test for bug https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/testtesttestbug/feed.xml Just another Technet site Wed, 17 Apr 2019 03:47:33 GMT en-US hourly 1 test https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/testtesttestbug/test Fri, 14 Oct 2016 07:19:13 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/testtesttestbug/?p=7426 Microsoft announces PowerShell is open sourced, available on Linux https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/testtesttestbug/microsoft-announces-powershell-is-open-sourced-available-on-linux Thu, 18 Aug 2016 08:14:49 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/server-cloud/?p=4955 blog.”]]> Microsoft brings together IT management and security for the hybrid cloud https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/testtesttestbug/microsoft-brings-together-it-management-and-security-for-the-hybrid-cloud Wed, 03 Aug 2016 08:00:42 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/server-cloud/?p=4935 Operations Management Suite (OMS) is management for the cloud, from the cloud. Delivering analytics, automation, configuration, security, backup, and site recovery, OMS gives you the ability to increase visibility and control from the on-premises datacenter to the cloud. The advantages of cloud-based management include the ability to innovate faster, scale to meet expanding requirements, and get up and running without long deployment cycles. Using cloud-based security tools also ensures that you are always working from the latest information on threats. Security and management go hand in hand, because the same data that indicates a potential performance or health issue, might also indicate a security breach. By bringing security and management together in a single cloud-based offering, OMS provides the tools you need to address threats and remediate issues without the added complexity of point solutions. Last week we announced the general availability of Azure Security Center, a set of tools to help customers gain visibility into the security state of their Azure resources, take control of cloud security policies, and both detect and respond to active attacks. With OMS Security we bring the security analytics that are built into Azure Security Center to hybrid cloud environments, giving you the capabilities you need to handle today’s evolving security threats. OMS Security leverages the same intelligence and detection that we use in Azure and is based on the security knowledge that we gain from running a hyper-scale cloud. With OMS Security, you can quickly assess the security posture of your hybrid cloud environment and detect active security threats. OMS Security will continuously monitor the environment for security vulnerabilities such as missing critical security updates, antimalware, and recommended security configuration baselines. To detect active security threats and attacks, the service leverages powerful event analysis paired with threat intelligence derived from Microsoft’s own cloud experience. You can centralize management for protecting systems, as well as creating alerts, implementing automatic security updates across systems, and applying security policies. A simple approach to search and queries across all data sources lets you streamline the security audit process with easy access to comprehensive and actionable security log data. With these new capabilities, IT administrators can avoid being blindsided by a breach and alert the security team if they see indicators of compromise. Security response teams can then use the same simple search capabilities to rapidly get a view across operations and security data to help stop the threat. The new Security service includes a broad range of tools to help you get deeper visibility across multiple aspects of the security landscape. Highlights include advanced threat detection and the Threat Intelligence dashboard, which lets you visualize attacks using the same data we use in Azure. For customers using Advanced Threat Analytics in Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS), you can now view that information in OMS, giving you a single view of security for IT operations. The new Security Configuration Baseline Assessment identifies vulnerable OS configurations that could be exploited by an attacker. To see OMS Security in action, and get a deeper view on how these features can work for you, take a look at Operations Management Suite Security in this episode of Microsoft Mechanics. To make it easier to get access to these solutions, we announced earlier this month that you can purchase OMS via a new subscription model. Existing System Center customers can get OMS as an add-on, extending the value of existing on-premises investments. To learn more about OMS Security, we encourage you to check out the website and read the deep dive blog post, Operations Management Suite expands to include security management, threat detection.]]> Cloud platforms – the banks of the future https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/testtesttestbug/cloud-platforms-the-banks-of-the-future Wed, 06 Jul 2016 10:00:10 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/server-cloud/?p=4916 This post was authored by Adam Dodds, Research Director Channel Strategies, Alliances and Brokerage, IDC Print This is the fifth in a guest blog post series by IDC on trusted cloud. This post details the growing importance of cloud platforms for storing and protecting data. Having had the opportunity to spend time with vendors, services providers, and organizations throughout the world, the universal theme that I keep hearing is the increasing recognition of information as a potentially strategic asset. This is an incredibly important discussion for an enterprise to be having as this factor must be acknowledged as a leading influence in the process of selecting a cloud provider. The challenge is that recognizing information as a strategic asset is an executive-level opportunity (and not one for the CIO’s office alone) and it is a compelling reason for the executives of the business to become more involved in the digital journey. It is a reflection that digitization is creating new points of value in a business that need to be recognized and nurtured. A great example of the value of a business’s information is Caesars Casino where the customer loyalty data was valued at $1 billion (U.S.) in 2015. This example is convincing evidence that information has a tangible value, despite the financial rules that govern the treatment of information on the balance sheet as having yet to mature. The rising impact of information as a power currency is already being recognized at a business valuation level. The high market value of digital natives now achieving global scale is a real reflection of this change (e.g., Facebook or Uber). Once the shift is made around information having a value, we can start thinking more about how we treat it, how we add value to it, how we protect it and, most importantly, where we put it from a cloud provider perspective. The big question asked by most organizations is, "We know our information has a value, but how do we quantify that valuation?" The answer is not simple and the approaches to valuing information vary in the market. These approaches center around three common themes:
