Artificial Intelligence is here to stay - how did this happen? Richard chats with Amy Boyd about where artificial intelligence came from, starting back in the 1950s - and how it was overpromised and under-delivered, resulting in an AI winter. And this cycle happened more than once! But along the way, some interesting technology developed that leads us to the modern era of AI, where cloud computing and huge data sources have created conditions for some really remarkable software - and a great sto...
Nov 04, 2020•46 min•Ep. 739
The pandemic has accelerated the move to the cloud - but it's not the only reason to migrate. Richard talks to Sonia Cuff about the effects of the pandemic on business transformation. Sonia talks about the response to the pandemic, such as working-from-home and moving to the cloud, as an adaptation to the crisis: Not transformation. The transformation part comes later, as you dig deeper into the new world the pandemic has brought you to. Can you go beyond surviving, and actually thrive? Links: C...
Oct 30, 2020•39 min•Ep. 738
You're moving virtual machines to the cloud - how do you keep them organized and maintained? Richard chats with Samuel Erskine about all the things Azure provides to make the life of a virtual machine better. The conversation starts on organization, using dynamic groups and tags to identify servers - not the machine names! Samuel digs into patch management and monitoring as well. Virtual machines are not going away; keeping them organized and maintained continues to be a crucial part of the job!...
Oct 28, 2020•34 min•Ep. 737
Is the deployment of IPv6 impacted by the pandemic? Richard talks to Ed Horley about how IPv6 deployment has continued through the crisis - and also how enterprises continue to lag behind home services when it comes to IPv6! Ed discusses the latest data around IPv6 usages showing that work-from-home has actually increased the amount of IPv6 traffic because the majority of consumer ISPs now provide IPv6 services. This leads to an interesting discussion on the instrumentation of IPv6 traffic for b...
Oct 23, 2020•46 min•Ep. 736
What does it take to get started with data science? Richard talks with Ayodele Odubela about her new book on learning data science. Ayodele talks about how often data science starts out just defining a good question to ask - and how that question evolves as you learn more. The example explored is getting new customers - which starts with understanding what customers you already have. Often we are unconsciously filtering potential customers, so knowing what bias you have in data is key - as is im...
Oct 21, 2020•42 min•Ep. 735
Ever had a conversation take a twist you didn't expect? Richard talks to Lauren Malhoit about the state of networking during the pandemic. The conversation evolves into a broader view on IT in the pandemic, thinking longer term, and that the changes we're making today are not going to magically disappear with the virus. While it may not be the conversation planned, it is two experienced IT folks sharing their tales of coping in these challenging times!
Oct 16, 2020•37 min•Ep. 734
Windows can protect itself from exploits – but you need to turn it on! Richard talks to Chris Jackson about his recently published document about exploit protection. Chris talks about the long list of mitigation strategies that exist inside of Windows to stop arbitrary code (read: malware) from executing. Each strategy comes with the risk of breaking your application. You need to apply the mitigations on an application-by-application basis, and with some testing around it. But if you want to mak...
Oct 14, 2020•44 min•Ep. 733
Enterprise Mobility is no longer optional! Richard talks to Richard Hicks about his work during the pandemic around remote connectivity. The early days of the pandemic were a scramble to get folks working from home, often needing to scale up VPN services. Now that a few months have gone by, other problems have appeared: Are the remote workstations getting patched? How do you know? What about self-service password changes with remote machines? Richard digs into the details of not being on the loc...
Oct 09, 2020•38 min•Ep. 732
Can you go serverless with databases? Monica Rathbun says yes! Richard chats with Monica about Microsoft's serverless mode for SQL Azure. Same SQL database, but now it is billed by the second and will automatically suspend itself after a set amount of time - incurring no costs to you while suspended! It doesn't work for every database scenario, but Monica talks through some options that have great potential. You need to understand the limitations as well as the benefits, but serverless SQL is a ...
Oct 07, 2020•36 min•Ep. 731
How can Windows Virtual Desktop improve productivity? Richard chats with Jen Sheerin about the kinds of applications better served by virtualization. Jen talks about her work with Citrix XenDesktop and Windows Virtual Desktop, and how the pandemic has accelerated adoption. The challenge is especially acute for thick client applications - you can deploy them to a home machine, but that is a security risk and has VPN performance challenges. Windows Virtual Desktop gives you more control, more secu...
