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I’m having fun with this series and hope you are as well. In my previous article, I introduced you to PowerShell classes and I built a class that I can use with my movie data file. If you are just joining us, you really should take a few minutes to read the previous articles (Making Data…

On this episode, I cover all of the Microsoft news this week including a hardware event for October, changes in Windows Insider provisioning, Scropio, Sony and it’s impossible to avoid those iPhones.

Microsoft has put a huge amount of emphasis on Office 365 Groups as the basis for team-based collaboration for its cloud service. Collaboration often requires input from external people and that hasn’t been possible until now. The announcement of external user support for Office 365 Groups is welcome, even if it is restricted in part.

Because it’s Apple’s world and we just live in it, this edition of Short Takes focuses on the U.S. Army migration to Windows 10, a rumored Surface AIO, a HoloLens tour comes to Microsoft retail stores, more Surface phone rumors, another Xbox One victory, and more.

Microsoft is said to be launching a new Surface, codenamed Cardinal. The new device will be a one-box desktop PC—i.e., an all-in-one (AiO), as popularlized by Apple’s iMac. The avian-themed rumor seems credible and well-sourced. And an October hardware event would fit with Microsoft’s previous form. But beyond that, everything is mere speculation. None of which stops us from some amusing Friday musing…

Learn how to perform geo-load balancing for deployments in different Azure regions using Traffic Manager profiles in Azure Resource Manager (ARM) or Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) subscriptions.

In today’s Ask the Admin, I’ll explain how to use linked Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates to facilitate complex deployment options.

As expected, Apple unleashed a new generation of mobile smart devices on Wednesday. The firm announced the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus smartphones, plus the Apple Watch Series 2 and some related accessories.

In today’s Ask the Admin, I’ll show you how to create an ARM template in Visual Studio for deploying Azure virtual machines (VMs). Having used VS to deploy resources in Azure, this is the way I now recommend you work with Azure templates.

Migration of legacy archives like Enterprise Vault are often left as the last part of the journey from on-premises servers to Office 365. A wide range of third-party migration tools are available, but many complex twists and turns await the unwary as they cope with journal reports, archive mailboxes, splitting and explosions, and the sheer amount of data to be migrated. It’s an interesting problem to solve.

As Brad noted yesterday, Microsoft will take on the Slack team collaboration solution by leveraging its in-house Skype capabilities to create a new product called Skype Teams. This is just one of three obvious tactics the software giant could have employed, and it suggests, I think, a new-found confidence in Skype.

Microsoft Azure and Office 365 hosted in the UK for the first time. Redmond just opened up three new data centers in England and Wales, arranged in two Azure regions. This brings the number of Regions to 28 globally. Among the launch customers are Aston Martin, a regional health authority, and the Ministry of Defence [sic]. This should give a boost to Microsoft’s data-sovereignty story…