Using the Azure Backup features for your on-premises platform is a great way to start introducing your organization into cloud services. So, if you haven’t explored the service yet, this is a good option since it should not be disruptive with your current backup process or any critical service you are providing. In this article, we’ll review a simple step-by-step process to set a System State backup of one of your on-premises machines to Microsoft Azure.

One of the main objectives for an organization moving to a public cloud, in any type of shape or form, is regarding the overall performance experience: It cannot be a downgraded version of what they have with their on-premises services. Microsoft is well aware of that, therefore created some time back the possibility to use private connections from your datacenter to MS Azure’s datacenters in order to guarantee this performance.

We have been talking on this blog before about the importance Microsoft and the rest of cloud providers are giving to security features and products in the last couple of years. The well-known security incidents present in the industry just in 2017 generated to companies billions in a loss, hence a large number of releases from Microsoft to face these incidents and, above all, provide calm to their customers around the cloud. Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA) combines several of the latest security enhancements. In this article, we will review how to connect the ATA platform to Azure, guaranteeing a reliable monitoring.

We’ve reviewed several times about the large supremacy around AWS and Azure regarding cloud services market share (more details about recent surveys can be found here: “AWS Bigger in SMBs but Azure is the Service Most Likely to Renew or Purchase”) and Google Cloud lands in third place for most of the services.  Now they are implementing new NVIDIA GPUs for their virtual machines and sustained discounts for customers using the new NVIDIA VMs.

Or should we expressed it differently, Hulu welcomes AWS but Dropbox moves away? I guess is still semantics, the information is the same. But the positive or negative connotation will depend on what service do you consider more relevant: Hulu or Dropbox. The fact still remains that Dropbox recently decided to opt for building their own cloud and Hulu is now one more streaming media company using Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and VMware are completing one of the most relevant partnerships around cloud services: VMware will offer their Software Defined Datacenter (SDDC) capabilities within AWS. With this partnership, VMware finally replaces the already sold vCloud Air cloud services.

This is going to be the third article in the series of reviewing and understanding Azure Stack (previous articles: Azure Stack Release and Deployment Models). Now that we have a good grasp of the platform, how the Integrated Systems come into play and features available; I want to extend the topics to other two important matters for existing customers of Azure: How the support model will work with hardware and software in place from different vendors; and what’s the interconnection with the already existing Azure Pack solution.

I’ve recently covered in my previous post about Azure Stack being finally released to the Integration Systems (Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo). We covered in the article the clarification of what Azure Stack actually means, features and functionalities available. In this second part will go beyond, reviewing how much is going to cost, deployment alternatives, Azure integration, and the disconnected scenario.

Microsoft’s Hybrid Cloud appliance to run Azure in your datacenter has finally reached to General Availability (GA) and the Integration Systems (Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo for this first iteration) are formally taking orders from customers, which will receive their Azure Stack solution in September. But, what exactly represents Azure Stack? Why is this important to organizations?

As we referenced several times, security is one of the main topics for cloud providers looking to guarantee privacy for their customers’ data and information. Microsoft just announced the public availability for Storage Service Encryption (SSE) for Azure Managed Disks, with no additional cost.