  1. How much revenue/profit could be attained if the information was sold?
  2. What would the cost be to the business if a competitor had the information?
  3. What would the financial impact be of not having the data available from a business operations perspective?
Answering these questions will provide an understanding of how – or if – information is valued in the organization, what data is valued, and where the emphasis on valuation should begin. By considering the context of the valuation, organizations can develop a tangible and rigorous methodology for identifying the approach to be taken. So why is this process important? Because more mechanisms are needed to bring the business thinking into alignment with the potential of digital technology and services as business “goes digital.” CEOs and their boards are looking for alternatives to the traditional risk-based approach to determine how and when they should get involved. With this in mind, we shift to the challenge of choosing a service delivery model for new information-based services and its relevance as a bank type structure. As with a bank, it is important that the service delivery provider balances the accessibility of the information with the need for robust security. Information is not physically tangible so there is an absolute need for organizations to pay close attention to their connection and engagement with their service delivery model. This is a crucial step in gaining customer trust regarding the stewardship of their information, and it should be treated no differently than safeguarding the organization’s cash in a bank. This principle should be adhered to irrespective of whether the datacenter is global or local. However, most organizations do not have the capacity or financial capability to provide bank-like service delivery. Indeed, implementing a delivery platform to bank-level would likely make an information value generation project unviable. What is becoming increasingly common is to use a provider of cloud services to build a new line of business on a cloud services platform. Choosing a platform provider uses much the same set of criteria as when selecting a bank but with obvious differences. A set of important characteristics include:
  • Accessibility and transparency. How is the organization able to physically reference the provider’s facilities and systems and have visibility into their unique environment? This is an important step in the cloud platform adoption process.
  • Culture and brand. How aligned at the personnel level are the employees of both provider and enterprise? Does the engagement reflect the way in which the organization does business?
  • The type of relationship being built. Who owns any developed IP? New ecosystem models are being built as enterprises realize that they can leverage, with the use of new digital technologies and cloud native businesses, the IP and capabilities of aligned but non-competing specialist service providers. (See Walmart, Uber, Lyft.)
  • Provider viability. How likely is the provider to stay in the business of providing this platform? What is their development roadmap and do they have sufficient funding to maintain the R&D levels? Are they committed for the foreseeable future?
  • Cost. How transparent are the costs of the service and how focused is the provider in building a relationship for the long term? This can be seen through a real commitment to optimizing the customers' environment both commercially and technically (see my comment above on relationship and ecosystem – a partner approach can be less risky but not a surety).
  • Location. Datacenter investment is aligned to a range of variables. Geographic stability, political stability, and power assurance remain top characteristics. Being local remains important in many geographies, especially where local legislation is used to drive local industry development. However, where local hosting is not available the ability to choose a location near country or globally offers a level of comfort where the connectivity can be relied upon.
  • Reliability. Providers should be able to clearly demonstrate the uptime of their environment. Architecting for resilience is important but this does not mean that you should design around the provider’s poor solution.
  • Compliance. Is the provider able to demonstrate an awareness of your business or your industry? Irrespective of whether data sovereignty or the industry itself has requirements around information availability, it is important to understand what is needed and where the risk lies (e.g., in health care this is critical especially regarding patient records).