Oct 02, 2020•36 min•Ep. 730
Perimeter security is one thing - what about beyond the edge? Richard chats with Ned Pyle about a series of blog posts (links in the show notes) to help you harden security on every machine in your network. Ned talks about various settings available on Windows clients and servers that can help protect your systems from bad actors - and there's nothing to install, just adjusting policy and settings! In the end, you can make your security much deeper and difficult to exploit. Links: SMB1 Product C...
Sep 30, 2020•45 min•Ep. 729
How can compassion help during the pandemic? Richard talks to April Wensel about the importance of compassion at this difficult time. April talks about how compassion has always been important and powerful for work and the rest of life, but today it's essential. Everyone has been affected by the pandemic to some degree, and everyone is grieving, whether they know or not. We all need more compassion in our lives, for ourselves, family, neighbors, co-workers, and the world. Links: Practicing Compa...
Sep 25, 2020•32 min•Ep. 728
SCCM or Intune? Do you need to choose? Should you choose? Richard chats with Greg Shields about device management using SCCM and/or Intune. Greg admits that it is his own journey coming from SCCM but developing an Intune class that led him to admire what Intune is good at. The two products definitely overlap, and understand each other - you can run both very successfully. It comes down to your organization's needs! Links: Configuration Manager Service Manager Intune Greg's Pluralsight Courses In...
Sep 23, 2020•38 min•Ep. 727
What does incident response look like during the pandemic? Richard talks to Julie Gunderson of PagerDuty about what it takes to respond to an incident effectively when you can't necessarily be in the same room together. The conversation starts out with the fundamentals of incident response - how to report an incident, how an incident unfolds, what it looks like to resolve an incident and then, most importantly, the post mortem. The pandemic just makes it harder - communication is remote, documen...
Sep 18, 2020•41 min•Ep. 726
What is your preferred SQL Server tool? Richard chats with Vicky Harp, who oversees the development of many of the tools you count on to manage all sorts of databases in the Microsoft world. From SSMS to Azure Data Studio to SQL CLI - there's a lot of ways to manage and maintain databases on-premises and in-the-cloud. What tool is right for you? Don't worry, you can use more than one! Links: SQL Server Management Studio Azure Data Studio Jupyter Notebooks Microsoft Azure Notebooks MS SQL CLI SQL...
Sep 16, 2020•40 min•Ep. 725
Ready for some cloud snark? Richard chats with Corey Quinn, the cloud economist and snarky commenter on all things cloud. The conversation digs into how the use of the cloud has evolved rapidly during the pandemic, and the reality that people may want to spend less on the cloud, but more importantly, they want consistency in their spend. Getting off virtual machines and into "real" cloud services can help, but understanding how you are using cloud technology is critical. Lift and shift...
Sep 11, 2020•37 min•Ep. 724
Are you ready to become Ansible? Richard chats with Josh Duffney about his book on Ansible - using a play on the term "become," which is the privilege elevation command in Ansible. The conversation turns to how you evolve as an infrastructure-as-code person, doing basic automation tasks first, but ultimately turning into a source-code-controlled library-building-team that makes deployment of applications and resources easy, reliable, and powerful. If you're coming from the Windows worl...
Sep 09, 2020•32 min•Ep. 723
The pandemic has sent everyone home to work - how do you support them? Richard chats with Jessica Deen about her work doing remote support both before and now during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jessica starts out talking more philosophically about support work in this challenging time, with lots of patience and empathy. But that also takes effective remote communication - being able to see the person you're supporting is incredibly valuable! Ultimately effective remote support comes down to understan...
Sep 04, 2020•36 min•Ep. 722
With folks working remotely more than ever, how do you keep your team together? Richard chats with Tracy van der Schyff about her work building tools in organizations that become the focal point of work. Whether with SharePoint in the old days, or Teams today, you can make a place that is great for work and connecting the team - and the power of transparency!
Sep 02, 2020•37 min•Ep. 721
The Hybrid Workforce is here to stay - how do you update Windows? Richard chats with Dave Backman about what it means to manage a hybrid workforce, where most of your staff work both from home, and occasionally in the office. The pandemic made this happen, and it's likely to continue indefinitely. So how do you keep Windows up-to-date? Dave talks about the modern update strategies beyond Windows Update Server, into InTune and Windows Update for Business.
