Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast

Welcome to Episode 437 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast. In this episode, Nick Burling, Chief Product Officer at Nasuni, joins Ben and Scott to talk about getting unstructured file data ready for AI. Nick digs into why 70 to 80 percent of enterprise data sits in file shares and object storage, how that data tends to end up ungoverned and risky to point AI at, and Nasuni’s PSYCHIC framework for making it proprietary, secure, current, indexed, hybrid, and continuous. The conversation covers Nasuni’s AI Activate, the MCP based service that enforces permissions before a query ever runs, and the recent DryvIQ acquisition, which adds content classification, redaction, and policy enforcement on top of that index. They also get into where this overlaps with Purview and Copilot’s own indexing, how DriveIQ reads and respects Microsoft’s existing sensitivity labels, and why 97 percent of orgs are piloting AI agents while only 43 percent call those projects successful. Nick closes with practical advice for anyone evaluating a platform like this: pick one high value use case, define success metrics up front, and keep the initial scope small. Discosure: This is a sponsor interview with Nasuni who is a sponsor of the podcast. Your support makes this show possible! Please consider becoming a premium member for access to live shows and more. Check out our membership options. Show Notes https://www.nasuni.com/ Nasuni Research Finds 97% of Enterprises Are Adopting AI Agents, Yet Most Projects Fail to Meet Objectives Nasuni Acquires DryvIQ, Enabling Organizations to Classify, Secure, and Activate Unstructured Data to Unlock AI Business Value Nasuni Research Finds 97% of Enterprises Are Adopting AI Agents, Yet Most Projects Fail to Meet Objectives Expanding Purview DLP and Information Protection to Foreign Platforms Nasuni Resources Nasuni News AI Program Success Related episodes: Episode 431: Agent Governance Is the New App Governance Episode 429: Getting started with LLM Wikis About our guest Nick Burling is Chief Product Officer at Nasuni, where he leads the company’s product strategy at the intersection of enterprise data management, cloud infrastructure, and AI. He is responsible for shaping Nasuni’s vision for how organizations manage, protect, and activate unstructured data for enterprise teams and AI at scale. This includes expanding the company’s capabilities for continuous cost optimization and protection, while empowering compounding workforce productivity through AI-optimized unstructured data.An accomplished product executive and entrepreneur, Nick brings deep experience translating technology innovation and market shifts into clear strategic advantage. His career spans leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies including Microsoft and IBM, as well as early-stage ventures he has guided from launch through successful exit. At Nasuni, he leads the teams defining how enterprises will manage and act on unstructured data in an AI-driven world. Learn more about Nick at Forbes on their Technology Council Profile. Sponsors Nasuni is a leading unstructured data platform for enterprises where file data is mission-critical for both people and AI. Nasuni powers the operational file layer where work happens — helping organizations manage, protect, and activate data so teams can work smarter, reduce costs, and operate securely without limits. Intelligink — Would you like to become the irreplaceable Microsoft 365 resource for your organization? Let us know!

Welcome to Episode 436 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast. In this episode, Ben and Scott dive into Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance. Almost nobody runs one Microsoft Entra tenant. Mergers, divestitures, dev and test environments, regional partitioning, that one AI proof-of-concept somebody spun up on a credit card. Organizations accumulate tenants the way they accumulate SharePoint sites. The difference is that nobody ever built an inventory of the tenants, and central IT frequently cannot name them, let alone say whether they are configured safely. Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance, now generally available, is Microsoft’s first-party answer. It is genuinely four products under one blade: it finds the tenants you did not know about, gives you a least-privilege way to administer them without local accounts, monitors their configuration for drift against a JSON baseline, and gates the creation of new ones so the next tenant is governed from birth. Your support makes this show possible! Please consider becoming a premium member for access to live shows and more. Check out our membership options. Show Notes Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance is now generally available What is Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance? Deploy Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance end to end Related tenants in Tenant Governance Licensing for Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance Sponsors Nasuni is a leading unstructured data platform for enterprises where file data is mission-critical for both people and AI. Nasuni powers the operational file layer where work happens — helping organizations manage, protect, and activate data so teams can work smarter, reduce costs, and operate securely without limits. Intelligink — Would you like to become the irreplaceable Microsoft 365 resource for your organization? Let us know!