As the value of an organization’s information grows to represent a significant proportion of a business, it is critical that the business becomes more involved in the decision-making process. There are too many cases where an organization has faced considerable business impact due to a data breach and, in hindsight, both the CEOs and the boards wished that they were more educated and involved in the assessment process (Sony and Target are two examples that come to mind). At a technical level the security, budgets, workload locations, and the shift to as-a-service models are driven largely by the CIO’s office. However, this is not the right answer any more as data and information shifts from a utility asset to an invaluable competitive differentiator asset for all organizations. Valuing that asset has never been more critical. The sooner that organizations treat information as they would treat more liquid assets, the faster they will realize its potential value. The downstream effect of this change will be a closer inspection of the providers with whom they choose to entrust their information. Only those providers that are hyper aware of their responsibility over this information and strive for transparency to ensure that this trust is warranted will be successful. To learn more, visit the Trusted Cloud website.]]> New flexible way for customers to buy Microsoft Operations Management Suite https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/testtesttestbug/new-flexible-way-for-customers-to-buy-microsoft-operations-management-suite Thu, 30 Jun 2016 10:00:11 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/server-cloud/?p=4885 This post was authored by Mike Schutz, General Manager, Cloud Platform Marketing. As you think about the transition from traditional IT to cloud, a key element in making that transition possible is IT operations management. Just about every business now has a mix of resources, with some still primarily running on-premises infrastructure and others now heavily relying on hosted or public clouds. While existing on-premises toolsets have some capabilities that can enable management of a hybrid cloud, the cloud presents fundamentally different challenges. Hybrid environments require a shift from optimizing infrastructure to optimizing applications and workloads. You need a new approach to manage the variable set of resources and priorities, while still ensuring that business needs are met. Just over a year ago, we launched the Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) to increase agility for IT operations. OMS, along with Microsoft System Center, leverages Microsoft’s deep management experience to streamline IT management across any hybrid cloud. With capabilities spanning analytics, automation, configuration, security, backup and disaster recovery, OMS is a cloud-based management platform designed for speed and agility. As a SaaS solution, OMS can be set up within minutes, giving you immediate visibility across your environment. Whether you are managing Windows Server or Linux, private or public clouds, OMS can give you a unified approach that lets you meet the unique requirements of your business. On July 1, we will introduce an OMS subscription that includes rights to both the cloud capabilities of OMS and the on-premises value of System Center. This new way to buy is an annual subscription option that is priced per end point, so that customers can now simply count the virtual machines or servers they wish to manage instead of calculating usage for individual services. Customers with existing System Center investments will still be able to incorporate cloud management with the OMS add-on, while new customers can take advantage of the simplicity of the OMS subscription. The new subscription provides an all-in-one option for customers to manage their workloads and applications on Windows Server and Linux, across any cloud – including Azure and Amazon Web Services. Customers are increasingly choosing OMS to meet the demands of the hybrid cloud. Over the last twelve months, the total number of OMS customers has increased by 164%. On average 1000 new customers a week are taking advantage of the new OMS security features. Usage of Automation continues to grow month over month in double digits, with nearly 3 million active jobs today. We’ve also seen high interest in application availability, as the number of instances covered by OMS Site Recovery has increased over 150% since last year. One customer already benefitting from the hybrid capabilities of OMS is the Port Authority of New South Wales. “We love the Microsoft Operations Management Suite for its easy layout,” says George Tzikas, Senior IT Infrastructure Specialist. “Being able to manage our entire on-premises and cloud-based applications and OS platform in one easy to monitor webpage is fantastic. We can now see things we have never seen before in our environment.” We’re also excited that our Microsoft partners are joining us in the transition to cloud-based management. Gordon McKenna, CEO of UK-based Inframon, believes that OMS offers the only real solution to the challenges customers are facing today when managing a hybrid cloud environment. “OMS provides us with a great platform for our customers’ cloud transformation journey, allowing us to introduce them to new services such as hybrid automation and disaster recovery. We can expand our managed service footprint whilst increasing their capabilities,” says McKenna. “Having a cloud-based management platform, that is easy to deploy and configure and is able to encompass new technologies at a cloud pace is essential.” The momentum behind the transition to cloud continues to increase. As customers consider their management options, we believe that the cloud-based capabilities of OMS, and the new subscription model, offer a great combination that will make it easier to handle that transition. To learn more about Operations Management Suite and the value it delivers, check out our dedicated blog, Hybrid Cloud IT Management, or follow us on Twitter @MSCloudMgmt. For more information on the Operations Management Suite subscription, read the Operations Management Suite Pricing and Licensing Datasheet.]]> Navigating Trusted Cloud considerations: Establishing the cloud transition team https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/testtesttestbug/navigating-trusted-cloud-considerations-establishing-the-cloud-transition-team Mon, 27 Jun 2016 10:00:24 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/server-cloud/?p=4865 This post was authored by Sean Pike, Program Director, eDiscovery and Information Governance, IDC. If you’re planning on migrating certain IT resources or applications to the cloud or, perhaps, are still determining whether to move to the cloud, this blog is for you. Over the past couple of years, IDC analysts have had the opportunity to talk with a wide range of IT executives and professionals about their journey to the cloud. The following showcases some common themes and questions resulting from those conversations. We also provide advice for building out a cloud transition team capable of meeting the most complex cloud challenges.

