Cloud

Today is Microsoft Ignite’s last conference day. Microsoft largest IT-conference MSIgnite took place from 4t to 8th of May in Chicagos’s McCormick center, some miles south of downtown. Martina and I attended BUILD conference too, so we have a direct comparison of the two large Microsoft conferences this year. The size was impressive Five conference days are exhausting. Well, actually this Friday is just half a conference day, because it ended after noon and the expo hall was closed down yesterday. But let’s start with the beginning. ...

Time flies! As soon as BUILD conference 2015 started it’s over now. Martina and I arrived a week ago in California and spent some days in Silicon valley (working there…) and north of San Francisco before attending the conference. BUILD, the 5th This was our 4th BUILD. In total there were five BUILD conferences (after Microsoft paused and renamed the PDC and started with Windows 8): The first one was in 2011 in Los Angeles, Anaheim, followed 2012 at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, we skipped 2013 in San Fran, Moscone Center, and have been at the last BUILD 2014 and now in 2015, also in the same location. So we have some experience with this Developer Conference. ...

Are working with Office 365 and are you attending Microsoft Ignite conference in Chicago in some days? Here’s your chance to engage six Office 365 MVP’s in an open Q&A panel discussion, see Microsoft Office 365 MVP Panel! See this astonishing promotion video here! Office365 MVP experts panel at Microsoft Ignite including @S_McNeill, @DarrellCWebster, @magrom, @JPBruzzese, @jseghers and @bretthill. Many thanks to @bretthill for this great video cut! Update: Video-URL links changed to YouTube. CU there at the Microsoft Office 365 MVP Panel!

The new app model has a lot of benefits, especially for Web Developers who are writing solutions for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 or SharePoint Online. A very common request of Line-of-Business (LOB) apps is that actions in SharePoint lists shall trigger special operations, for example to start a workflow or to exchange data with other, external systems. This can be accomplished with “Remote Event Receivers” in SharePoint. With SharePoint 2013 the new concept uses Azure ServiceBus to transport events and data between the SharePoint Server system and a remote App (which while developing usually is running on “localhost”). ...

Gestern wurde der Azure Media Player im Azure-Blog angekündigt. Announcing Azure Media Player Der Azure Media Player dient dazu, Media Streams von den Azure Media Services auf verschiedensten Geräten wiederzugeben. Im O-Ton liest sich das so: “Azure Media Player utilizes industry standards, such as HTML5 (MSE/EME) to provide an enriched adaptive streaming experience.” **Wichtig: **Der Azure Media Player unterstützt ausschließlich Media Streams von den Azure Media Services. Unter der Adresse https://aka.ms/azuremediaplayer kann der Azure media Player live ausprobiert werden. Es können sogar eigene Videos (URLs) aus den Azure Media Services durch Einfügen des .ism/manifest files in die URL und “update player” verwendet werden. Hier gehts zur Ankündigung im Blog. ...

Viele Unternehmen setzen SharePoint als Intranet, App- und Zusammenarbeits-Plattform ein. Heute hat Microsoft im Office Blog die erste offizielle Roadmap zur nächsten Version, SharePoint Server 2016, bekanntgegeben, siehe SharePoint Server 2016 update. Seth Patton, Senior Director of Product Management for the SharePoint Team, hat die Timeline veröffentlicht. Demnach wird SharePoint Server 2016 im Q2 2016 öffentlich verfügbar sein. Eine Public Beta ist für Q4 2015 geplant. Weiters stellt Microsoft klar, dass es für die nächste Zukunft eine on premises Version von SharePoint geben wird. ...

On infographicportal.com there’s a nice representation how fast the mobile market is growing – and how important this market is and will be in near future. See the article here: https://www.infographicportal.com/state-mobile-2015/ Here are some statements out of the graphics: “There are 1.2 billion mobile users today. By 2018 – in 3 years – that number will be nearly 5 billion.” “Mobile payments are increasing annually by 48%.” “By 2017, 87% of connected devices will be Tables and Smartphones.” ...

Office 365 verändert sich schnell – jede Woche finden sich neue und spannende Features rund um das Service. Eines der Features die sehr lange nachgefragt wurden war eine anpassbare Login Seite. Bisher war das jenen Kunden vorbehalten, die entweder ADFS einsetzen oder über eine eigene Azure AD subscription verfügen. Glücklicherweise gibt es dieses Feature nun auch für Office 365 Abonnenten. Gleichzeitig damit wurde auch verkündet, dass es nun möglich ist, dass Office 365 Benutzer ihr Kennwort selbst zurück setzen können, was bisher nur den Office 365 Administratoren vorbehalten war. ...

Heute gibt es ein kleines Ostergeschenk für alle Developer, die mit Azure entwickeln, nämlich den ganz neuen Azure Resource Explorer. Das Azure Resource Explorer Tool steht als Website unter https://resources.azure.com/ zur Verfügung. Damit können die Azure Management-API’s angesehen und ausprobiert werden. Nach der Authentifizierung mit dem Azure-Login liest das Tool die damit verknüpften Providers und Subscriptions aus. Diese werden links in einem Tree aufgelistet. Beim Anklicken eines Knoten wird das korrespondierende HTTP Kommando rechts generiert und der Output sogleich im JSON-Format darunter angezeigt – wie ein Explorer eben. ...

Office 365 is moving fast – each week we find new and interesting stuff in the service. One of the long awaiting features is custom branding. This was first only exclusive to customers who use their own ADFS service and afterwards only to those customers who have an additional Azure AD subscription. Gladly this feature is now available also for Office 365 customers, together with the self-service password reset option for all users (not only Office 365 administrators). ...