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Microsoft recognizes the real power of cloud services, such as Office 365, lies not necessarily in the client apps that we use to access and work with data, but in the ability to tap into data and use analytics and business intelligence (BI) to get insights for making business decisions. Often knowledge workers don’t need complex BI or analytics, but just access to company data that has already been presented in a document so that it can be reused somewhere else. Sounds like it ought to be a simple task, right?

Microsoft is making significant changes to how it updates Windows and Server products; these updates go live starting tomorrow which means it is important for you to be prepared.

Find out about a new network security feature, the Web Application Firewall, for web applications that was launched in preview at Microsoft Ignite 2016.

Microsoft has announced a hardware event for later this month where the company is expected to show off some new Surface good but it is important to keep expectations in-line with reality.

On this episode, I cover all of the Microsoft news this week including the fixing broken updates, Band hitting the end of the road, Google announced a few things and should Microsoft build a proper Android phone.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is talking up the company’s cloud chops in artificial intelligence. Azure and Office 365 are chock-full of machine-learning facilities, he says. Over the past few days, he’s appeared on stage in Dublin and London, preaching the gospel of AI and FPGAs. And now Microsoft’s donated Azure credits to a UK research consortium that specializes in data science…

Because I’m still sick and I’m taking this entire town down with me, this edition of Short Takes focuses on the PC market nosedive, whether Microsoft should buy Fitbit, Samsung profits are exploding like its phones, Blackberry will try to license its mobile OS, and a lot more.

Find out how to enable Modern Authentication in Exchange Online so that 2FA-enabled Office 365 can use Outlook 2013 or later.

Learn how to enable two-factor authentication on a Microsoft Account with the help of Microsoft’s Authenticator mobile app.

Russell Smith describes how to access DSC node reports in Azure Automation DSC using the management portal.

A relaxed week between the bedlam of Ignite and the calmness of the IT/DEV Connections conference in Las Vegas gives me a chance to catch up with some of the less-important but still worthy things I learned about recently. The Exchange team celebrated the 20th anniversary of the product, another of its leaders joined the Microsoft SLT, email from Paul Robichaux caused some problems, and the new Office 365 Admin Center finally reached general availability.

Russell explain what multi-factor authentication is and why you should enable it.