eXtreme. tech.

Microsoft Consumerization of IT Content

2012-06-26T03:56:55Z

The Consumerization of IT content links listed below are to help educate you on how Microsoft can help you enable various aspects of the overall consumerization of IT shift in the industry of people bringing your own device (BYOD) to get work done. Under this topic, there are many considerations which need to be taken into account such as device management, security and information protection, access anywhere, productivity, and policies. The high level categories of content below are:

Microsoft Learning Jumpstart course
Edge Show
Event Interviews
Product Evaluations
Consumerization of IT Matrix Spreadsheet
TechEd 2012 Sessions
How Microsoft IT enables Consumerization

Microsoft Learning Jumpstart course on “Enabling Consumerization of IT” – http://aka.ms/consumerit
This is a course designed to give you a jumpstart on learning about all of the technologies Microsoft has to enable consumerization in your company responsibly. The modules listed below are 50 minutes each, unless noted otherwise. This will also become a Microsoft Virtual Academy track soon.

Keynote—Enabling the Consumerization of IT (75 min)
End-to-End Security & Access
User-Centric Application Delivery
Mobile Device Management
Productive with Office 365
Information Protection
Cloud Security and Management with Windows Intune
Desktop Virtualization

Consumerization of IT on the Edge Show
This is a weekly show from Redmond providing news and industry relevant information about bleeding edge Microsoft technologies. Each episode consists of ~4 minutes of IT Pro relevant news followed by ~12 min of technical interview on each evangelist's area of focus. I cover Consumerization of IT in its own set of episodes on a regular basis, the episodes so far are:
#2 - Mobile Device Management in Configuration Manager 2012
#5 - Manage VDI using SCCM 2012
#7 - Operationalize security w System Center Endpoint Protection 2012
#10 - Office productivity on any device
#12 - Enterprise voice and collaboration on any device with Lync
#16 - Windows Server 8 VDI
#18 - Virtual desktops and apps on any device
#25 - Information Protection with AD RMS

Event Interviews: You also may want to check out these relevant product team interviews to give you a taste of what the technologies can do.

From MMS 2012 – most of which have demos and are targeted around 15 minutes each.
Windows Intune Mobile Management Demo
SCCM 2012 User Centric Application Delivery
Direct Access in Windows Server 2012
User Experience and Desktop Virtualization Intervew
System Center Endpoint Protection 2012
Dynamic Access Control Demo

Relevant Microsoft Product Evaluations

Windows Server 2012 – http://aka.ms/ws2012
Office 365 – http://aka.ms/O365
Windows Intune – http://aka.ms/wintune
Windows 8 – http://aka.ms/win8client
System Center – http://aka.ms/sccm

Consumerization of IT Matrix
There are more than 19 products which support consumerization of IT and also a wide range of scenarios where Microsoft products support various devices. To help us and customers quickly understand all of this, I created an excel spreadsheet (http://aka.ms/coitmatrix) which maps capabilities and Microsoft products to which major computing devices we support across Apple, Google, and Microsoft (i.e. iPad, iPhone, Android slate/phone, Windows Phone, etc).

TechEd 2012 Sessions

MGT309 – Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Overview

SIA206 – Keep Your Data Safe!

SIA207 – Windows Server 2012 Dynamic Access Control Overview

WCL279 – Windows 8: Overview for the enterprise, Enabling Flexible Workstyles

WCL303 – Microsoft Desktop Virtualization – The Right Technology for Your Business Scenario

WCL386 – Windows Intune: Equipping the enterprise to manage the consumerization of IT

EXL312 – Forget about IT - How about Lync Inside Business Applications?!