Question 1: How do I get started?

Chances are your enterprise has already started to embrace the cloud, whether you're prepared for its use or not. This is the typical Shadow IT problem. Business leaders and developers view cloud-based applications and platforms as low-cost, flexible alternatives to searching for customized platforms or waiting on other stakeholders to weigh in. So, today's business processes can look like a string of processes and applications that traverses internal applications, third-party cloud applications and cloud platforms. This brings us to the first tangible piece of advice for cloud migration and introduces the first member of our cloud transition team. First, IT leaders must accept that their role has changed. IT is no longer able to be entirely prescriptive. This means democratizing IT and bringing business leaders into the fold to understand the exact problems and anticipated outcomes from new technology. The Business Process Leader is the first member of our new team. Of course, you can't tackle every business unit or process at the same time. Choose wisely. Look for business processes in flux, those actively engaging in conversations about new technology, and processes with distributed workforces. These make great candidates for an initial foray into the cloud.

Question 2: How do I know I'm banking on the right provider?

This question comes up more and more. Recognizing that there is a growing list of possible alternatives but that the cloud platform market is heavily dominated by a few key players, organizations can struggle finding the right mix of flexibility, price, service, security, and more. Most suppliers can provide a long list of their benefits, but identifying the right partner for your organization to capitalize on future opportunities while keenly identifying the potential for future challenges takes discipline and rigor... What's a company to do? In these situations, I always turn to old reliable risk management. Sure, it can be a boring and tedious process to try to measure cloud risk, especially when you compare it to the more stimulating coin flip and dart throw methods. Fortunately, most companies already have someone trained in risk management that likely performs supplier/3rd party risk management functions for IT and other business units. This is the second member of our cloud transition team. In large organizations, this function may be part of the Chief Finance Officer (CFO), Chief Risk Officer (CRO) or Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) organization, so you may need to approach several different business units, but you're looking for the most senior individual in charge of evaluating risk. For larger projects, I absolutely recommend starting with an executive to gauge his/her level of interest in supporting transition. For smaller projects, there are likely a number of risk officers fully capable of executing supplier risk management evaluations for each potential supplier. Of course, you'll want to narrow options a bit before transitioning to the risk management phase, but performing a risk assessment for each of the final candidates is crucial. Chances are it won't make the initial discussions completely smooth, but it should help eliminate unanticipated turbulence later on.

Question 3: Can I even put that data/application in the cloud?

