Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) has published a series of great courses covering Microsoft System Center 2012 SP1 over the last several weeks. This content has been so well-received that we’ve asked Senior Technical Evangelist Symon Perriman and Senior Program Manager Justin Incarnato to host a two-hour “MVA Live Q&A” session exclusively for our MVA community. This is an incredible opportunity to get answers to your System Center questions! This is a free session and open to anyone interested in Microsoft System Center 2012. MORE
Yesterday we launched a new Windows Dev Center. You might ask “Why are you telling us about that, Brian?” Well, the answer is that my team is responsible for MSDN and much of the infrastructure behind it. We partner very closely with the Windows team team produce an awesome Windows Dev Center. Yesterday was the culmination of months of work to really overhaul the dev center and make it serve our customers even better. MORE
Yesterday at the JP Morgan Technology, Media and Telecom conference, Microsoft Windows CFO Tami Reller shared that the next version of the Windows client OS will be Windows 8.1. In addition, the Windows product group shared that there will be a public preview on Wednesday, June 26, 2013. MORE
Today, the Business Intelligence blog continues their From Data to Insight & Impact blog and video series from Microsoft Finance Director Marc Reguera. The inspiration for this demonstration stems from Marc’s diverse travels and his desire to better understand the crime rate of cities throughout the United States. MORE
As many of you already know, at this year’s TechEd we’re going to take the wraps off a range of new products and services, and I am very excited to be delivering the keynote address at both TechEd North America and TechEd Europe. I cannot wait to talk about – and demo! – some of the remarkable new capabilities and functionalities we are going to deliver to the IT industry. MORE
The mobile market is growing continuously, and in the near future, more mobile devices than desktop computers will be used to surf the web. To ensure a user-friendly experience, we must optimize Internet websites for presenting content across the different devices. SharePoint 2013 offers a number of options for optimizing public-facing websites for mobile devices. Depending on your requirements, you can choose one or a combination of several options. MORE
Make Windows Azure Your Datacenter! This Jump Start will help you understand how you can use Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, such as Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks, to migrate, extend, run, manage and monitor common workloads in the cloud. The jumpstart will be led by Microsoft Lead Azure Technical Evangelist David Tesar and Azure Group Technical Product Manager David Aiken. Get ready for a live online interactive experience highlighting the latest and greatest via numerous scenarios and demos all while answering questions from the audience. MORE
Yesterday we announced that we've completed upgrading all Hotmail customers to Outlook.com. Coupled with the growing organic excitement for Outlook.com, this has pushed us to over 400 million active Outlook.com accounts, including 125 million that are accessing email, calendar and contacts on a mobile device using Exchange ActiveSync. MORE
This morning we released the v2.0 update of the Windows Azure SDK for .NET. This is a major refresh of the Windows Azure SDK with some really great new features and enhancements. MORE
Today is a step forward in the collaboration we started more than six years ago with SUSE. As part of Microsoft’s sponsorship of the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) in San Francisco, we are thrilled to announce that SUSE and Microsoft will extend their existing work in connecting Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V with SUSE Cloud. MORE
Everything on SharePoint 2013 is an app. All the things you might be familiar with (list, libraries, code) are packaged into an app for SharePoint. This way, whenever the user wants something for the site, there’s an app for that. Where do you get apps? From the store. For Office365 there is a public store that contains public apps. Some are free, some have other licensing models. You can also get apps from a private app catalog for your SharePoint site. MORE
In this first part of our three part series on using PowerShell to help secure your cloud infrastructure, Yuri Diogenes and I (Tom Shinder) will talk about how you can secure data in flight within your cloud infrastructure using SMB 3.0 encryption. The ability to secure the data moving over the cloud infrastructure network is especially important when you consider the option of using file based storage for your virtual machine disk and configuration files. MORE
We are very happy to announce that the updated technical documentation for deploying and running SQL Server in Windows Azure Infrastructures Services is now available online. When deploying SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines, we recommend that you follow the detailed guidance given in the new SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines documentation in the library. MORE
The Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) brings together the brightest IT professionals from around the world to increase their technical expertise through an intensive week of training led by experts in desktop, device management, datacenter, and cloud technologies. Checkout the ASKCORE favorites. MORE
Want to learn more about the Microsoft Azure service and all of the capabilities? Scott Guthrie is broadcasting live right now (April 23, 2013 from 9am - 10:30am PST) so head on over the http://channel9.msdn.com/ for the live stream. MORE
It’s here. It’s here. It’s here. Yep, the 2013 Windows PowerShell Scripting Games are finally here, and today is the official kickoff. Launched this morning at the first community organized International PowerShell Summit taking place in Redmond, Washington this week, the 2013 Scripting Games launched amid great fanfare! MORE
Let's say you want to create a sticky note app that lets you add a sticky note on your Windows 8 desktop computer. Then this sticky note is sent to a live tile on your Windows 8 phone and your Windows Surface, so you simply can't forget or ignore it! Windows Azure Mobile Services helps you easily put together Windows Store and Windows 8 phone apps that can do this. MORE
Over the next couple days we will roll out a major upgrade to Microsoft account, including optional two-step verification to help keep your account more secure.
Microsoft has increasingly focused on delivering connected devices and services that are currently used by more than 700 million people around the world. A Microsoft account is the key that unlocks your experience across these products—from your Windows PC to your Windows Phone, from Xbox to Outlook.com, from SkyDrive and Skype to Office and much more. MORE
This morning we announced the general availability release of our Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) support for Windows Azure – including our new Virtual Machine and Virtual Network capabilities. This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production apps. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using it today. MORE
On April 27, 2013 something very cool is happening. A bunch of Windows Azure MVP's and community activists are organizing a Global Windows Azure Bootcamp. This is a completely free, one-day training event for Windows Azure, all organized by the community, and presented in person all over the World. MORE
People are continually surrounded by devices that are connected to a network. Even the latest refrigerators and washing machines can connect to the internet and home networks. So it’s no surprise that end-users expect their apps to be connected as well. These “connected apps” consume the latest content from the web—social media, digital media, blogs, and other types of content. Developing connected apps has become the norm, but it can still be a challenge to handle common issues like loss of network connectivity, metered network costs, or performance issues. Windows 8 makes it easier than ever before to write a connected app. MORE
For the latest and greatest on business intelligence and business analytics, look no further than the PASS Business Analytics Conference, which kicks off today in Chicago. At a time when data is increasingly at the forefront of the industry conversation, this event offers an opportunity to go deep and take a look at how business intelligence and data professionals are using analytics to further their business goals. Are they able to share their insights and tell stories in new ways? MORE
Missed the live broadcast of Microsoft Certified Career Day 2013? Want to revisit the sessions? You're in luck! You can now watch the following recorded webcasts on your own time at aka.ms/mccd2013. MORE
Today we released some great enhancements to Windows Azure. These new capabilities include:
All of these improvements are now available to start using immediately (note: some services are still in preview). MORE
We finished the RTM release of Visual Studio 2012 in August 2012 and launched it in September. At that time, we committed to releasing new value into Visual Studio via a regular cadence of Visual Studio Updates, and in November 2012 we released our first, Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 (VS2012.1), which contained not only bug fixes and performance improvements, but also new functionality spanning four primary areas of investment: Windows development, SharePoint development, agile teams, and continuous quality. MORE