OSP221 – Microsoft Office 365 for Enterprises

OSP325 – Active Directory Integration with Microsoft Office 365 (& Windows Intune)

Microsoft IT and Consumerization of IT

TechEd 2012 : SIA203 – The Consumerization of IT (Microsoft’s CISO perspective)

Lync 2010 video demos

2012-03-13T17:34:54Z

In this video episode of The Consumerization of IT Show (subset of Edge Show), we demo quite a few ways how Lync will help you “consumerize” your IT inside your organization. Watch the video: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/edge-show-12-enterprise-voice-and-collaboration-on-any-device-with-lync

Natural user Interfaces at Microsoft

2012-01-19T18:35:00Z

Recently, I interviewed Microsoft storyteller Steve Clayton about all of the natural user interfaces currently available and some of the natural user interfaces we can coming in the future. There is lots of very cool things coming from Microsoft which will change the way you work/play!

Here is the link to the actual video on TechNet Edge: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/technet-radio-turning-science-fiction-into-science-fact-the-evolution-of-natural-user-interfaces

Delivering applications to any device

2012-01-13T19:01:00Z

There are a couple of videos I created and released recently which all relate to this concept – how can your organization effectively deliver applications to various devices like iPads, Android devices, Windows PCs (even “bring your own”), and Tablets? There are a lot of options out there and in these two videos we break it down.

In this video with Mike Chan – we spend most of the ~6 minutes on the whiteboard explaining the various types of delivery mechanisms and the characteristics of each. It is useful to give you a framework of wrapping your head around the landscape regardless of whether or not you are a Microsoft-only shop.

In the latest TechNet Edge show – where I focus on the broader “Consumerization of IT” topic, we dive into how Office really is available in these different delivery mechanisms – with a special focus on web apps. It’s nice to see an example of how the higher level framework from the previous video plays out with one of Microsoft’s flagship applications.

Why run IE9 and Firefox or Chrome?

2011-06-30T18:53:00Z

It’s clearer now IMO that undisputedly Internet Explorer is the only real browser for Enterprises now that Firefox is on such a short release cycle like Google Chrome. I mentioned the support lifecycle and patching as one of the major reasons in my - why IE9 is the best for Enterprises article.

This video (below) corresponds to the article - TechNet Radio: Top reasons to Deploy IE9 video(download formats at this link).

The question I have for enterprise customers is – why do you have Internet Explorer AND another browser installed in your company? Is it because you let users install their own browsers/software? have an outdated version of IE?

FEP 2012 and SCCM 2012 features

2011-06-15T18:52:45Z

At TechEd NorthAmerica I interviewed Mike Chan about the next version of Forefront Endpoint Protection 2012 and System Center Configuration Manager 2012. He let us know about some of the technical details of what’s coming and gave insight into the new alignment of security and management development within Microsoft.

Download the original video here

Windows Phone Mango Enterprise comparison

2011-06-06T21:08:46Z

I did an interview with Paul Bryan on the Windows Phone product team at TechEd North America about the productivity features such as Lync integration, server search, conversation view, and pinnable email folders.

After covering the productivity features, we dive into why an enterprise might want to support Windows Phone over the competition such as Android or iPhone. We get into the new security and management capabilities being supported such as complex (alpha-numeric) password support, Information Rights Management support for protecting e-mails and Office documents, support for access to hidden Wi-Fi networks, and Exchange Active Sync management capabilities with System Center Configuration Manger 2012. Finally, we cover how Windows Phone enables companies to deploy their own applications only to their employees via the Windows Phone Marketplace.

The original video can be downloaded here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/why-windows-phone-in-the-enterprise

IE App Compatibility VHD VPC images update

2011-05-19T21:58:32Z

So the base Internet Explorer (IE) Virtual PC (VPC) images were due for a refresh and I signed up for the job. I thought it would be best to not only simply patch the images and place them up on the site, but to also reassess how we could optimize the images and options available. Previously, there were three separate Windows XP images (IE6, IE7, IE8) and one Windows Vista SP1 with IE8 image. To optimize, I decided it would be best to have the following images:

Windows XP IE6 (with install bits on the drive for IE7 and IE8)
Windows Vista IE7 (with install bits on the drive for IE8)
Windows 7 IE8 (with install bits on the drive for IE9)
Windows 7 IE9 + ACT 5.6, Expression Super Preview.

It is very easy to duplicate the images and then just update the version of IE you’d like to keep. I’d be happy to accept feedback on what you think of this new structure of VPC images available. Do you care about having the various operating systems and versions of IE available, or do you only care about working with the various versions of IE?

