TechEd North America 2014, Houston
Keynote – Brad Anderson, Josh Twist, Matt McSpirit, Adam Hall, Brian Harry, Richard White, Eron Kelly, Julia White

Day 1, 12 May 2014, 9:00AM-10:30AM

Disclaimer: This post contains my own thoughts and notes based on attending TechEd North America 2014 presentations. Some content maps directly to what was originally presented. Other content is paraphrased or represents my own thoughts and opinions and should not be construed as reflecting the opinion of either Microsoft, the presenters or the speakers.

Executive Summary—Sean’s takeaways

• Mobile-First, Cloud-First
• Focusing on Mobile Apps + Cloud Services is critical
• For Cloud, Azure is a great solution
  • Highly scalable
  • Supports lots of hybrid (on premise + cloud) scenarios
  • Good support for analytics
  • Resilient—e.g. automatic failover
• Mobile Apps
  • Must support iOS and Android
  • Microsoft supports identity and app management on these devices
  • IT control of apps and data
• Story for Developers
  • Easier and easier to create cross-platform solutions (Visual Studio + Xamarin)
  • Native apps for best experience and for leveraging existing .NET skills
  • Hybrid apps, HTML5 + Cordova, if your devs have HTML5 experience
• Story for Users
  • Touchy-feely video—things basically getting cooler for users all of the time
• Office 365
  • Very cool, running on a variety of platforms
  • Multiple users
  • IT management

Full video

Brad Anderson – Corporate Vice President, Windows Server and System Center Program Management

On Satya—no better leader, no better human

Reflecting on past 10 years

Connected devices

• 2008 – more connected devices than humans
• Now hyperscale

Growing number of users, growing # of connect devices

• Lots of data
• High dependent on cloud

]:05 video – Mobile cloud, video]

Video – mobile cloud – various speakers

• Costs very little to store all this data
• Devices can access this data
• Lots of compute power + lots of connectivity

Possibilities

• Two loops
  • Device – data
  • Device – human
• Detecting Parkinsons by detecting micro tremors
• Guthrie – important to engage customers
• Data lets you engage and collaborate
• “Start dreaming” – If you don’t dream, you won’t go anywhere

Mobile-first and cloud-first

• Must have both
• Cloud with devices is untapped potential
• Devices without cloud is the same—untapped potential

Bring together – IT Pros, Devs, End Users

• Want all these groups to get value from the cloud
• Public cloud can bring value to everything you do

IT Pros – Cloud

• Stop thinking as private/public clouds as separate
• The cloud is integral to your datacenter
  • Will let you deliver new things to your customers
• Think about—the organization you choose for public cloud

Three attributes for public cloud provider

• Scale – hyperscale – only three organizations doing this right now
  • Willing to back SLA financially
• Enterprise proven
• Hybrid
  • Build application on any cloud, deploy on any cloud

I submit..

• If you use these attributes to pick provider, Microsoft stands alone

Example of organizations using Azure

• Walsh, Paul Smith, NBC Olympics, Blink Box, TitanFall

What could you do with unlimited computing power?

• TitanFall – Respawn

TitanFall vide

• Figures out nearest data center
• Spins up dedicated server
• More consistent experience – no host advantage
• “throw ’em a server”
• Constantly available set of servers
• AI powered by server – wouldn’t be feasible if it was client-hosted

Day one – 100,000 VMs running around the world

• Controlled by <150 employees

Infrastructure of Azure

• 16 different regions
• Azure Active Directory – 2B authentications per day
• Cloud is your design point
• Foundation of data centers is Windows Server
• Network of compatible clouds

Embrace cloud culture thru hybrid

Infrastructure

• Identity – AAD, rights management, Cloud App Discovery
• Compute – IaaS, compute intensive VMs
• Networking – dedicated high-speed link, ExpressRoute, redundancy
• Storage – Analytics Platform System, Azure Files preview

Applications

• Applications always require database
• SQL Server 2014 – 30x increase in performance, w/o rewriting application (3000%)
• Azure Redis Cache Preview
• API Management Preview
  • Build API for your customers, share

Josh Twist – Demo on API Management

Story about Wellmark (health care provider), using Azure API Management

• Partner-facing dev portal
• Document that tells devs how to use API, dynamically generated
• Can generate code samples, platform-specific

Publisher experience

• Dashboard for API
• Enable caching
• Policy configuration –
  • Rate limit on API
  • Quotas

Back to developer portal

• Developer console, generated by API platform
• Can exercise API in real-time
• Demo rate limit – hit several times, then get 429 Too Many Requests response

