The Cloud Architects Podcast

If you've ever used the Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator or consulted The Exchange Preferred Architecture you'll be very familiar with the work of our guest, Ross Smith IV. Nic and Warren caught up Ross to talk about his 19-year tenure at Microsoft and his new role in Intune Engineering, giving us a sneak peak into some of the innovation we can look forward to in Outlook for iOS and Android. Ross Smith IV is a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft. In his current role, he is responsible for driving the adoption of Outlook for iOS and Android with Intune App Protection Policies and Azure Active Directory Conditional Access. He also defines and manages the creation of technical content related to Outlook for iOS and Android. You can find Ross on Twitter - https://twitter.com/RossSmithIV

There is no denying that the only constant with cloud services is change, the nature and rate of this change often brings about some interesting challenges for organizations. We sat down with Anna Donnelly to talk about organizational change management, driving user adoption and how a sound change management strategy is essential to the success of your cloud adoption project. Anna Donnelly is a Services Product Manager at Insight and a Certified Change Practitioner helping organizations manage change and drive user adoption.

When sitting having our morning breakfast at the Grand Hyatt in Hong Kong, we started a conversation with the incredible Phoummala Schmitt about Azure Governance, Nic thought it was great and pulled out the recording devices. So here we are, a super informal interview about Azure Governance. Enjoy!

Governance is a big word and is a concept that is often thrown around. It seems to confuse a lot of organizations, even those who have successfully navigated the cultural and technology changes often brought on by cloud adoption. The 'on by default' nature of many cloud services has made it even more important for organizations to plan their governance strategy before adopting these services, so we sat down with Antonio Maio to talk about the need for governance and why it isn't something that should be overlooked. Antonio Maio is an information security architect with over 25 years of experience in cyber security practices and systems, product management, software development and leadership. Antonio is currently an Associate Director & Senior Enterprise Architect at Protiviti and is a 7-time Microsoft MVP. Antonio also maintains trustsharepoint.com and antonio365.com where he shares his knowledge, information and experiences around Office 365 services, including SharePoint, Exchange, CRM, Azure and  Microsoft Flow. You can follow Antonio on Twitter twitter.com/AntonioMaio2

The Internet of things (IoT) seems to be everywhere these days. Anything from connected light bulbs and door bells to sensors that monitor and report the drying and curing of concrete in real time, there seems to be an IoT solution for every problem but IoT is so much more than just a sensor connected to a Raspberry PI. Microsoft's Anthony Bartolo sat down with us at Ignite to explain what IoT is, why IT Pros should pay attention and how to get started. Here are some of the links mentioned in the episode: http://aka.ms/mousetrap https://microsoft.com/learn https://aka.ms/iotschool Anthony Bartolo is a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft helping the IT Professional community harness the Azure platform and sharing feedback with the engineering teams within Microsoft surrounding current challenges and requested service enhancements. You can follow Anthony on Twitter https://twitter.com/WirelessLife or see what his team is up to by following the hashtag #AZOps. You can also find them on TechCommunity at http://itopstalk.com

We take for granted everyday that we can login securely to our Office 365 or Azure accounts, but do we ever wonder how that works or why it works the way it does? Identity is a very large part of every organisation and this is the team that makes Identity possible. From Business 2 Business, Azure AD Connect, Guest access and all the pieces that fit together to make Identity in the Cloud work. In this episode we talk with Program Manager Elisabeth Olson and Principle Program Manager Robert Lowe. They both work with the Azure Active Directory teams at Microsoft in Redmond. They give us some amazing answers to some burning questions as well as some insight into how the beast that is Azure AD works.

Documentation is something we all rely on, especially in today's rapidly changing cloud world where the only constant seems to be change. Perhaps I'm a little obsessive, but I constantly use Microsoft's documentation to confirm things, even when I already know the answer. Like many people though, I never really considered what goes into making sure I have something to refer to and keeping it up to date with all the change going on. Nicolas and I had the pleasure of sitting down with Brenda Carter and Joe Davies from the Microsoft Documentation Team at Ignite recently to talk about how they do what they do, how you can help and what it takes to be a technical writer. Brenda Carter is a Principal Technical Writer at Microsoft. Brenda works on enterprise and solution architecture across Microsoft's cloud platforms and services, from Office 365 to Azure. Recent focus areas include security and access management for Office 365 and other SaaS services, including protection for identities, devices, and files. Joe Davies is a Senior Technical Writer at Microsoft. Throughout his career as an instructor, course developer, and technical writer, his driving concern has been presenting technical information in a way that enables someone to go from total ignorance to comfortable understanding as efficiently as possible. If you have an feedback, questions or comments for the documentation team, you can reach them at cloudadopt@microsoft.com

Diversity and inclusion in tech was one of the powerful themes at Microsoft Ignite this year and I'm excited to see if get bigger every year. Nicolas had the distinct privilege of being able to sit down with Phoummala Schmitt, a.k.a Exchange Goddess to talk about diversity in tech, community and her new role at Microsoft. Phoummala Schmitt is a Sr Cloud Advocate at Microsoft and has a broad range of experiences including Microsoft Technologies, Virtualization and Storage. She has held various engineering roles, from working for a VAR, through several healthcare companies having been a Technical Team Lead for Messaging and Groupware at Independence Blue Cross and Senior Systems Engineer for Harsco Corporation. You can follow Exchange Goddess on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ExchangeGoddess

The Microsoft Tech Community was launched in 2016 and is an evolution of the Office 365 Network, extended to support the Azure; Windows Server, and SQL Server communities. Microsoft Tech Community brings together multiple communities in one central location to support discussions and best practice sharing across a variety of Microsoft products and services. We had a lot of fun catching up with Anna Chu at Microsoft Ignite last week to talk about her role at Microsoft, the value of community and what it takes to put on an event like Ignite. Anna Chu is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft responsible for working across the Microsoft Tech Community and MVP communities to engage with the IT Pro audience. This involves driving partnerships between engineering and marketing that influence product roadmaps and leading community strategy to enable best practice sharing between customers- in turn facilitating a natural feedback loop between the people who build Microsoft Office products and services and the people who implement them. You can follow Anna on Twitter https://twitter.com/_achu

In this episode, Nic and Warren have a chat to the Perf Guy himself, Principal Lead Program Manager at Microsoft, Jeff Mealiffe We talk the evolution of Exchange and get Jeff to spill on which version he liked best! We also talk about Office 365 connectivity and the great things Microsoft is pushing internally to make your Office 365 experience better. Jeff Mealiffe is in the Microsoft Exchange Customer Experience group, part of the Microsoft Exchange engineering team based in Redmond, Washington. Jeff is responsible for multiple areas related to Exchange deployment experience for customers and partners. He manages partner programs related to Exchange solutions, helping to build Exchange knowledge with Microsoft’s partners and increase ease of product deployment and customer satisfaction. He also engages directly with customers as a result of executive-level escalations to ensure that issues are resolved efficiently by Microsoft services and the product group and that the knowledge gained from these escalations affects future product development. Jeff uses his deep technical background to manage engineering projects either within the Exchange product or in a segment of the Exchange product ecosystem, including end-to-end management of Exchange virtualization supportability and deployment scenarios. He has held various roles in the Exchange engineering team during his 11 years at Microsoft, and his project experience and knowledge of the product have gained him recognition as an Exchange expert. You can find Jeff on Twitter @mealiffe Enjoy!!