G'day Azure!

6 November 2014 // View as Webpage As announced at TechEd Australia 2014 in Sydney on the 27th of October, Microsoft Azure’s global footprint has extended to include two new Azure Regions: Australia East (New South Wales) and Australia Southeast (Victoria). This is great news for New Zealand as we now have the capability of the Microsoft Azure public cloud (security, reliability, flexibility, scalability and familiarity) along with the benefits of “next door neighbor” connectivity. Also announced was the expansion of the ExpressRoute offering later this calendar year. ExpressRoute will provide New Zealand customers and partners the option to create private connections between their own data centres and the new Australia Azure Regions. ExpressRoute connections provide the most direct route with the lowest possible latency and best possible performance. In New Zealand there are several providers planning to offer ExpressRoute when available, including Snap and Spark Wholesale, with more to be announced shortly. What does Microsoft Azure really mean to Kiwi business? That depends on your business. You may be 100% ready for cloud and ready to move everything you can, as fast as you can. Websites on Azure Websites; mobile apps back-ended by Mobile Services and supported by Notification Hubs; Windows and Linux servers running on IaaS; file and data storage through DocumentDB, Azure Storage and SQL Database; you name it: [insert your requirement here] on [insert Microsoft Azure service here]. You may be a startup looking for a platform that provides enterprise capability with minimal upfront investment. You may be a small business, or an IT Professional working with many small businesses, with your Windows Server 2003 environment moving before it reaches end of support next year. There are new services and extensions to existing services being added to Microsoft Azure all the time. These new Azure Regions are just one example. Last week we also announced G-series virtual machines , partnership with CoreOS, Cloudera and Docker, a new Azure Marketplace and Premium Storage. I recommend you catch up on this wave of information at the Microsoft Azure Blog. If you’re more of a ‘do-er’ and would prefer to experience these new features for yourself, rather than read about them, activate your MSDN benefits or get a free trial here. Dirk Develter Cloud & Enterprise Business Group Lead Microsoft New Zealand Monitoring Azure Site Recovery. Have you had some questions on your mind about the monitoring capabilities of Azure Site Recovery? A recent article covers the three key questions many IT Pros are asking: 'how do I monitor the replication health of my protected virtual machines?', 'how do I check the status of my jobs?' or 'how do I monitor my virtual machines once they are failed over to Azure?' Success with Enterprise Mobility. The results are out from an interesting survey recently published by Ovum. The survey looked at enterprise end users and their concerns about BYOD. What was the number one concern for both enterprises end-users? "A lack of trust in employers and a lack of faith that individual privacy will be protected". Read more here on your role in bridging this gap. EMM Game-Changing Announcement #2. Office 365 will be updated in early 2015 to include mobile device management (MDM) capabilities by directly integrating a subset of Microsoft Intune MDM capabilities. This means that going forward Office 365 will include built-in MDM capabilities to help organizations manage iOS, Android, and Windows Phone devices that connect to Office 365.                   Startup Weekend Tauranga 7-9 November 2014 Startup Weekend is rolling into Tauranga in early November from the 7th-9th! Startup Weekends are 54-hour events designed to bring technical and non-technical entrepreneurs together for action, innovation and education. Technical Evangelist Thiago Almeida will be making an appearance, so be sure to get your tickets now! If you’re planning on building a proof of concept website or app during the weekend, make sure you sign up for a free Azure trial account now so you can hit the ground running! IT Camp: Extend your Datacenter with Microsoft Azure 11 November - 20 November 2014 If your organisation needs to scale on demand, rapidly respond to your customers, and maintain total control over your data at all times, attend one of these free camps led by Microsoft experts. You'll get hands-on training and first-hand experience extending your network using Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines as well as a deep dive into key enterprise scenarios like workload migration and networking. Register now for one in your area: Auckland (11 November), Christchurch (13 November), and Wellington (20 November). UC User Group Inaugeral Meetup 13 November 2014 Join the Unified Communications (UC) Meetup group on Thursday the 13th of November from 3pm at the Microsoft New Zealand offices in Auckland for this month's primary subject: Lync - Choosing the right Topology. Startup Weekend Auckland 14-16 November 2014 Auckland will get its fair share of Startup Weekend action too, come the 14th-16th of November! Technical Evangelist Thiago Almeida will be attending the Auckland event as well. Make sure you get a ticket to this 54-hour event for entrepreneurs of all sorts. Again, if you’re planning on building a proof of concept website or app during the weekend, it's a great idea to sign up for a free Azure trial account now so you can hit the ground running when you're there! Windows 10 Meetup 19 November 2014 On Wednesday the 19th Regan Murphy, Infrastructure Technical Evangelist from Microsoft, will be demonstrating Windows 10. He'll also be there for a Q&A to answer your questions about the successor to Windows 8.1. The Meetup kicks off from 5:30pm, with the presentation beginning at 6pm at the Microsoft New Zealand offices, Level 12, 157 Lambton Quay. IT Pros who are on the top of their game never stop learning. Keep your foot on the pedal and make the most of Microsoft Virtual Academy's year-round, Free Online Learning. New, world-class courses are added monthly. If you haven't already, see what's on offer from these expert delivered courses. Check out these three courses that are recommended by our technical team this week: Windows Server 2012 R2: Using IP Address Management (IPAM). Get a detailed look at IP Address Management (IPAM) in Windows Server 2012 R2 with the slides and videos in this course. Virtualizing & Managing SQL Server Microsoft Cloud OS. As customers move past virtualizing their less critical systems and move onto the more powerful, more demanding, more mission-critical systems, it is very important that they have confidence that virtualization can provide what was previously available in the physical world. Service Management Automation with Windows Azure Pack. Want to get a head start on automating your cloud infrastructure and services? The slides and videos in this course deliver an interactive training session on Service Management Automation (SMA), the automation component of Windows Azure Pack (the self-service portal from Microsoft that connects to System Center 2012 R2). © 2014 Microsoft Corporation Terms of Use :: Trademarks Microsoft respects your privacy. To learn more, please read our online Privacy Statement. If you would prefer not to receive this newsletter any longer, click here to unsubscribe. To set your contact preferences for other Microsoft communications click here. The Privacy Officer // Microsoft New Zealand Ltd, PO Box 8070 Symonds St, Auckland 1150, New Zealand