Russell Smith

Microsoft went all-in on One Copilot earlier this year. In March 2026, CEO Satya Nadella reorganized the company’s AI efforts, consolidating the consumer and enterprise Copilot teams under one unified leadership. That means Microsoft’s once-separate personal and business Copilot projects, like Copilot for individuals and Microsoft 365 Copilot for enterprises, are now being built as one platform…

This week, Microsoft launched an always-on personal agent called Scout that acts under its own Entra identity at Build. They announced sandboxed execution containers that turn Windows into a proper agent runtime. And ASUS unveiled a mini PC purpose-built to run AI agents locally on your desk. Thanks to Cayosoft for sponsoring this episode. Episode…

Today on Petri Dish, we’re joined by Brian Alvey, CTO of WordPress VIP, the enterprise-grade CMS platform trusted by organisations like NASA, Salesforce, and major global publishers. Brian has been building on the web since the earliest days, bringing a rare mix of builder and operator experience to modern content platforms. In this conversation, we’ll…

This Week in IT, the Mac Mini quietly became the default home for always-on AI agents — and your users are probably already running them outside your security boundary. Meanwhile, VMware just dropped an ARM hypervisor. And if you needed a reason to treat AI agents like real identities, a coding agent just wiped an…

Hybrid IT has become the default operating model for most organizations. Not by design, but through years of incremental decisions driven by business needs. In a recent Petri Dish interview, Brad Cline, Vice President of IT Operations at SolarWinds, shared a frontline perspective on how infrastructure complexity emerged, why it continues to grow, and how…

This Week in IT, Google Chrome is silently downloading a 4 gigabyte AI model onto devices right now and unless you’ve deployed one specific policy, there’s nothing stopping it. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s fix for a sluggish Windows 11 is to spike your CPU to the max when clicking, and they just started the deprecation clock on…

Virtualized infrastructure across on-premises data centers and the cloud was supposed to make life easier for IT teams. Instead, it’s often become a tangle of complexity. Why is something as established as virtualisation turning into a headache and what are we missing? To find out, I’m joined by Brad Cline, Vice President of IT Operations…

This Week in IT, Microsoft Edge is exposing passwords by design, shadow AI agents are lurking on your endpoints, and Azure is quietly pulling the plug on VMs you’re probably still running. Episode overview 1. Microsoft Edge Stores All Saved Passwords in Plaintext RAM — “By Design” A Norwegian security researcher discovered that Microsoft Edge…

“Applications can be incredibly powerful. If you own the application, you can act as that application. And if that application is highly privileged, you could effectively become a global admin without ever being in that group.” Nicolas Blank, Identity Architect, Microsoft MVP, and CTO of NBConsult In Microsoft Entra, being an application owner can be…

Microsoft is previewing a full system rollback for Windows 11 — OS, apps, files, everything — snapped back to where it was 72 hours ago. It’s basically a time machine for your PC. But here’s the thing: it can also roll back your security patches. Meanwhile, a single configuration change knocked Outlook off every iPhone…

Most Entra ID reviews focus on roles and permissions. I.e., who’s a Global Admin, what’s been consented, what looks obviously dangerous. But what if the real risk isn’t a privileged user at all? What if a regular user, with no admin role, can still put themselves on a path toward Global Administrator, simply because of…

Microsoft just confirmed that AI agents — including third-party ones — are coming to the Windows 11 taskbar. The controls to manage them exist the default hands control to the user. Plus, there’s a new way to do a Hybrid Entra Join without waiting for Entra Connect to sync, but it needs Windows Server 2025…