Build 2016 has begun...

Microsoft Build 2016 conference has just begin, watch the live streaming from Channel 9.

Watch here: Live Build 2016

On demand Videos are now available in Channel 9 : Build 2016

This year Build was great with lot of exciting announcements and innovations.

Few Key blogs and articles to read are below:

Official Microsoft Blog - Build 2016: Announcing tomorrow’s cloud innovations for today’s developers 

The Verge - Microsoft Build: the 10 most important announcements

AD Team blog - Microsoft Identity at //build/ 2016 

Windows Blog - Best of Build 2016

Office Blogs - Office at Build 2016—new opportunities for developers

Skype for Business Voice Solutions Poster

Use this poster to choose the right Voice solution for your organization: an all-in-the cloud solution delivered by Office 365 or a hybrid solution that combines on-premises software and Office 365 services.

Download here: Skype for Business Voice Solutions Poster

Microsoft IT SME Roundtable on Skype for Business at Microsoft

IT subject matter experts (SMEs) from our Skype for Business at Microsoft IT Showcase course answer questions about how Microsoft IT implements, monitors, maintains, and supports Skype for Business at Microsoft.

Access here: Microsoft IT SME Roundtable on Skype for Business at Microsoft

Techincal Case Study: Automating licensing for Office 365 in a hybrid environment

Licensing is always a bit of challenging task in any large enterprise and it ideally varies between one another. Learn how Microsoft IT team automated the Licensing for Office 365 in their Hybrid environment from the below Technical Case study.

Utilize the resources provided and test how the solution fits in to your environment and reduce the License management overhead for your Admins.

Review here: Automating licensing for Office 365 in a hybrid environment

Add-on Read:

As we all know PowerShell plays a major role in Office 365 Administration, lets understand how to Manage user accounts and licenses with Office 365 PowerShell.

Access the TechNet documentation here: Manage user accounts and licenses with Office 365 PowerShell

More resources are available in PowerShell for Office 365 Website.

Managing security risk in the cloud

Lacking criteria or an assessment framework for SaaS applications, the Microsoft Information Security Risk Management team created a workbook to provide needed guidance. See how the team uses this to ensure the consistent evaluation of SaaS deployments.

Download here: Managing security risk in the cloud

Office 365 Enterprise Guided Tour

Take a guided tour of the new Office 365. It’s a quick and easy way to test drive new enterprise capabilities, including advanced collaboration, analytics, and security features.

• Step through common enterprise scenarios to see how Office 365 can support your business needs
• See the latest in-product experience with the most up-to-date versions of the Office applications you use every day as well as the new advanced features
• Explore the top features and advanced capabilities available for email and calendar management, collaborative meetings, analytics, and security

Take the Tour here: Office 365 Enterprise Guided Tour

System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) Vs Log Analytics in Operations Management Suite (OMS)

Monitoring plays a major role in any environment and with the advent of Cloud Computing, monitoring both On premises and Cloud workloads is now essential to take quick action and remediate issues proactively to provide a highly available environment to the users.

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) is a leading solution in the market and adopted by vast majority of Organizations around the world, and now Microsoft took one step ahead and introduced the Operations Management Suite (OMS) which does compliments the functionality of SCOM and even beyond.

I recently came across this TechNet article that clearly outlines the comparison between System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) and Log Analytics in Operations Management Suite (OMS) in terms of their architecture, the logic of how they monitor resources, and how they perform analysis of the data they collect. This is to give you a fundamental understanding of their differences and relative strengths. You do have options to Integrating SCOM and Log Analytics in a hybrid model and obtain some rich monitoring capabilities for your environment.

Access here: Monitoring product comparison

Review OMS Architecture: OMS Architecture Documentation

Be sure to review the below Blogs to stay updated...

System Center Operations Manager Team Blog

Welcome to the Microsoft Operations Management Suite Blog

A Nice article that outline PowerShell Monitoring with OMS: Use Microsoft Operations Management Suite to track PowerShell activity

AzureAD Connect Health for Sync

Microsoft team announced the General Availability of the new AzureAD Connect Health for Sync to monitor both the authentication components and the sync engine of Azure AD Connect. This now comes without any additional configuration or hardware. After installing and configuring the latest version of Azure AD Connect (version 1.0.9125 or higher), all you need to do is visit https://aka.ms/aadconnecthealth to view your Azure AD Connect Health Dashboard.

This is an great add-on for the AAD Connect deployment and more on this is available in the below Official AD team blog post.

Access here: AzureAD Connect Health for Sync is now GA!

View it action here: Azure Active Directory Connect Health: Monitoring the sync engine

Refer Azure AD Connect Health for ADFS in this post: Azure AD Connect is now GA !!!

Updated Documentation here: Monitor your on-premises identity infrastructure and synchronization services in the cloud

As always share your feedback to the Microsoft.

Office 365 Connectors

Microsoft introduced Office 365 Connectors, a brand new experience that delivers relevant interactive content and updates from popular apps and services to Office 365 Groups. Now its time for the feature to roll-out to first release customers and reaching GA shortly.