There's been a lot made of data breaches and fraud in the news over the past several years. Despite the fact that these are largely on-premises incidents, there's something about data moving away from the four walls of the enterprise that seems to challenge IT management. Moving to the cloud can change a company's risk profile. Understanding compliance needs and a cloud provider’s responsibilities are important conversations to have, especially for highly regulated enterprises that have seen regulation and enforcement increase and new standards develop that dictate where and how data can be stored. Compliance departments can help identify and gauge potential issues, attorneys can help decipher regulatory intent. The importance of legal input is one of the reasons that we've seen an upswing in corporations hiring attorneys focused in specific practice areas, such as privacy or technology transactions. Welcome to the team in-house counsel!

Question 4: Can we secure it?

Once you've made the determination that an application of dataset can be moved onto cloud-based infrastructure, questions will ultimately arise as to whether the enterprise can effectively secure the associated infrastructure or data. In some cases, major security functions may be province of a selected cloud provider but, even then, you'll want to understand just how secure the infrastructure and data will be. Here, the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) plays an incredibly important role. Cloud infrastructure and applications can provide different security challenges when compared with traditional enterprise IT security. CISOs need to be able to answer one important question: "Do we have the knowledge to maintain or evaluate cloud security mechanisms?" This requires an honest assessment of security teams and their existing skillset. If a CISO is unable to definitively answer "yes," the company may wish to acquire, train or contract the necessary skills.

Question 5: What's the real purpose for moving to the cloud?

There are lots of reasons that companies have begun moving to cloud applications and platforms. Chief among those reasons is cost and flexibility. Both cost and flexibility apply to long term corporate goals of cutting IT cost, improving service and improving resiliency. They also apply to reducing risk related to new product lines. It’s much cheaper to spin up a new cloud-based virtual server to test out an idea than it is to maintain a product lab or acquire additional hardware. Whatever the goals are, CIOs, and perhaps, Chief Architects, are able to shed light on long-term corporate strategy. That strategy will ultimately affect everything from which cloud provider is selected to the length of certain contracts. In other words, cloud transition can't peer through a narrow lens. The cloud transition team must have an understanding of future goals or it will risk executing on a poorly thought-out transition plan.

