07Mar2016
03Mar2016
My Top 5 Favorite Microsoft Cloud Solutions for the SMB
1. Office 365 (Even if you thought "I already use it") Office 365 is, to put it quite bluntly, the new gold standard in productivity at every level of the Enterprise. In the SMB space especially, this is so much the case that I cannot emphasize it strongly enough. If you aren't already using...
29Feb2016
Why we tend to focus on IaaS Solutions
IaaS is an area of extreme interest to SMB customers, probably because it is the easiest way for them to translate what they are accustomed to working with (e.g. on-premises servers) into a cloud-based equivalent. In other words, for better or worse, we are in the habit of thinking about our applications and...
25Feb2016
What is the Azure Cloud?
It would be quite literally impossible to list all of the Azure-based products and their corresponding feature sets, since the list would be out of date as soon as I hit "Publish." Microsoft is constantly releasing new features into Azure everyday--some are all new products, while others build on existing ones....
22Feb2016
Azure Virtual Machines: Were you aware of the MAJOR caveat to their SLA?
I think this is important to many Azure customers, but very few seem to be aware of it. So, I decided to record this caveat into a blog post, for future ease of reference. Most people think of the cloud as a great way to provide up-time to applications without a large investment...
18Feb2016
How-to migrate Email from Small Business Server 2008/2011 or Exchange Server 2007/2010 to Office 365 with Zero Downtime
Update: Please refer to this newer article. Some of the details here are very dated--like there is no hybrid key anymore--and the activation only works on 2016, not 2019, plus we have minimal hybrid now, etc., etc. A "minimal hybrid" approach is preferred if you're just doing a quick migration...
15Feb2016
Key Differences between Essentials Dashboard Azure AD Integration and Azure AD Connect
Windows Server Essentials Dashboard allows you to connect your on-premises domain to Azure Active Directory and Office 365. Arguably the best feature of this mechanism is similar to the primary benefit provided by Azure AD Connect or DirSync--the ability to sync local passwords into the Microsoft Cloud.* But we need to...
11Feb2016
Microsoft Intune vs. MDM for Office 365
I have previously written about configuring Mobile Device Management for Office 365. The Office 365 Admin Center has a great subset of features lifted from Microsoft's cloud-based Intune service, which is admittedly a much more "full-blown" MDM solution. Whether you are using MDM for Office 365 or Microsoft Intune, the enrollment process works basically the...
08Feb2016
Azure Multi-factor Authentication vs. MFA included with Office 365
I have previously described MFA for Office 365. It's a great way to add an extra layer of security to your cloud-based applications. Here are the features included with MFA for Office 365: Administrators can protect accounts with MFA Mobile app as a second factor Phone call as a second factor SMS as a second...
04Feb2016