Download the images

IE 9 Tracking Protection Video

2011-02-10T20:44:00Z

I interviewed the program manager responsible for the privacy features in IE 9, such as the IE 9 Tracking protection feature and we get into how it works, why you need it, etc. This is the updated feature to IE 8’s Filtering protection feature. There are a number improvements I see over IE 8’s filtering protection:

Tracking protection stays on until you turn it off. With IE 8 Filtering protection, you had to manually turn this functionality on with every browser session. IE 9’s tracking protection provides a friendly GUI to turn on/off tracking protection for every site you visit or globally.
Numerous enhancements as to the capabilities for the type of content it can block from being tracked.
Standardized and more well adopted tracking protection lists from 3rd parties.

One other thing to point out is the difference between importing a tracking list into the privacy section of your IE 8 browser (a separate mechanism from In-Private Filtering) – this only protects you from cookie tracking.

Link to download the video is at the original post here.

Windows Intune Interview Video

2010-06-15T21:52:05Z

I recently interviewed the Group Program Manager for Windows Intune and thought I’d share – it’s really cool stuff, especially for small to medium sized shops who have a lot of remote workers or no/weak management story in place. We dig into the capabilities of Windows Intune as well as explain what is going on behind the scenes to make everything work.

You can download the source files in WMV, Zune, IPod, etc from the original post on Edge here: Windows Intune - Under the Hood

Silverlight 4 Deployment Guide

2010-04-30T01:03:41Z

A few days ago the new version of the Silverlight 4 Deployment Guide was made available for download. This guide is great for any enterprise who wants to deploy, manage, or troubleshoot Silverlight version 1-4 in their corporation. I led this effort in collaboration with the Silverlight product team and here are the major new additions since the previous version of the guide:

Deploying and managing Silverlight out of browser (OOB) applications
Links to the Updated Group policies and template (ADMX/L files) which includes the new capability to lockdown:
- Silverlight Trusted Applications — allows users to install out-of-browser applications via the Install dialog
- WebCam and Microphone — allows webpages and applications to access the microphone and webcam
- UDP Multicast Networking — allows webpages and applications to do UDP multicast networking
Updated the verbiage to include Silverlight 4 and new system requirements

IE 8 security video interview

2010-03-22T15:24:02Z

When I say IE 8 is the most secure browser out of the box, the natural inclination most people have is marketing FUD. I do truly believe in the statement and tell this to my own family as one of, if not the, main reason they should be using IE 8 instead of other web browsers.

To hit home on this statement and some other security-related topics (like patching) related to web browsers, I interviewed Pete LePage on the IE product team for this 8 minute interview.

To see what specific topics I cover, links to security statement sources, and to get the various download formats (Zune, iPod, WMV, MP3, WMA, etc) please go to the original source at: http://edge.technet.com/Media/IE-Security/

IE 8 Reopen Closed Tabs

2010-03-01T07:31:29Z

In Internet Explorer 8, you might wonder how to reopen/restore your last browsing session – especially when you had multiple tabs opened. In IE 7, when you closed the browser with multiple tabs, you’d get this window prompt:

This is very similar to what you currently see with Firefox’s solution when you close the browser with multiple tabs open:

In IE 8, we do have a way to restore your last browsing session, but it is not intuitive. When you close IE 8, you no longer get a similar prompt to what you see above. Instead, you just see the following prompt:

After you close all tabs, and then re-open IE 8 you have to do two things to restore your last session.

Go to “about:tabs” in the browser address bar
Click on the “Restore last browsing session” link

I’ve been asked this (or complained to about) this numerous times, so I thought I’d turn it into a blog post. I’ve already submitted feedback to the product team that we should have a “smarter” default page (like about:tabs) and/or make the process to restore tabs more intuitive.

IE 8 localized Enterprise and IT Pro Guidance

2010-01-15T17:28:43Z

Just letting you know there is updated localized guidance for IE 8 in Simplified Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, and Spanish (Traditional). Unless noted, you use the “Change Language” pop-up menu in the Quick Details blue block to choose the language for downloading the paper.