Aug 28, 2020•35 min•Ep. 720
How do criminal hackers make money hacking? Richard chats with Paula Januszkiewicz about the methods used by criminals to steal money through various exploits. Whether its ransomware or taking control of your Facebook account long enough to ask for money in your name, there are a lot of possibilities. As long as there is money to be made, the hacks will continue. Increasing your security doesn't make you immune, it just makes things more expensive for the black hats. Perhaps expensive enough tha...
Aug 26, 2020•36 min•Ep. 719
You sent machines home during the pandemic - are the drives encrypted? Richard talks to Microsoft Premier Field Engineer Julie Andreacola about BitLocker and the various management tools needed to make BitLocker work for you and your organization. Julie talks about the need for PCs that have modern TPM chips - BitLocker will work without them, but life is much better with, especially in recovery. The conversation then turns to management, including Azure AD, InTune, and MBAM. Any combination of ...
Aug 21, 2020•39 min•Ep. 718
ARM Templates are awesome - but what happens when they get big? Richard chats with Pierre Roman on the Cloud Advocates team at Microsoft about how ARM Templates are evolving to help you manage them when they get more sophisticated. Pierre talks about all the challenging bits of scaling ARM Templates, including modularizing, testing, and using source control. Your infrastructure-as-code is code, and it needs care and feeding to be as good as it can be, especially as things get more complex!...
Aug 19, 2020•46 min•Ep. 717
How is your productivity during the pandemic? And the folks you work with? Richard talks to Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick, authors of Agile Conversations, about how to improve productivity during the pandemic. The conversation turns to how we measure productivity in the first place, and why we were happy with our productivity before the pandemic. Squirrel and Jeffrey talk about being comfortable with how things were - and now that no one is all that comfortable, how do we rethink work, t...
Aug 14, 2020•40 min•Ep. 716
How secure is your office Wi-Fi? Richard chats with Dr. Avril Salter about using enterprise security features in Wi-Fi. The conversation starts out focused on WPA2-Enterprise, using RADIUS servers and protocols like CHAP and PEAP. It may be more complicated to set up, but once running, you have far more control over who can be on your Wi-Fi. Avril talks about creating separate SSIDs for secure corporate devices, BYOD devices, a guest network, and a legacy network. Yeah, four SSIDs! Next up - WPA...
Aug 12, 2020•40 min•Ep. 715
There is big data, and then there is genomic-scale. Richard talks to Lynn Langit about her work in large scale data analytics around the pandemic. Lynn talks about the terabytes of data involved in doing genetic analysis and the pipeline needed to move and organize that data. It takes a cloud - you need a huge amount of compute in relatively small bursts, as well as massive amounts of storage. And in the end, you get probabilistic results - nothing is ever absolutely certain! But the experiences...
Aug 07, 2020•40 min•Ep. 714
There are performance issues in the cloud? Lori Mac Vittie says yes! Richard chats with Lori about how just buying more cloud might increase capacity - but not performance. This leads to a conversation about performance even is - and what it means to the users of your apps. Ultimately, the same diagnostic challenges we had before the cloud come into play - bottlenecks exist within software and need to be improved. Might be code, might be data architecture - it takes a group effort to understand ...
Aug 05, 2020•39 min•Ep. 713
You've moved to the cloud - you're secure, right? Richard chats with Dana Epp about what you should be doing to secure your cloud services in Azure. Dana talks about how the default settings for Azure services tend toward making them easy to use and inexpensive. But it also leaves you potentially vulnerable - logging is turned off, for example. The conversation turns to tools like Azure Advisor helping you lock down your services better and having a clear view of who is using your services, as w...
Jul 31, 2020•44 min•Ep. 712
Ready to automate? Richard chats with Sandy Ussia about Power Automate, formerly known as Flow (although the term flow is never far away). But Power Automate is exactly what you think it is - a no-code/low-code solution to providing automation in Azure between Office 365 and a whole host of other platforms including Google, Salesforce, and so on. Sandy talks about the array of templates that already exist for Automate, so that rarely do you need to start from scratch - there's always a template ...
Jul 29, 2020•41 min•Ep. 711
The Black Hats are targeting your users' fears - are you prepared? Richard talks with Susan Bradley about the focus of attackers on COVID-19 topics. Susan talks about how many security exploits depend on convincing users to click on something they shouldn't. You can train to resist those clicks, but nothing is ever perfect. The question is, what happens next? The conversation digs into multifactor authentication, resisting lateral security breaks, and more. You can keep your remote workers secur...
Jul 24, 2020•32 min•Ep. 710