Insight into trends, usage, health of API – Analytics

• Summary of API
• Geographical distribution, can drill in, see state by state

Summary

• Protect API, get insight
• Available today in the Azure portal

Brad Anderson back

Business continuity

• SQL Server 2014 AlwaysOn
• Anti-malware added to Azure
• w/TrendMicro, additional security options
• Encrypted Storage for Office 365 – every file encrypted with its own key
• Site Recovery Preview – (HyperV Replication Manager) – disaster recovery
  • Azure can be location where you store copy for disaster recovery
  • Seamlessly failover to Azure
  • Simple, can apply to all services in data center
  • Azure can monitor health of your VMs, auto launch failover stuff

Matt McSpirit – Senior Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft – Failover Demo

Site Recovery – secondary location can be Azure

• Replication and recovery of your on-premises data centers
• Number of protected clouds, all on-premises, managed by Systems Center
• Configured for Replication and Recovery

Configuring cloud

• Replication interval down to 30 secs
• # recovery points
• Encryption at rest

On premises networks mapped to Azure networks

How VMs failover in controlled way

• Should be automatic
• Recovery plans – series of steps that executed in event of a failover
• Done in groups of services
• Can be manual action – asks someone to do something, waits for OK

Initiating failover

• Can test failover, prior to initiation
• “Planned failover” – primary site still online
• Just click

Brad Anderson back

Telemetry data

• 100% success with failovers

Mobile side (mobile-first)

• The cloud is integral your enterprise mobility
• Devices are lit up with various apps, become extension of who we are

Enterprise mobile needs

• How do you enable users to be productive on their devices, while keeping company secure
• Three big categories for things that you need
  • Identity management
  • Device/application management
  • Information protection

Identity management

• Leverage your investment in Active Directory
  • Common identity across all SaaS apps
• First app to bring under management – e-mail
  • E.g. Outlook on iPad/Android
• Will be bringing set of app wrappers on iOS/Android that will let you bring your apps to those platforms
• Layered approach for protection
  • Protect device
  • Protect application
• Protection that travels with file – Azure Rights Management service
  • Access rights travel with file

Enterprise Mobility Suite

• $4/user/mon – independent of # devices

Azure Remote App

• Remote desktop services that run in Azure
• Remote app down to devices
• 4,000,000 downloads of RDS apps on devices

Adam Hall – Senior Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft – Azure Remote App Demo

Hey, this is the third British guy that we’ve seen. Rule Britannia!

Users logs onto SaaS app, e.g. Office 365

Sign-in Page

• User goes to sign-in page, enters AAD creds, connects to Outlook
• AAD administration portal
• Security reports – 2B authentications / day
• Sign-in from multiple geographical regions – users who have logged in from 2 geographies that you can’t travel between
  • Likely compromised account
  • Administrator can reset password or enforce multi-factor authentication
• User list
• Can look at which applications each user is accessing
  • 80% of users admit using non-approved applications

Cloud App Discovery tool – Azure RemoteApp

• See what apps users are accessing
• Can control which applications a user can use

Azure Remote App (new)

• Can publish access to applications that users can access

Brad Anderson back again

Developers

• What can cloud bring to developers
• E.g. company that has 10,000 apps that users use
• End user experience – based on apps that users use
• Cloud is integral to accelerating application innovation

Want

• Multi device
• Iterate quickly
• Rapid development

Multi-device

• Universal Windows Applications
  • Single project in Visual Studio, 90% of code applies across all Windows platforms

Cortana demo

• First and only personal digital assistant in cloud
• Powered by cloud – watches what I do
• Surfaces up the things that are relevant to me
• Search example
  • Shows things that are important
• “What’s on my calendar for Thursday”
• “Go see Godzilla Friday the 17^th at 7PM”
  • “Just so you no..” you have – calendar conflict
• “Find me the best barbecue in Houston”
  • Good reviews – interact with Yelp
• It knows who I am
• “Next time I speak with Chris, remind me to congratulate him on his daughter’s graduation”
• Don’t have to speak, can interact with keyboard
• “email from Chris”
  • Reminders show up
• Speak name of app and then request
  • “Contoso find jobs near me”
  • Can enable your apps with Cortana

Mobile device management also works on phones

• Historically – Rich experiences vs. Breadth of devices
• .NET for Android and iOS
  • Through partnership with Xamarin
  • 60-70% of code in common

Hybrid Apps

• Multi-device hybrid apps
• HTML, but with much richer experience
• Cordova partnership

ASP.NET vNext

• Agile, Fast, Open

Brian Harry – Corporate Vice President, Microsoft – Application Lifecycle Management