Wrapping up

To summarize, we've enlisted 5 participants for our cloud transition team: a Business Process Leader, a Risk Officer, a Legal representative, the Chief Architect or CIO, and the CISO or a high-ranking member of the security team. Now that the team has been created, it should be fairly clear how these individuals must work together in order to accomplish long-term corporate goals. It takes the insight of corporate business leaders and application developers to envision the value of new delivery methods and production platforms. At the same time, there must be a counterbalance to prevent the enterprise from running headlong into an ill-timed project or ill-fitted provider. To learn more, visit the Trusted Cloud website.]]> Trusted cloud considerations and financial services https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/testtesttestbug/trusted-cloud-considerations-and-financial-services Wed, 15 Jun 2016 08:00:06 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/server-cloud/?p=4815 A discussion with Bill Fearnley, research director for compliance, fraud, and risk analytics at IDC Financial Insights. Print This is the third in a guest blog post series by IDC on trusted cloud. This post details a Q&A discussion between Bonnie Kearney, director, trusted cloud marketing at Microsoft and IDC financial insights research director, Bill Fearnley. Bonnie: Hi, Bill. As an analyst focused on financial services, can you give some perspective on the current role of cloud in financial institutions in a cloud first world? What is driving demand? Bill: Certainly. A couple of key thoughts come to mind immediately. The shift to cloud is happening now. While not all financial services workloads will move to the cloud, IDC Financial Insights believes that financial firms will continue to increase their investments in cloud architectures to control costs, move to a services delivery model for employee applications and data, and leverage the enterprise datacenter architectures of leading providers.
  • Varied deployment for cost control. Because customer records and the firm's IP and transaction data are very sensitive, financial firms are using the cloud to help lower costs and provide “elastic capacity,” as well as deploying a wide variety of clouds — including private, public, and hybrid clouds — in a variety of cloud deployment options: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS).
  • Relying on a trusted cloud. Key things that financial services customers and regulators care about when moving workloads into the cloud include operational security, protecting customer and employee privacy, and meeting compliance requirements. Also, cloud service providers must be transparent about what they do with the data, who has access to it, and where it resides. Trust is fundamental to relying on a cloud vendor as both employees and customers of financial services firms increase their use of personal mobile devices and expect anytime, anywhere remote access to information and their accounts.
  • Data resiliency, availability and reliability are important factors. Cloud providers have built enterprise class datacenters at a global scale to ensure systems, services and operations are functioning at all times. Architected to maintain data availability, data resiliency, business continuance and disaster recovery planning (BC/DR) are critical operational features that customers must look to when choosing a cloud vendor. Ability to choose vendors that offer choice of where data is stored at a regional level is another factor to consider.
  • Risk assurance and accountability remain the same. Cloud computing offers substantial innovative benefits, yet financial services customers remain accountable for managing and supervising cloud vendors from a risk assurance perspective. Financial services firms need to evaluate the benefits as well as the trust related investments of cloud service providers as they navigate the journey.
Bonnie: At Microsoft, we place a great deal of importance on our long-term investment in trusted cloud including principled approach to security, privacy, control, compliance, reliability and transparency. Can you give some insight into the relevancy these key investments are likely to have for financial services investigating and investing in cloud service? Bill: Happy to. In terms of realizing the promise of cloud computing, an area that comes immediately to mind is compliance benefits in the cloud, where the scalable capacity to meet the demands of the business and BI analytics show great promise for helping financial services insure compliance and avoid financial penalties from regulators.
  • In compliance and fraud detection and prevention, financial services firms are increasing their use of risk based analytics models for risk scoring, transaction monitory and investigations of compliance and fraud alerts. The cloud provides access to huge amounts of data needed that is scalable for analysts and data scientists. We are now seeing leading firms make this move to cloud, especially for access to market events and pricing data.
  • In addition, firms are aggregating large amounts of internal and external data to help comply with regulations such as Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) analysis.
  • Analysts use huge data sets to develop and test statistical and analytics models to help detect financial crime and compliance violations often these data sets are also accessed in the cloud.
  • When developing investment and portfolio strategies, analysis build portfolios that they believe will provide investment upside for their clients. To test how their strategies might perform in a variety of market conditions, they will “back test” their portfolios over a long time period with large amounts of historical transaction and market data. To the changing  data and investment research needs of investment professionals, many firms are looking at providing access to cloud-based market and transaction data that analysts can download as needed to build investment and portfolio back-testing models.
