Israeli Government Turns to Microsoft Azure

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Israeli government turns to Microsoft Azure

By Maor David-Pur, Government Industry Solution Manager, Microsoft Israel, as written on enterprise.microsoft.com
As governments from around the world consider moving to the cloud, many are turning to Microsoft to help them with this move. Why? Because Microsoft Azure offers the greatest flexibility and security of any major cloud computing platform. Moreover, we’re committed to working with governments to meet their unique needs.
A great example is the Israeli government, which has been hosting an increasing number of workloads on Azure. By choosing Azure, government officials are saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware and maintenance costs. They’re obtaining a flexible solution that allows them to keep sensitive data on-premises. And they’re improving services for citizens by offering them solutions that automatically scale up to meet user demand. Consider the following examples:

The Israeli parliament is broadcasting its meetings with Azure Media Services

During the past few years, an increasing number of citizens have been tuning in to watch the meetings of the Knesset, Israeli’s parliament. To meet the growing demand, the parliament has begun streaming these meetings both live and on-demand using Azure Media Services, a highly scalable, cloud-based video streaming service. By moving to Azure, the Knesset has saved money in hardware and maintenance costs, while offering citizens a service that automatically scales up and down as demand dictates. Azure has also enabled the parliament to make its meetings accessible to citizens from almost any device including the Android, iPhone, and Windows platforms.

Israeli Railways runs its journey planning service on Azure

The Israeli Railways Company offered a journey planning service hosted on its own servers, but the service had been slow and sometimes crashed, which discouraged citizens from using it. To improve the service without an expensive hardware investment, the state-owned railway moved its database to Azure. Israeli Railways was initially concerned about privacy and security, but it was reassured by our industry-leading commitment to protect our customer’s data. By running its database on Azure, Israeli Railways has saved money in hardware and maintenance costs. Moreover, the railway now has a highly available and scalable service that citizens can depend on for their transportation needs
Based on its positive experience with Azure, the Israeli government is continuing to extend its use. Israeli Railways is planning to move other parts of its website to Azure. And the Knesset plans to add 18 more channels that broadcast committee meetings in addition to meetings of the entire parliament. In addition, the Knesset’s research arm is experimenting with Azure Machine Learning as it researches the impact of proposed legislation.
These scenarios demonstrate some of the many ways that Azure can help governments meet their unique needs. The Israeli government is turning to Azure for a growing number of services because it’s scalable, cost-effective, and highly secure—and because it offers a hybrid approach, giving the government the control and flexibility it needs. To learn more, please see our Microsoft Azure web page.

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Bing’s March Madness predictor, game development on Azure and Microsoft’s solar energy partnership

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Bing’s March Madness predictor, game development on Azure and Microsoft’s solar energy partnership

By Thomas Kohnstamm as written on blogs.microsoft.com

Thanks for tuning in for another edition of Weekend Reading. Recent excitement surrounds using Bing to predict your March Madness bracket, Azure as the backend cloud solution of choice for game developers, a Microsoft Research platform that uses “Minecraft” to test AIs applications Microsoft partnering on a solar power project in Virginia and more.
March Madness fans are turning to Bing Predicts to devise their bracket based on machine learning that analyzes social and search signals and more than a decade of extensive NCAA statistical data. Last year, Bing’s smarter bracket picked 73 percent of the games correctly and finished in the top 30 percent of all brackets nationwide. Find out more about the smarter bracket and Bing’s March Madness predictions on Bing Blogs and also learn about the March Madness app.

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Popular adventure and puzzle game “Draw a Stickman: EPIC 2” lets users collaborate to draw and share inventive characters, tools and weapons. Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform is a key component of the game’s functionality, mobility, scalability and performance. For game developers around the world, Azure is the backend cloud solution of choice, helping them launch and grow their games with a reliable, open platform and easy-to-use services for scaling and managing user spikes. Read the full story on Microsoft News Center.

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AIX, a platform developed by Katja Hofmann and her colleagues in Microsoft’s Cambridge, U.K., lab and unveiled publicly on Monday, allows computer scientists to use the world of “Minecraft” as a testing ground for improving artificial intelligence. Microsoft researchers are using AIX for their own research, and they have made it available to a small group of academic researchers under a private beta. This summer, AIX will be available via an open-source license. Read more about AIX on Next at Microsoft.

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As part of Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to carbon neutrality, the company has joined a public-private partnership that will bring 20 megawatts of new solar energy onto the grid in Virginia. Microsoft is excited about this innovative partnership model and looks forward to expanding on the new approach. Learn more about this deal and Microsoft’s commitment to enhancing access to renewable power sources on the Microsoft Green Blog.

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Twitter for Windows 10 is now available for your phone, with new features that make connecting with people and expressing yourself more seamless than ever.
From your phone, you can explore Moments, a feature that shows the best of what’s happening on Twitter. You can also send group Direct Messages; shoot, edit and tweet video from your camera; share a tweet and easily add a comment; and see top tweets without logging in. The updated app joins the Twitter Windows 10 app released last year for PCs and tablets.
This week on the Microsoft Facebook page, we traveled to Buffalo, New York, where we welcomed BAK USA to the Windows family. In Buffalo, they’ve started a tech revolution by foregoing the assembly line and building each tablet by hand.