Here are the following documents which are available:

Internet Explorer 8 Deployment Guide (link)
- Use the menu in the upper-right corner of the page to change the language
- The guide is also available in Hindi. Given TechNet does not support Hindi, we have created a CHM (Compiled HTML Help File) that you can download or distribute to customers. To access, open the “IE8Deploy” CHM file stored here. Note: the Table of Contents is in English due to CHM limitations.
Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) 8 documentation (link)
- Previously localized as part of IEAK download, and now available on the Web. (No IEAK documentation in Hindi because there is no Hindi IEAK.)
“Techniques for Preinstalling Windows Internet Explorer 8” whitepaper (link)
“Windows Internet Explorer 8 FAQ for Business” whitepaper (link)
“Windows Internet Explorer 8 Technology Overview for Enterprise and IT Pros” whitepaper (link)

Mark Russinovich interview in Berlin

2009-12-11T00:04:03Z

I interviewed Mark Russinovich again (see my 1st interview with him in his office the future of Sysinternals, Security, Windows) at TechEd EMEA in Berlin. This time we chatted about the new tools coming out from Sysinternals like the Disk2VHD tool, what features in Windows 7 are security and which ones are not, and Windows 7 performance enhancements.

The original post to download the various file formats (Zune, iPod, etc) can be found at:
Mark Russinovich interview at TechEd EMEA 09

Windows Mobile 6.5 Released

2009-10-07T00:54:36Z

Windows Mobile 6.5 launched today, now being referred to in short as “Windows phone” moving forward. Some of the key benefits I see from the consumer side are listed below. I posted a detailed text post on TechNet Edge which describes the business value of Windows Mobile phones for IT Pros.

Microsoft My Phone - a new service that offers free automatic backup and online access to phone contacts, calendar, texts, photos, browser favorites and more. In select markets, My Phone also offers a Premium Package that helps users find, lock or erase a lost device.

Windows Marketplace for Mobile - a new marketplace with fun and useful high-quality mobile applications to install right from your phone.

Upgraded touch user interface - that was designed for finger touch and the ability to cut through clutter to accomplish what you want. In my experience using WM 6.5, it is much better at touch gestures, but the shortfall is some of the menu items were not designed optimally with fingers in mind. The “Today” and “Start Menu” pages work great with and were clearly designed for your finger.

Updated web browser – Internet Explorer mobile has been updated to allow easier operation using touch gestures with an enhanced pan/zoom and also has Adobe Flash for watching videos on the web.

I’ve been using my HTC Fuze with WM 6.5 on it since March 2009 and have overall been pretty happy with it. I’m looking forward to what we come up with for Windows Mobile 7, which I imagine will be an even better for usability and “fun” as a consumer.

Office 2010 Web Applications

2009-09-23T00:47:31Z

I did an interview with Chris Bryant who gave me a cool tour of the new Office Web applications. Finally an answer to Google Docs. I’m looking forward to using these!

Windows Firestarter Event

2009-09-11T01:10:38Z

On September 18th you can attend locally or interact live via Live Meeting to learn about some of the core information you want to know about the next wave of Windows products – Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2. I will presenting a session on IE 8 focused on IT Pros and consumer (since us IT Pros are consumers too). I look forward to seeing or hearing from you!

To see the agenda and register for the event, go to this website:
http://www.technetevents.com/firestarter/index.html

Forefront Protection (vs Online) for Exchange – FPE vs FOPE

2009-08-25T00:52:00Z

In this interview with Mike Chan, I help clarify when you might want to utilize Forefront Protection for Exchange versus Forefront Online Protection for Exchange – or use both. Most of the video is spent white boarding out how things work between FPE / FOPE and Exchange 2010’s security.