Welcome to Episode 435 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast. In this episode, Ben and Scott take a lap around what’s new in Power BI, starting with the two MCP servers now in preview, one local and one remote, that can clean up your data model, write DAX for you, and turn a messy pile of tables into an actual usable semantic model. Ben shares how it helped him tame a 44 table QuickBooks Online mess, and why he had way better luck with it than with Copilot in Power BI. From there they get into PBIP, the newer Power BI project file format that breaks a report into files you can actually put in Git and collaborate on like real developers, branches, rollbacks, and all. It has been in preview since 2023 and still lacks solid guidance from Microsoft on wiring up CI/CD, but Ben and Scott dig into why it is worth adopting anyway, even if you are working solo. Your support makes this show possible! Please consider becoming a premium member for access to live shows and more. Check out our membership options. Show Notes Overview of the Power BI MCP servers (Preview) Power BI Desktop projects Git integration Power BI Modeling MCP Server Episode 90 – Power BI and Data Democratization with Alexander Arvidsson Episode 287 – Power BI Field Parameters and Microsoft Entra Optimize your semantic model for Copilot in Power BI Power BI Desktop projects (PREVIEW) Power BI Desktop projects Git integration Power BI projects, Git, and Team Collaboration Sponsors Nasuni is a leading unstructured data platform for enterprises where file data is mission-critical for both people and AI. Nasuni powers the operational file layer where work happens — helping organizations manage, protect, and activate data so teams can work smarter, reduce costs, and operate securely without limits. Intelligink — Would you like to become the irreplaceable Microsoft 365 resource for your organization? Let us know!

Welcome to Episode 434 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast. Microsoft announced Project Perception on 2026-07-27 with a lot of “workforce of AI agents” language. In this episode, Ben and Scott discuss what Perception really is, what it needs from your tenant, what it costs, and what happens the first time an agent asks you to approve something. Six agents. Seven playbooks. Every one manually triggered. Each agent gets its own Entra Agent ID and a permission grant. There’s a lot to unpack. Your support makes this show possible! Please consider becoming a premium member for access to live shows and more. Check out our membership options. Show Notes Save $200 at TechCon365 with code Ben200: https://www.techcon365.com/Seattle/ What is Project Perception? How Nationwide stays ahead of attackers with Project Perception Key concepts in Project Perception Agent categories in Project Perception Microsoft Security Copilot Security Compute Units and capacity Work with playbooks in Project Perception Prior podcast context Ep 431: Agent Governance Is the New App Governance Ep 419: Security and AI  Ep 416 and Ep 412  Ep 406: Agents of Insight  Ep 377: Microsoft Copilot for Security  Sponsors Nasuni is a leading unstructured data platform for enterprises where file data is mission-critical for both people and AI. Nasuni powers the operational file layer where work happens — helping organizations manage, protect, and activate data so teams can work smarter, reduce costs, and operate securely without limits. Intelligink — Would you like to become the irreplaceable Microsoft 365 resource for your organization? Let us know!

Welcome to Episode 433 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast. In this episode, Ben and Scott discuss how Microsoft 365 authentication is moving from “make passwords safer with MFA” to “remove phishable authentication wherever possible.” The practical conversation for IT pros is no longer just whether MFA is enabled. It is which methods are allowed, which users are still on SMS or voice, how passkeys change the user experience, and how to balance security, accessibility, recovery, and support load. Your support makes this show possible! Please consider becoming a premium member for access to live shows and more. Check out our membership options. Show Notes Passkeys were supposed to replace passwords, but they’re failing for the most predictable reason Microsoft Entra authentication overview Passkeys by default and retirement of Microsoft-provided SMS and voice authentication Plan a phishing-resistant passwordless authentication deployment in Microsoft Entra ID Run a registration campaign to set up a passkey or Microsoft Authenticator Practical Protection: Understanding Entra ID and Passkeys Important Change Coming for Entra ID Passkeys in November 2025 Microsoft to Stop Providing Telephony-Based Authentication Methods for MFA in February 2027 How to enable passkeys (FIDO2) in Microsoft Entra ID Sponsors Nasuni is a leading unstructured data platform for enterprises where file data is mission-critical for both people and AI. Nasuni powers the operational file layer where work happens — helping organizations manage, protect, and activate data so teams can work smarter, reduce costs, and operate securely without limits. Intelligink — Would you like to become the irreplaceable Microsoft 365 resource for your organization? Let us know!

