding Office 365. His community efforts have been recognised with the Microsoft MVP award since 2013. Follow Darrell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrellwebster/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DarrellaaS Blog: webster.net.nz and contributing to regarding365.com

Microsoft Inspire recently wrapped up in Las Vegas and in this episode, Nic catches up with Michael Van Horenbeeck to talk about his experience at Microsoft Inspire. Michael talks about his role as a Microsoft Partner and the value of attending Inspire. Michael Van Horenbeeck specializes in a variety of products and services from the Microsoft 365 product stack, more specifically within Enterprise Mobility + Security, Azure Active Directory, Office 365, etc. He is one of the handful experts in the world to hold both the Microsoft Certified Solutions Masters for Messaging certification and the Office Apps & Services MVP award at the same time. Over the last 18 years, he has worked with various technologies and solutions from different vendors, mainly focusing in the area of Security, Messaging, Collaboration and Intelligent Communications. He works with customers around the globe, helping them to design, implement, migrate, consolidate and secure various solutions and services based on Microsoft's M365 offerings. You can also find him speaking at several international conferences such as Microsoft Ignite, TechSummits, Mobile Workplace Conference. Follow Michael on Twitter at https://twitter.com/vanhybrid This episode is also available as a video recording: https://youtu.be/XjoMUXaJtXI

With Microsoft Ignite 2019 fast approaching, the Community Call for Content is now open and closes on August, 4. In this special episode, Anna Chu (a.k.a The Community Khaleesi) takes us through the types of submissions being accepted and walks us through the process. Are you interested in presenting at Ignite 2019? If so, Anna's tips will help you put together the best possible submission, increasing your chances of success! Anna Chu is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft responsible for working across the Microsoft Tech Community and MVP communities to engage with the IT Pro audience. This involves driving partnerships between engineering and marketing that influence product roadmaps and leading community strategy to enable best practice sharing between customers - in turn facilitating a natural feedback loop between the people who build Microsoft Office products and services and the people who implement them.

Ever wondered about the scale of Exchange Online or what it takes to manage a service at that scale while constantly deploying new features? Microsoft's Brent Alinger gave us a tour of Building 31 (a.k.a Exchange Central) on the Microsoft campus and sat down with us to talk about the humble beginnings of the service and how it has grown and matured since then. Brent Alinger is a member of the Microsoft Exchange product group. He is responsible for product servicing and updates to in-market releases. Brent has more than 20 years' experience working with Exchange, Messaging Platforms and Directory Services. If you have questions about how features are delivered across O365 or Enterprise releases, Brent is the person to talk to.. This episode is also available as a video recording on YouTube: https://youtu.be/VZ_h5LQfltw

July 1 every year is a big day for the MVP community - Its renewal day for MVPs and we also get to welcome new MVPs into the community. Nicolas, Warren and I are humbled to have been renewed and to be part of this amazing community for another year. In this episode, we had a lot of fun catching up with Anna Chu (a.k.a The Community Khaleesi) to talk about being an MVP, the MVP summit and got a sneak peak into Ignite and Ignite The Tour coming up later this year. Anna Chu is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft responsible for working across the Microsoft Tech Community and MVP communities to engage with the IT Pro audience. This involves driving partnerships between engineering and marketing that influence product roadmaps and leading community strategy to enable best practice sharing between customers - in turn facilitating a natural feedback loop between the people who build Microsoft Office products and services and the people who implement them. You can follow Anna on Twitter https://twitter.com/_achu

The Microsoft Office 365 Hybrid Configuration Wizard (HCW) has come a long way since it was first introduced in Exchange 2010 SP2, prior to that configuring a hybrid deployment required ~50 manual steps. We had the pleasure of sitting down with Greg Taylor and Georgia Huggins while in Redmond recently to talk about the evolution of the HCW and what challenges the newly released Hybrid Agent solves for customers. Georgia Huggins is a Program Manager for Exchange Online and currently owns the experience to establish hybrid from Exchange Server on premises to EXO. She has experience working with both small and large enterprise customers and designing, building and delivering features based on their needs. Georgia also spent many years managing, testing and supporting Exchange Server in pre-production and production environments for Microsoft Information Technology groups. Greg Taylor is the Director of Product Marketing for Exchange Server and Exchange Online. Prior to that he spent many years as part of the Exchange Engineering and Customer Experience teams, designing and building Exchange features, working with large enterprise customers, presenting at public events and working with technology communities. Greg also ran the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) and Architect (MCA) and Exchange Ranger Programs for Microsoft, an elite 3-6 week in-person Redmond based program, training Microsoft and partner consultants and engineers how to design and troubleshoot the world’s largest and most complex Exchange deployments. You can find Greg on Twitter https://twitter.com/gregtaylor_msft

We often talk about "The long tail of previous best practices" and how in today's ever-evolving cloud landscape it is very important to follow updated guidance, this includes keeping our security policies up to date. Nic sat down with Tarek and Mark from Microsoft to talk about Azure AD security, the evolution of identity management and the need to modernize legacy applications. Here are links to the sessions mentioned in the episode: BRK3408 - Azure Active Directory best practices from around the world - https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/67647 BRK3243 - Hybrid identity and access management best practices - https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/64566 BRK325 - Shut the door to cybercrime with identity-driven security - https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/64568

If you've ever used the Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator or consulted The Exchange Preferred Architecture you'll be very familiar with the work of our guest, Ross Smith IV. Nic and Warren caught up Ross to talk about his 19-year tenure at Microsoft and his new role in Intune Engineering, giving us a sneak peak into some of the innovation we can look forward to in Outlook for iOS and Android. Ross Smith IV is a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft. In his current role, he is responsible for driving the adoption of Outlook for iOS and Android with Intune App Protection Policies and Azure Active Directory Conditional Access. He also defines and manages the creation of technical content related to Outlook for iOS and Android. You can find Ross on Twitter - https://twitter.com/RossSmithIV

There is no denying that the only constant with cloud services is change, the nature and rate of this change often brings about some interesting challenges for organizations. We sat down with Anna Donnelly to talk about organizational change management, driving user adoption and how a sound change management strategy is essential to the success of your cloud adoption project. Anna Donnelly is a Services Product Manager at Insight and a Certified Change Practitioner helping organizations manage change and drive user adoption.