Remove Active Partition

2009-08-06T19:10:00Z

I couldn't find any good search results on how to remove an active partition on a Windows system (and this is not in the disk management GUI) and eventually figured this out on my own, so I thought I'd share. Of course, this is only useful if you have a drive which no longer contains an operating system / boot files and you just want to remove the flag. The solution is simply the command-line tool "diskpart" which resides in the windows\system32 directory and the Inactive command. the active command marks it for active, which can also easily be done in the disk management UI.

DISKPART> help inactive

On disks with master boot record (MBR) disk formatting, marks
the partition with focus as inactive.

Syntax: INACTIVE

    The computer may start from the next option specified in the BIOS such as a
    CD-ROM drive or a Pre-Boot eXecution Environment (PXE)-based boot
    environment (such as Remote Installation Services (RIS)) when you restart
    the computer.

A partition must be selected for this operation to succeed.

Caution:

        Your computer might not start without an active partition. Do not mark
        a system or boot partition as inactive unless you are an experienced
        user with a thorough understanding of Windows storage management.

Save TechNet Library content offline

2009-07-31T03:15:00Z

Ever wanted to not have to scroll through endless expansions of bite-sized content on the TechNet library and just download a document of only the content you want instead? I know this has been frustrating for me in the past and when I brought it up to a TechNet manager he said “you can already do this”. To my shock, I asked how since it isn’t visible anywhere within the TechNet library…

The ”Package This” tool is a piece of software you can download from CodePlex which will allow you to accomplish this. You have to make sure you have the .Net 2.0 framework and MS Help installed, but it is well worth the time to have offline searchable files.

This is a picture of the user interface where you select the content you want to package:

After you select what you want, you can then Export it into a CHM file!

XP-Mode vs App-V vs Med-V vs VDI

2009-07-24T02:32:00Z

There are so many virtualization options available from Microsoft, which one do you use when? We cleared this up in a short interview and addressed how these options might help you remediate your legacy applications over to Windows 7. Also, we just launched the XP to Windows 7 Migration process guide with the announcement of Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 RTM yesterday which will further clarify these options and give you links to deeper resources on each subject.

Visit the original post on TechNet Edge which has links to the other 4 videos in the series

Office 2010 Demo and Interview for IT Pros

2009-07-14T03:12:19Z

I interviewed Ralf on the Office 2010 team who showed a demo of some of the cool new features in Word and Outlook 2010 as well as answered some relevant questions for IT Pros – now that the Technical Preview is out there we can show it. The full breakdown of the interview is at the original post text on Edge. Check it out.

Silverlight Enterprise Deployment Guide v2 available

2009-05-29T02:08:21Z

I finished creating the Silverlight deployment guide awhile ago, but after a number of reviews, revisions, and updates it is finally available for download. This guide is applicable to all versions of Silverlight, including Silverlight 3. The idea was that the guide would have a long life beyond SL 3 without revisions, while areas needing updated (i.e. version history, group policy settings) will continue to evolve on the Silverlight administration page.

Version 1 of the Silverlight deployment guide was geared at only the 1st release of Silverlight and didn’t include all of the improved windows update methods included with Silverlight 2. Some of the changes I’ve made to this document are:

New sections for deployment using WSUS, SCCM, and manual advertisement
Version table with the update ID numbers for Update rollup / Feature pack
Updated text surrounding making a choice for deployment
Updated logic and text around Silverlight’s built-in auto-updater
Updated add-on section for IE 8

Download Silverlight Deployment Guide v2

ADMX policy missing or blank - bug

2009-04-11T02:48:00Z

When you create a policy with a custom ADMX template which uses a registry key outside of the standard 4 recommended locations (below) and open up your group policy editor using gpedit.msc, the policy will not be listed and you will get no error. The workaround is to use the group policy editor which comes with the group policy management console (i.e. right click on a policy in the GPMC.msc and choose edit). This one wasted a bunch of my time wasted, so hopefully you don’t have to go through the same.

Recommended Group policy locations:

HKLM\Software\Policies (computer settings, the preferred location)

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies (computer settings, an alternative location)

HKCU\Software\Policies (user settings, the preferred location)

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies (user settings, an alternative location)

One other note - this bug appears to have already been fixed in Win7 & Server 2008 R2.