Bonnie: The cloud has the potential to help reduce the compliance burdens for banks. As financial institutions evaluate cloud service providers, what other trust principles are key in their considerations? Bill: Financial services firms must keep assets and information safe. This includes a continued focus on some key elements:
  • Security. Financial firms have a lot of intellectual property (IP) that must be kept secure and protected. In addition to customer records and transaction data, firms have billions invested in proprietary financial models, investment research and development. Firms must protect their transaction data and customer information from threats that could come from customers, employees, contractors or counterparties. For financial firms, a breach can hurt their brand and an erosion of trust in all of their relationships. Cloud service providers with proven experience in data security can help financial institutions combat (and stay ahead of) the growing number and increasing sophistication of cyber attacks.
  • Reliability/availability. In addition to security, firms must provide continuous system and data availability, business continuance and disaster recovery (BC/DR) planning to monitor events (e.g., weather and other events) to keep data secure and out of harm's way whenever possible. Cloud service providers with multiple datacenters can help firms stay out of trouble by moving customer and firm data and workloads away from threats (e.g., natural disasters or political unrest) producing more reliable/resilient service.
    • Banks and financial firms with international operations must make data available at the speed of the business and make it accessible to those that need it, so master data management is recommended to help make data accessible (and protected) and how it is managed and configured internally is important.
  • Privacy and control. The control of information and privacy are paramount to maintaining trust in financial services. Financial firms know how and where money is spent and invested which gives them “privileged access to information” so they are responsible (and liable) for maintaining customer privacy. Firms must have control and access to their data at all times, especially in these times when financial regulations and data security in financial services is making headlines.
  • Transparency. It’s important that cloud vendors are transparent about where data resides at a regional level, and what they do to keep it safe and secure. Increasingly, regulators are inspecting data, analytical models and financial firms Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) policies and procedures around data and data management, especially accessibility and security of customer and compliance information.
  • Compliance. International firms have to comply with data usage rules and regulations, and cloud providers can help firms make sure they are compliant with data management and data security rules and regulations that often vary from country to country. Access to data is key to innovative analytics, especially for data scientists and analysts to do queries, build models and run tests on analytical models.
  • Choice. For some customers, the need to choose a cloud vendor that offers flexibility and choice of workloads, both private hosted cloud, hybrid and multi-tenant is important depending upon the types of data it puts in the cloud and its risk appetite to manage more critical workloads and data in a multi-tenant environment.
Bonnie: Thanks for your insights Bill. Any final thoughts for our readers? Bill: Thank you Bonnie. I would like to end with a few concluding points:
  • Financial services firms are increasing their investments in the cloud to provide new applications and data as a service to their employees and partners.
  • Trust is paramount to relationships that firms have with customers, employees, counterparties, partners and investors. Firms are being very selective in their network, software, services and applications vendors when making cloud investments and successful cloud service providers will need to continue to invest in security, data privacy and data management, regulatory compliance, and transparency to establish and maintain that trust.
  • As financial firms move to cloud, they must continue to adhere to strong risk assurance programs and maintain appropriate oversight and control of the cloud vendor.
  • Regulations have not kept pace with the speed of innovation in the cloud, yet so long as customers meet their risk assurance obligations with cloud vendors, financial services regulators will watch carefully, but are unlikely to stop, adoption of cloud given the market has already moved in this direction.
To learn more, visit the Trusted Cloud website.]]> Explore Azure Stack—and much more—at Microsoft Ignite https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/testtesttestbug/explore-azure-stackand-much-moreat-microsoft-ignite Thu, 09 Jun 2016 10:00:12 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/server-cloud/?p=4785
  • Do you want to deepen your knowledge of Azure Stack?
  • Strengthen your defenses against hackers?
  • Make better use of PaaS?
  • Discuss real-world questions with product experts, in person?
  • Challenge your strategic thinking?
    • Perfect. All of that—and more—is waiting for you in Atlanta. The full session catalog is now live, so all you have to do is start exploring which sessions you want to attend. We’re a little biased, so here’s a sample of the Server & Cloud topics you’ll find in the catalog…