Discussion about how AI is reshaping consulting billing, pushing firms from hourly rates toward outcome-based pricing. Comparison of fixed-bid and time-and-materials approaches for cloud projects. The growing role of reusable delivery artifacts like scripts and prompt packs. The persisting value of human oversight for quality, deployment planning, and reputational risk.

They dig into agent sprawl across Copilot, Copilot Studio, and third-party platforms and why governance is suddenly critical. Identity, data access, permissions, and lifecycle issues from agents are highlighted as distinct from traditional apps. Microsoft Agent 365, agent registries, risk scoring, and the admin center’s inventory tools get a close look. Lifecycle and unexpected billing risks are also flagged as urgent concerns.

Deep dive into a new desktop AI app that ties local files, models, automations and integrations together. Walkthrough of real onboarding pain points like licensing, admin controls and platform differences. Tour of model selector, personality options, scheduled automations and session management. Comparison with other Copilot offerings and discussion of consumption pricing, governance and practical adoption tradeoffs.

They explain building personal LLM wikis with Obsidian and markdown for searchable knowledge vaults. They walk through automating clippings with web clippers, RSS feeds, and a Python ingest script to save tokens. They explore using Copilot Cowork to schedule workflows and convert emails to markdown to generate to-do lists. They also cover scaling transcript ingest, token costs, and security caveats for plain markdown storage.

Welcome to Episode 428 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast. In this episode, Ben and Scott unlock the secrets to modernizing your IT management by ditching pesky on-prem GPOs and embracing the future with Intune. They discuss how savvy IT pros are migrating thousands of GPOs into clean, manageable cloud policies. Dive into real-world workflows: from exporting and analyzing legacy GPOs with AI tools, to recreating policies in Entra ID, and finally decommissioning AD. You’ll discover how to think through the migration, avoid common pitfalls like leftover legacy configs, and implement a phased migration that minimizes disruption. Your support makes this show possible! Please consider becoming a premium member for access to live shows and more. Check out our membership options. Show Notes DiskPrices.com These HDD prices are getting crazy. An increase of 96.4% in 1 month for the same 26TB drive. $279.99 a month ago to $549.99 today. Where are we buying hard drives now? Import and analyze your on-premises GPOs using Group Policy analytics in Microsoft Intune Microsoft Copilot in Intune Policy CSP Use the Intune settings catalog to configure settings Use the Intune properties catalog to get device hardware properties Create a Settings Catalog policy using your imported GPOs in Microsoft Intune Sponsors   ShareGate is your migration and governance solution for Microsoft 365. ShareGate helps your teams simplify tenant migrations, get Copilot-ready, and take control of Microsoft 365 governance. Nasuni is a leading unstructured data platform for enterprises where file data is mission-critical for both people and AI. Nasuni powers the operational file layer where work happens — helping organizations manage, protect, and activate data so teams can work smarter, reduce costs, and operate securely without limits. TrustedTech is a leading Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) specializing in Microsoft Cloud services, Microsoft perpetual licensing, and Microsoft Support Services for medium and enterprise-sized businesses. Their robust team of in-house, U.S.-based Microsoft architects and engineers are certified in all 6/6 Microsoft Solutions Partner Designations in the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program. M365 Licensing Consultation M365 Tenant Assessment Copilot Readiness Assessment  Intelligink — Would you like to become the irreplaceable Microsoft 365 resource for your organization? Let us know!