Microsoft recently introduced the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework which provides customers with a set of Azure best-practices to help them build and deliver well-architected solutions on top of the Azure platform. The framework consists of five pillars of architecture excellence, that can be used as guiding to improve the quality of the workloads that run on Azure. These five pillars are: Cost Optimization, Operational Excellence, Performance Efficiency, Reliability, and Security. They will be explained in more detail in the following sections. ...

Most companies typically go through a set of phases the in their Microsoft cloud journey. They start with experimenting with the cloud for rapid application development. A single subscription is manually created in the Azure portal, and a set of services is quickly deployed from the portal to serve business and the developer’s needs. It is even not uncommon in this phase, for the business or for developers to use their own credit card for creating this single subscription. The main goal in this phase is mostly serving business needs quickly, creating small proof of concepts, or avoiding the lengthy and time-consuming deployment strategies of bigger organizations. ...

Most organizations embrace a hybrid and multi cloud approach for their businesses. This will give them the full benefits of their on-premises investments, the ability to innovate using cloud technologies, and the ability to avoid vendor lock-in. For the last two years, Microsoft is investing enormously in enabling seamless hybrid capabilities. They released Azure Stack, which enables a consistent cloud model, but is deployed on-premises. They enabled security threat protection for any infrastructure, which is fully powered from the cloud, and they enabled the ability to run Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services AI models anywhere. Microsoft recently released Azure Arc, which unlocks new hybrid scenarios for organizations by bringing new Azure services and management features to any infrastructure. Azure Arc extends the Azure Resource Manager capabilities to Linux and Windows servers, and Kubernetes clusters on any infrastructure across on-premises, multi-cloud, and the edge. You can use Azure Arc to run Azure data services anywhere, which includes always up-to-date data capabilities, deployment in seconds, and dynamic scalability on any infrastructure. Azure Arc for Servers is currently in preview, and that is what we are going to cover in this post. ...

Many companies fail to understand and implement Azure governance. This can result in many unwanted results, like accidentally deleting resources in your Azure environment, non-compliance with external regulations, deploying costly resources, or deploying resources in the wrong Azure regions. The solution to this is Azure governance, the ongoing process of managing, monitoring, and auditing the use of Azure resources to meet the goals and requirements of your organization. In this session we are going to look at Azure Blueprints, Azure Policy, Management Groups and the Resource Graph to effectively manage your Azure environment. Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/sjoukjezaal/the-steps-to-effective-azure-governance

This is the second article in a series about the different solutions that Microsoft Azure has to offer for specific industries. In my first post, I covered how these industry specific solutions help organizations to accelerate their digital transformation, and why this is so important nowadays. In this second part, we will look at the manufacturing, financials services and government industries. Azure for manufacturing In the upcoming years, instead of selling unconnected products, manufacturers will start focusing more on selling products that come with connectivity services. They will also move from selling a discrete product to selling products as a service. To accommodate global crises, manufacturers will also seek ways to be more agile and responsive to changing market demands. Manufacturers are building digital feedback loops that help companies connect with their products and customers to continuously learn, grow, and improve existing services, as well as build new ones. ...

Adapt and thrive with Microsoft Azure for Industries – part 1 The way we work and live has changed. As a result of the recent global health crisis, many organizations are accelerating their digital transformation efforts to meet the challenges that they were exposed to. Employees around the world shifted to remote work, stores needed to shift to a buy online, pick up in-store model. In manufacturing, remote capabilities became key. Digital transformation has now become a requirement for business continuity, and digital technology has universally become key to business resilience and transformation. ...

My new book, Microsoft Azure Administrator – Exam Guide AZ-103, is now published! See below, the book description: Book Description Microsoft Azure Administrator – Exam Guide AZ-103 will cover all the exam objectives that will help you earn Microsoft Azure Administrator certification. Whether you want to clear AZ-103 exam or want hands-on experience in administering Azure, this study guide will help you achieve your objective. It covers the latest features and capabilities around configuring, managing, and securing Azure resources. Following Microsoft’s AZ-103 exam syllabus, this guide is divided into five modules. The first module talks about how to manage Azure subscriptions and resources. You will be able to configure Azure subscription policies at Azure subscription level and learn how to use Azure policies for resource groups. Later, the book covers techniques related to implementing and managing storage in Azure. You will be able to create and configure backup policies and perform restore operations. The next module will guide you to create, configure, and deploy virtual machines for Windows and Linux. In the last two modules, you will learn about configuring and managing virtual networks and managing identities. The book concludes with effective mock tests along with answers so that you can confidently crack this exam. By the end of this book, you will acquire the skills needed to pass Exam AZ-103. ...

Thanks for attending my session at DevSum in Stockholm on May 23, 2019 on Azure AD B2C: Application Security Made Easy! Hereby my slides: [DevSum: Azure AD B2C Application security made easy]("//www.slideshare.net/SjoukjeZaal/devsum-azure-ad-b2c-application-security-made-easy" “\“DevSum:”) from SjoukjeZaal

Thanks for attending my webinar at Dear Azure on December 09, 2018 on External Collaboration with Azure B2B! Hereby my slides: [Azure Saturday: External Collaboration With Azure AD B2B]("//www.slideshare.net/SjoukjeZaal/azure-saturday-external-collaboration-with-azure-ad-b2b" “\“Azure”) from SjoukjeZaal

Thanks for attending my session at the Intelligent Cloud Conference in Copenhagen on April 10, 2019 on Azure AD B2C: Application Security Made Easy! Hereby my slides: [Intelligent Cloud Conference: Azure AD B2C Application security made easy]("//www.slideshare.net/SjoukjeZaal/icc-azure-b2-c-application-security-made-easy" “\“Intelligent”) from SjoukjeZaal

Deel 1: Azure Active Directory synchronisatie Om een hybride omgeving op te zetten m.b.v. SharePoint 2016 en Office 365 dienen een aantal stappen te worden doorlopen. De eerste stap is het synchroniseren van je On premise Active directory omgeving met Azure Active directory. Om je gebruikers accounts te kunnen synchroniseren met de cloud, wordt de tool Azure AD Connect gebruikt die je hier kan dowloaden: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=47594 . Om Azure AD Connect te kunnen gebruiken dient je server te voldoen aan een aantal eisen. Deze eisen zijn na te lezen op de volgende website: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/active-directory-aadconnect-prerequisites/. ...