    Bring Azure to your datacenter with Azure Stack, Windows Server and System Center futures

    Drive business transformation in the cloud-first world. Microsoft Windows Server & Microsoft System Center are evolving to meet this changing world. To accelerate value and stay ahead of competition, you need infrastructure that unleashes application innovation and you need your IT to meet increasingly demanding business requirements. How do you embrace the modernization of on-premises infrastructure, hybrid approaches and new models for application delivery to drive value? Join this session to learn how you can continue to be a strategic partner to the business by leveraging the power of Microsoft Azure in your datacenter to deliver the rapid innovation your business requires.

    Explore Windows Server 2016 security

    This foundation session walks you through the current threat environment and the guiding principles that Microsoft used for building Windows Server 2016. Windows Server 2016 delivers layers of protection that help address these emerging threats so that the server becomes an active component in your security defenses. These security protections were built with the mindset of how we deal with the overall threat of ongoing attacks inside the datacenter environment and range from threat resistance and enhanced detection to managing privileged identity and protecting virtual machines from a compromised fabric.

    Hear about the state and future direction of the Azure Compute services

    Microsoft Azure Compute services span from Infrastructure to application platform - VMs, Cloud Services, VM Scale Sets, Containers, Batch, Service Bus, Event Hub, Service Fabric and power the rest of the Azure platform services. Hear directly from the leaders of Azure compute, our infrastructure and platform vision, where we are in our execution and future direction. Expect to see several demos highlighting existing and new services, customer and partner evidence. And that’s just a start… With more than 440 sessions to choose from, which ones will you attend? > Explore the full Session Catalog < Remember: September 26–30 is approaching fast. We’re excited to see everyone soon—and if you haven’t yet registered, don’t delay! Register for Microsoft Ignite.]]>         Microsoft and Facebook to build subsea cable across Atlantic https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/testtesttestbug/microsoft-and-facebook-to-build-subsea-cable-across-atlantic Thu, 26 May 2016 10:00:01 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/server-cloud/?p=4765 This post was authored by Frank Rey, Director, Global Network Acquisition, Microsoft Cloud Infrastructure and Operations. Today we’re excited to announce the latest step in our global cloud infrastructure as Microsoft and Facebook announce plans to build “MAREA” – a new, state-of-the art subsea cable across the Atlantic. The new MAREA cable will help meet the growing customer demand for high speed, reliable connections for cloud and online services for Microsoft, Facebook and their customers. The parties have cleared conditions to go “Contract-In-Force” with their plans, and construction of the cable will commence in August 2016 with completion expected in October 2017. AEC-OverviewMap We’re seeing an ever-increasing customer demand for high speed, reliable connections for Microsoft cloud services, including Bing, Office 365, Skype, Xbox Live, and Microsoft Azure. As the world continues to move towards a future based on cloud computing, Microsoft is committed to building out the unprecedented level of global infrastructure required to support ever faster and even more resilient connections to our cloud services. This robust, global infrastructure will enable customers to more quickly and reliably store, manage, transmit and access their data in the Microsoft Cloud. “In order to better serve our customers and provide the type of reliable and low-latency connectivity they deserve, we are continuing to invest in new and innovative ways to continuously upgrade both the Microsoft Cloud and the global Internet infrastructure,” said Frank Rey, director, global network acquisition, Microsoft Corp. “This marks an important new step in building the next generation infrastructure of the Internet.” MAREA will be the highest-capacity subsea cable to ever cross the Atlantic – featuring eight fiber pairs and an initial estimated design capacity of 160Tbps. The new 6,600 km submarine cable system, to be operated and managed by Telxius, will also be the first to connect the United States to southern Europe: from Virginia Beach, Virginia to Bilbao, Spain and then beyond to network hubs in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. This route is south of existing transatlantic cable systems that primarily land in the New York/New Jersey region. Being physically separate from these other cables helps ensure more resilient and reliable connections for our customers in the United States, Europe, and beyond. Microsoft and Facebook designed MAREA to be interoperable with a variety of networking equipment. This new “open” design brings significant benefits for customers: lower costs and easier equipment upgrades which leads to faster growth in bandwidth rates since the system can evolve at the pace of optical technology innovation. This is critical to ensure the Microsoft Cloud continuously improves to provide the highest availability and performance our customers need for their mission-critical workloads and data. Microsoft and Facebook are working with Telxius, Telefónica’s telecommunications infrastructure company, building upon their longstanding experience in subsea cables on this innovative new system. Telxius will serve as the operator of the system and sell capacity as part of their wholesale infrastructure business. As one of the largest cloud operators in the world, Microsoft has invested more than $15 billion (USD) in building a resilient cloud infrastructure and cloud services that are highly available and highly secure while lowering overall costs. Microsoft has now announced 32 Azure regions around the world with 24 generally available today – more than any other major cloud provider. This latest investment, together with Microsoft’s previously announced investments in global fiber assets including the NCP trans-Pacific subsea cable, is further proof of Microsoft's commitment to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.]]> Technology, privacy and public safety: When worlds collide https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/testtesttestbug/technology-privacy-and-public-safety-when-worlds-collide Thu, 26 May 2016 08:00:23 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/server-cloud/?p=4766 Technology, privacy and public safety: When worlds collide, we’ll take a thought-provoking look at the issues of data privacy in a world of accelerating technology growth and escalating geopolitical risk. Don’t miss it! Reserve your webinar seat now! Helping you stay ahead of threats is one of the ways Microsoft puts our Trusted Cloud principles to work for our customers. It’s a brave new world, and trust in technology is critical to both public safety and enterprise success. Visit the Trusted Cloud.]]>