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Because I’ve fallen and I can’t get up, this edition of Short Takes examines Microsoft’s latest marketing gaff, Build 2018 vs. Google IO 2018, Google vs. Nest, Broadcom vs. Qualcomm, and much, much more.

Microsoft’s Build conference is happening May 7-9 but unlike the past few years, the company has serious competition for this conference.

MyAnalytics is one of the AI components inside Office 365. Part of the E5 plan or available as an add-on, MyAnalytics is usually seen as a dashboard of weekly activity. Its Outlook add-on can highlight commitments you made in email and remind you about other ways you can work smarter. The only problem is that MyAnalytics is handicapped by a lack of signals…

Google is taking a big step forward with G Suite to make it so that you no longer need to use Office while using the cloud service.

In this Ask the Admin, Russell Smith discusses setting up Active Directory to support a secure tiered administrative model and Privileged Access Workstations.

Aidan Finn explains how Azure automatically protects any databases you create with the Azure SQL service.

Microsoft is playing hardball and will offer corporate customers free ‘One Drive’ services if they are currently contracted with another vendor.

Microsoft has released some useful updates for the Office 365 Planner app, but external access is still not there, which is baffling. On the other hand, you now have an OWA-like schedule view, filters to suppress tasks that you don’t want to see, and better notifications to tell you when you must do some work. And an iCalendar feed is coming soon to allow you to clutter up your Outlook calendar with even more stuff.

In this Ask the Admin, Russell Smith looks at how the solution works and why you should use it when it reaches general availability.

Aidan Finn shares the results of some stress tests that were run on the Azure virtual machines with and without the Accelerated Networking feature enabled.

Aidan Finn describes a preview feature of Network Security Groups, called Application Security Groups, which allows you dynamically assign firewall policies to groups of Azure virtual machines.

Because we get much closer to Spring every day, this edition of Short Takes corporate earnings from Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Amazon, and some of the interesting facts we can mine from each. Plus some other stuff.