Dell and Microsoft announce 'Azure in a box' for $9,000 a month at Dell World

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Dell and Microsoft announce 'Azure in a box' for $9,000 a month at Dell World

By James Niccolai as written on pcworld.com

Dell and Microsoft have teamed up to sell a converged system that combines servers, storage and software in an integrated box which they say can connect easily to Microsoft's Azure cloud services.Called the Cloud Platform System Standard, it's aimed at customers building out a hybrid cloud environment, one in which on-premises equipment is linked to the public cloud for services like backup and recovery, or to provide more compute and storage capacity when it's needed.It's a model most of the big IT vendors are pushing, including Hewlett-Packard, Cisco and Oracle. Dell and Microsoft claim their system is different because it runs basically the same software stack that Microsoft uses in its public cloud, making it easy for the on-premises and cloud components to work together, although that's a claim Oracle is making too.
Cloud Platform System Standard is actually a smaller version of a similar product the companies introduced a year ago, called Cloud Platform System Premium. But while the first product occupied basically an entire server rack, with a minimum buy-in of 32 compute nodes, the standard edition starts with four nodes, scaling to a maximum of 16.
That lowers the entry point and makes it feasible for smaller companies to deploy, and Dell says it's come up with a novel subscription pricing model to reduce the investment risk for companies trying to set up a hybrid cloud for the first time.
Customers can rent Cloud Platform System Standard from Dell for US$9,000 a month. That "starter pack" includes a Dell PowerEdge C6320 Rack Server, two top of rack switches and 64TB of storage. The system comes loaded with Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2, and the Windows Azure Pack.
The basic configuration is enough to run about 100 virtual machines, and the system can scale to support about 400, according to Glenn Keels, Dell's executive director for cloud, HPC and integrated systems.
After six months, customers can buy the system outright, return it, or extend the same payment scheme for another six months, he said. They can also move to a new payment model Dell is offering where they rent the system and pay only for the capacity they use.

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Michael Dell announced the system at the Dell World conference Wednesday morning, joined on stage by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Dell has also joined Microsoft's Cloud Solution Provider Program, which means it can act as a reseller of Azure services, the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite and Office 365.
Vendors are pushing the hybrid model hard, but the complexity of putting the software and hardware together has been a barrier. Having a system from two close partners like Dell and Microsoft, with a flexible pricing model, could make the new system appealing.
"The pricing model is pretty incredible; you only get charged for what you use, which basically removes every objection from a financing perspective," said Patrick Moorhead, principal at Moor Insights & Strategy.
Customers can put together their own system using OpenStack, but having Dell and Microsoft do the work for them is appealing, he said.
Ryan O’Hara, director of program management for Microsoft Private Cloud Solutions, told reporters in a briefing that customers can get the product from a bare metal state to running a basic set of Azure services in as little as three hours.
Dell provides support for the entire system, he said, so customers don't have to figure out which vendor they need to call if something goes wrong.

Microsoft Azure Named a Leader in Gartner’s Enterprise aPaaS Magic Quadrant

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Microsoft Azure Named a Leader in Gartner’s Enterprise aPaaS Magic Quadrant

Enterprises around the world are embracing the cloud to rapidly deliver innovation. Given customer demand and application platform value, we’re excited that Gartner has just recognized Microsoft Azure as a leader in their Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Platform as a Service for the third year in a row based on completeness of our vision and ability to execute.
While we’re proud of our continued leadership in cloud technology, we have long maintained that customers need choice and flexibility. Microsoft is the only vendor recognized by Gartner as a leader across six Magic Quadrants for enterprise cloud workloads: Enterprise Application Platform as a Service, Operational Database Management Systems, Data Warehouse and Data Management Solutions for Analytics, Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, Cloud Storage Services and Server Virtualization, and we believe this validates our strategy to provide a full spectrum offering that provides the power of choice as we deliver industry-leading platform and data services, infrastructure services and hybrid solutions.

VIEW THE REPORT

Managed Solution’s Team has the experience and expertise to architect Azure solutions tailored for your environment. Call us at 800- 313-2109 or fill out the contact form and someone with get back to you shortly!


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Power BI Service April Update: ExpressRoute for Power BI

Power BI Service April Update: ExpressRoute for Power BI

By Amanda Cofsky as written on powerbi.microsoft.com
We are pleased to announce that Power BI has integrated with Azure ExpressRoute. This means that companies using Power BI will be able to use ExpressRoute to establish a private, managed connection to Power BI. Additionally, we already have several improvements to recently released features like row-level security and Analyze with Excel.

