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i keep catching myself getting far wordier than intended in these “summaries.” i’m going to work on that! catching up though. this makes 4 of 9 in this series. remember the days when microsoft was all about NOT developing for competing platforms to edge them out of the market? well, this post titled enabling open source software is all about the loving embrace of open source.   open source with windows common engineering criteria (cec) drives consistency across products by requiring engineering compliance on a variety of factors with goals such as integration, manageability, security, reliability, etc. this same concept extends to all things cloud – private, hybrid, or public. so what’s all this cec stuff do for open source, you say? well, it means having the same goal. single pane of glass administration, things that work in one environment should translate pretty easily to another, etc. here’s things microsoft has been up to: linux community . microsoft has been pretty involv

  pcit. there’s that term again. it doesn’t mean personal computer though. it actually means people-centric IT. as more and more devices are born to consume cloud-based services, it makes sense for management of such devices to be cloud-based as well. part 3 – people-centric IT in action – end-to-end scenarios across products – (coincidentally) looks at three scenarios of pcit.   scenario 1: company access, personal device. company access already exists today through technology such as vpn. this is really more about giving users the ability to get to their work files on a personal device. it address some of the risks around compliance by utilizing authentication (ad fs) and encryption (work folders). 1 of course, remote wipe is a part of the scenario. the core component to scenario 1 is work folders. think of work folders as a skydrive pro for file servers. (skydrive pro is for sharepoint, in case you were curious.) work folders requires both a server 2 and a client. windows 8.

this morning’s read: part 2 of 9, titled making device users productive and protecting corporate information . here’s my summary of another incredibly long and detailed post. don’t forget to go back and get the full read. away we go. people-centric IT (pcit). addresses four key areas. users. expect to have access to all of their corporate resources from anywhere. devices. diversity is not just about controlling which models of a particular brand to use. diversity of device type continues to grow as well. diversity = complexity. apps. complexity in cross-platform management and deployment of apps. data. provide data access without while staying compliant and secure. bring your own device (byod). byod is not a trend so much as a turning point. there’s no going back. diversity of devices will continue to climb which positions companies to have to fight the trend or embrace the trend. that’s what pcit is about. user productivity. embracing byod effectively means having a he

well, guess what? r2 is coming. you knew that already. what you might not know yet is r2 is coming october 18 , along with windows 8.1. brad anderson has also been releasing a series of blog posts to highlight all of the forthcoming changes. it’s a lot of material to read! figured i’d read along and post the high points. obviously i’m way behind since it’s a 9-part series which started at the beginning of july and is up to part 7 already. enough exasperation. let’s get started with part 1 titled beginning and ending with customer-specific scenarios . cloud-first approach . build and deploy in their cloud first then deliver to customers and partners. ms currently operates > 200+ cloud services. unified planning . client, server, system center, azure and intune all planned and prioritized together, including common release schedules and milestones. three core pillars . centric to the support and inspiration behind r2 products: empower people-centric IT (pcit) . a move toward an

this isn’t so much a technical post. it’s just an explanation of how to spot check a profile before you decide to accept an invitation. let’s say you get a mysterious invitation from someone on linkedin. at one point it was pretty easy to spot these but as all feats of engineering goes, things usually get better – including social. :) the new thing seems to be female profiles using attractive photos as a means of getting someone to accept the invitation. this is the easiest way i know how to spot a fake: make a copy of the photo. in windows land, you can just drag the image off the browser and drop it to the desktop. like so: next, go to google’s image search and drag the photo to the search bar – don’t think bing supports this – as illustrated below: voila. 83 results. hope you found that useful.