Connectors are easy to configure and makes your Office 365 Groups communication more effective. If your organization already has Office 365, you can use Outlook, Outlook on the web or the Outlook Groups mobile app to start using Office 365 Connectors.

Access the Office Blog post to know more: Introducing Office 365 Connectors

Ensure to join the YamJam hosted next month Thursday, April 14, 9–10 a.m. PT / 8–9 p.m. GT. in the Office 365 Network.

Quarterly Exchange Updates

Exchange has a very long history as we all know and evolved a lot in the last 20 years from the time of  RTM of Exchange 4.0, which is beautifully explained in the latest blog " 20 years ago in a galaxy far away…" by Exchange Team. If you are attending Microsoft Ignite 2016, you get the opportunity to celebrate the birthday event in person.

It's now time for the Quarterly Exchange updates.

Exchange Server 2016 gets its first cumulative update and Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 12 is also released. Exchange Server 2007 gets RU 19 and Exchange Server 2010 gets RU13 and also few more important updates along with few new changes are shared.

Access the EHLO Blog post here to know more: Released: March 2016 Quarterly Exchange Updates

Hybrid News:

Support for Standalone Hybrid Configuration Wizard in Exchange Server 2010

Customers using Exchange Server 2010 in Hybrid mode with Office 365 will notice a new link in the EMC to use the Updated Standalone Hybrid Configuration Wizard. We encourage all customers to use this updated version of the Hybrid Configuration Wizard.

Reminder: Customers in hybrid deployments where Exchange is deployed on-premises and in the cloud, or who are using Exchange Online Archiving (EOA) with their on-premises Exchange deployment are required to deploy the most current (e.g., CU12) or the prior (e.g., CU11) Cumulative Update release.

Review the Release details for the Knowledge base articles and download links for the updates.

Finally, Always test the deployment of the updates in your lab environment to determine the proper installation process for your production environment.

SharePoint 2016 RTM and Project Server 2016 RTM is now available

Microsoft team released the most awaited SharePoint 2016 RTM and Project Server 2016 RTM last week and this is a milestone in Microsoft software release cadence.

More updates are available in the Official Office Blogs posts:

SharePoint 2016 RTM and the Future of SharePoint event

Project Server 2016 RTM is now available

Also get to know What’s new for admins in SharePoint Server 2016

Be sure to register yourself and join the SharePoint Virtual Launch event Online on May 4 2016 and enjoy the celebration.

Register here: SharePoint Virtual Launch event

Stay tuned for more updates...

Microsoft Intune End User Enrollment Guide

Microsoft  Intune team recently published a customizable End User Enrollment Guide, that can help your end users enroll their mobile devices into Microsoft Intune

Download here:Microsoft Intune End User Enrollment Guide

Also Learn What's new in Microsoft Intune

Most importantly know how to Protect your company data and email with Microsoft Intune

Mobile device management at Microsoft - Technical Case Study

In today's world of mobility, every Organization wants their employees to be more productive and BYOD is now becoming a adoptable solution with the advent of strong MDM and MAM solutions.

Learn how Microsoft IT uses Enterprise Mobility Suite and other services to manage identity, devices, and applications. Now, simplified and integrated IT solutions enable their employees to be productive on any device.

Access the Case Study here: Mobile device management at Microsoft 

Preparing for Microsoft Specialist Certification Exam 70-534, Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions

Are you preparing for Microsoft Specialist Certification Exam 70-534, Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions, then below are few resources I came across in my journey, which will help you out with your Exam preparation Roadmap.

Review the Exam details here: Exam 70-534, Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions

This Exam is one of the Essential exam for your MCSD certification.

 Review here:  MCSD: Azure Solutions Architect

Keith Mayer MSFT has published the below Early Experts Study Guide in his blog with rich set of resources available for the Exam preparation.

Access here: Early Experts Study Guide for Microsoft Specialist Certification Exam 70-534, Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions.

Microsoft Virtual Academy course targeting this Exam preparation is the next key resource: Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions

Next on the list is the new Jump Start Series from Channel 9 : Exam Jump Start 70-534 Prerequisites: Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions

Also take a loot at the Cert prep Guidance from Sidney Andrews, MCT:  70-534: Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions

Another essential guidance from renowned IT Expert Mark Wilson here: Preparation Notes for Microsoft Exam 70-534: Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions

Grab the Exam reference E-book from Microsoft Press store for your reference.

Buy here : Exam Ref 70-534 Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions

Update:

Access the new Certification Exam Prep session from Microsoft Ignite 2016.

Access here: BRK3264 - Cert Exam Prep: Exam 70-534: Architecting Azure Solutions

More Good news:

Passing an Exam is always not easy and you can take an extra chance for success now with the advantage of  Microsoft Certification Booster Pack.

Know more here: Give yourself an advantage with a Microsoft Certification Booster Pack

Get an Azure Trail now and get started...

Update:

Microsoft team made new changes to the Certification path, Be sure to know the latest Microsoft Certification updates and decide your learning path.

Microsoft Azure Datacenter IP Ranges

For anyone interested to know the IP Ranges used by Microsoft Azure Datacenters.

Download here: Microsoft Azure Datacenter IP Ranges