Application Lifecycle Management

• Key ingredient is integration

Visual Studio Online

• Bring ALM value to cloud
• >1 million users
• SLA of 99.9%

Need to integrate tools with Visual Studio

• New open APIs for Visual Studio online – allow integrating apps with VS Online

Richard White – CEO, Founder, UserVoice

Make user feedback actionable

Have done integration with Visual Studio

• Prod Mgr & Eng Mgr
• Looking at public portal
• Product Manager – admin console
• Can send item to Engineering team
• Create Work Item – synchs to Visual Studio
• On VS side, shows up on Backlog items

CanBan board

• New => Approved
• Add comment to Bug
• Updated item in User Voice – see history of item
• Prod Mgr can then mark item in User Voice as “started”
  • Will send message to users who said they wanted feature

Brad Anderson back again

Users

• How can users get value in Mobile-First, Cloud-First world
• The cloud enables your users to do the things they’ve only dreamed of

Users video – What users can do

• World has become giant network
• Hyper connected world
• What if you were connected to everything important
• Plugged into everything that matters
• Collaborating
• Exchanging ideas
• Listening to employees, customers, partners
• Adapt quickly
• Share information in real-time
• One connected network
• You understand customers
• Power of the network
• “Work like a network”

Users

• From information to action
  • Must focus
  • Technology must help us
• Work like a network
  • Don’t lock up communications within organization
  • Share across organizations
  • Much more open environment
• Responsible empowerment
  • Strike balance between corporate/personal

Information – Action

• Need comprehensible data platform
• Analytics engine
  • HDInsight, based on Hadoop
• Get data to people
  • Using tools/capabilities that customers want to use
  • Surface everything through Excel
  • BI available in Office

Eron Kelly – General Manager, Microsoft

City of Barcelona – hosting festival

• Bicing – Rent bike
• Where are the bikes?
• Measure social sentiment – what do users think?

Excel

• Search from Excel
• Look at “social sentiment data” up in cloud
• Merge data set with existing analytics
• Now, with map, can view various data
  

Q&A, asking question in natural language

• “Total bikes available”
• “Total bikes by street” – bar chart
• “vs. xxx” – scatter chart
• “tweet messages for streetname” – lists tweets

Brad Anderson again

Office Graph

• Runs in cloud, understand individual’s intent
• Surface data up to Office tools

Open Communications

• What if all communications were “open” by default?

Mobile Productivity

• Natively instrument Office 365 across all platforms
• Entune
• E.g. control where users save documents

Julia White – General Manager, Microsoft

Office 365 & Entune

OneDrive for Business

• Struggling with “rogue” applications
• 1 TB storage per user
• Drag/drop content into web portal
• Sync – syncs to local content in Windows Explorer
• Share content – sharing icon – can enter people, from Active Directory, or from people outside company
  • Admin can control sharing
• Collaboration
  • By default, edit in browser, but can edit in desktop app
  • Can see other people currently editing
  • Can see them editing in real-time
• Go to ribbon, Tell Me, type “insert table”
  • Takes you right to command
• Share with company – using Yammer – Post

Yammer

• Social aspect – how we work with groups of people
• Future view of Groups, open communication
  • Group that people can find and join
  • Sure looks like Facebook
    

Outlook – now has Yammer Groups

• Can attach to same conversation from Outlook
• Can look at what groups some other guy is part of
• Can view conversation in a particular group
• Public vs. Private groups

Oslo app, built on Office Graph

• Surfaces view of content that’s relevant to this user
• Real-time stuff based on your actions, personalized
• Tells you, for each item, what the source is—why it’s showing it to you
• Some default searches – things “presented to me”
  • Based on meetings you’ve been in
• Two views of Bill – org chart
  • Also how he’s spending time, who he’s working with
• Can see what content is trending on that you also have permission for

Working on all devices, iPad demo

• Open Word, can open document that you were just working on
• “One source of the truth”
• Unmistakably Word, but also really natural
• Balance – familiar app experience, but fits into iOS experience
• Easy to interact with touch on these devices
• Context specific Ribbon command
• Making changes live, will appear on other platforms
• Always keep file fidelity, across all platforms
• Co-editing also on iPad

New stuff coming in future

• Office 365 & InTune
• Mobile device management on Office 365 on iPad
• IT can apply policies and controls
• Outlook demo, open Excel
• Only shows apps that IT has approved for business purposes
• Better format, opening in Excel
• Try sharing from native e-mail app on iPad => can’t paste document into e-mail
• But can send document from Outlook
• Business content stays only in managed/approved apps

Brad Anderson back again

Story about three customers using Office 365

• Mitchells and Butlers – managing 20,000 mobile devices with 2 people
• British Airways – 11,000 people on Yammer
• Xx Golf – using InTune to manage laptops and iPads

Enterprise Mobility platform

• Office 365
• Mobility Suite
• “Most comprehensive mobile solution”

The mobile-first cloud-first enterprise

• We believe deeply in this