Welcome to another Azure Content Spotlight! These articles are used to highlight items in Azure that could be more visible to the Azure community. This week’s content spotlight is about the Azure Data Architecture Guide, which is published by the Azure CAT team. This guide can be used by data professionals, architects and developers, who are interested in selecting the right data services and technologies on Azure. It will give you a lot of interesting information, and guidance on how to design effective data architectures and solutions on the Azure platform. The Azure CAT team provided a series of blog posts: ...

Thanks for attending my webinar at Dear Azure on December 09, 2018 on External Collaboration with Azure B2B! Hereby my slides: https://www.slideshare.net/SjoukjeZaal/dear-azure-external-collaboration-with-azure-ad-b2b The code has been shared on GitHub: https://github.com/SjoukjeZaal/Events/tree/master/2018-12-09%20Dear%20Azure -Sjoukje

Welcome to another Azure Content Spotlight! These articles are used to highlight items in Azure that could be more visible to the Azure community. This weeks content spotlight is about Cognitive Service Containers, which is released in preview last week. There was a high demand for the flexibility to deploy AI applications in a variety of environments. By deploying Cognitive Services in containers, data can be analyzed close to where the actual data resides. And these containers can be deployed on on-premises environments as well, so customer data (e.g., the image or text that is being analyzed) is not sent to Microsoft. For information and how to get started with Cognitive Service Containers, you can refer to the below links: ...

Thanks for attending out session at The Office 365 & SharePoint Connect on November 15, 2018: Innovate - Connecting bleeding edge technologies! Hereby my slides: https://www.slideshare.net/SjoukjeZaal/o365-sp-connect-2018-innovate-connecting-bleeding-edge-technologies -Sjoukje

Welcome to another Azure Content Spotlight! These articles are used to highlight items in Azure that could be more visible to the Azure community. This weeks content spotlight is all for developers that want to get started with developing AI applications or more experienced AI developers that want expand their knowledge. AI is a set of technologies that enable computers to assist and solve problems in a way that are similar to humans by perceiving, learning, and reasoning. Using the cloud and the Microsoft AI platform you can now infuse your applications with these intelligent capabilities. Microsoft offers an extensive set of services to build intelligent applications, like Azure Cognitive Services, Bot Framework and Azure Machine Learning. You can use different tooling, even open source technologies such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or Jupyter and leverage the infrastructure capabilities that are part of Microsoft AI platform as well. To get started or expand your knowledge, you can refer to the following resources: ...

Thanks for attending my session at the PolarConf on Oktober 10, 2018 on External Collaboration with Azure B2B! Hereby my slides: https://www.slideshare.net/SjoukjeZaal/external-collaboration-with-azure-b2b-118983713?qid=16289d77-0f53-47c2-9642-4571e4f3d030&v=&b=&from_search=8 The code has been shared on GitHub: https://github.com/SjoukjeZaal/Events/tree/master/2018-10-10%20PolarConf -Sjoukje

Thanks for attending my session at the AZUG on september 20, 2018 on External Collaboration with Azure B2B! Hereby my slides: https://www.slideshare.net/SjoukjeZaal/external-collaboration-with-azure-b2b?qid=9102ff87-4d7d-4c0f-8bb2-38cc1a1d641c&v=&b=&from_search=9 The code has been shared on GitHub: https://github.com/SjoukjeZaal/Events/tree/master/2018-09-20%20AZUG%20BE -Sjoukje

Welcome to another Azure Content Spotlight! These articles are used to highlight items in Azure that could be more visible to the Azure community. This weeks content spotlight is about App migration to Azure. The Cloud is changing the way applications are architected. Instead of monoliths, applications are decomposed into smaller services. These services communicate with each other through APIs or using asynchronous messaging. They can scale horizontally, so new instances can be added and removed easily. Deployments must be automated and monitoring is critical for gaining insights into the applications. And this all can be realized without the need to bother about the underlying infrastructure. This changing way of designing and architecting applications, introduces new architectural patterns and best practices for building apps on the Azure cloud platform. Below is a set of resources which can help software architects and developers gaining insights about the different services and resources Azure has to offer to compose your applications. It also provides different patterns and best practices on how to design your applications. A couple of Build 2018 videos: ...

Welcome to another Azure Content Spotlight! These articles are used to highlight items in Azure that could be more visible to the Azure community The Secure DevOps Kit for Azure (AzSK) offers a set of scripts, tools, extensions, automations, etc. for dev ops teams which are using automation and are integrating security into native dev ops workflows. The following focus areas are covered: Secure the subscription: A secure cloud subscription provides a core foundation for development and deployment activities. Enable secure development: Developers should have the ability to write secure code and to test the secure configuration of their cloud applications. Integrate security into CICD: Ability to run Security Verification Tests (SVTs) as part of the VSTS CICD pipeline. Continuous Assurance: Treat security as a continuously varying state of a system with continious assurance. Alerting & Monitoring: provides solutions for individual application teams and also for central enterprise teams. Cloud Risk Governance: A telemetry framework that generates events capturing usage, adoption, evaluation results, etc. For more information, you can refer to the following sites: ...