Enterprise

ExpressRoute
ExpressRoute is an Azure service that lets you create private connections between Azure datacenters and your on-premises infrastructure, or create private connections between Azure datacenters and your colocation environment. Now with Power BI and ExpressRoute, you can create a private network connection from your organization to Power BI (or using an ISP’s colocation facility), bypassing the Internet to better secure your sensitive data and connections.
ExpressRoute delivers the benefits of the public cloud, while surpassing the network reliability and privacy of the Internet. It is a great option for companies that require premium, managed connectivity for their productivity services. You can define all aspects of your network connectivity provider’s connection from Microsoft to your users, helping ensure predictable network performance and availability. You can also use multiple ExpressRoute providers to establish ExpressRoute circuits in different geographic locations for additional redundancy and geo-resiliency. You can learn more in the Power BI and ExpressRoute documentation.
Content pack support for RLS (preview)
In the last blog we announced a preview of Row-Level Security, and this week we're announcing our first update of RLS: support for organizational content packs. With this change, if RLS is defined for those dashboards and reports that are distributed as part of a content pack, then the security rules will be respected for all instantiated content packs. This change improves this method of distributing your content by ensuring that your security rules are kept intact.

Dashboards

Vimeo video tile
Previously, we released a video tile that supports YouTube videos. These video tiles allow you to customize your dashboard and add a bit of personal or corporate flair. Now the video tile supports Vimeo videos too.
Add a video tile by selecting Add widget from the top right of the dashboard.

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Select the Video option and then Next.
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Enter a Vimeo URL in the Video URL text field and select Apply.

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Now the tile displays the Vimeo video.

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Note that Vimeo URLs come in several different formats, for example https://vimeo.com/originals/lumia/101557016 and https://player.vimeo.com/video/101557016. We support most, but not all of these formats. If the URL you've entered doesn’t work, try one of the alternate URLs for that video; the video ID-style URLs tend to work best. In our example above the video ID is 101557016, so try https://vimeo.com/101557016.

Analyze in Excel

Analyze in Excel available to all users
Last blog, we announced that now you can analyze your datasets in Excel. This powerful feature lets you connect your Power BI data model to Excel and create PivotTables and PivotCharts with that data. This means your data models are no longer restricted to Power BI, and now this feature is available to all users, free and Pro.
Improved multi-user account experience
Now users with multiple Power BI user accounts will have a better experience when authenticating to Power BI from Excel. Enter the credentials for the account that has the workspace where the dataset is located. If you accidentally entered in the credentials for a different account, you will get a sign-in failure message and a chance to try signing in again. To take advantage of this update, make sure the install the latest Analyze in Excel updates. You can find them under the download menu option.

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On Demand Webcast: Why & How Enterprises are Adopting the Cloud

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Join guest speakers, Forrester Research Vice President and Principal Analyst James Staten and Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich, for a discussion on why enterprises are adopting the cloud and how they are doing so.
Source: https://azure.microsoft.com

Managed Solution’s Team has the experience and expertise to architect Azure solutions tailored for your environment. Call us at 800- 313-2109 or fill out the contact form and someone with get back to you shortly!


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Enhancing Microsoft Office 365 with the Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS)

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Enhancing Microsoft Office 365 with the Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS)

By adding the Enterprise Mobility Suite to Office 365, your employees are enabled to access corporate data from any mobile device with a single sign-on, allowing your workforce to be productive from just about anywhere. This solution also provides IT with the high-level control that allows users to freely collaborate together, while protecting your company’s data.
The Enterprise Mobility Suite is a comprehensive cloud solution from Microsoft that enables our customers to meet their IT and Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) challenges.
It addresses our customers’ need for an end-to-end secure and productive managed cloud environment for their mobile workforce that encompasses identity, Mobile Device Management, and Mobile Application Management.
Office 365 comes standard with the basic version of Azure AD, which includes MFA capabilities for Office 365 workloads only. To get the enterprise-grade services, you need EMS for its advanced identity management, security, and auditing capabilities, as well as Azure AD Premium’s enterprise-grade synchronization between on-premises AD and Azure AD. Additionally, EMS includes Azure RMS to provide protection for non-Office file types, as well as access for developers to Azure RMS SDK for Rights Management in on-premises Windows Server file shares.
Today’s workforce is mobile, making the business extend beyond office and customary work hours. EMS helps businesses stay agile and competitive, while keeping their data, tools, and resources accessible, yet more secure, anywhere, anytime.

Who should be interested?

Small and mid-size businesses with 50-500 seats*
*Note that Telcos may be ready for EMS once they add Intune for mobile device management to Office 365

Why is EMS important?

Overview of Enterprise Mobility Suite that support customer scenarios

The suite at-a-glance:

Hybrid Identity and Access Management: Azure AD Premium

Hybrid Identity and Access Management: Azure AD Premium

Information Protection: Azure AD Premium and Azure Rights Management

Contact us for more information:


 

Managed Solution is a full-service technology firm that empowers business by delivering, maintaining and forecasting the technologies they’ll need to stay competitive in their market place. Founded in 2002, the company quickly grew into a market leader and is recognized as one of the fastest growing IT Companies in Southern California.

 

We specialize in providing full Microsoft solutions to businesses of every size, industry, and need.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Azure provides extreme flexibility and enables companies to grow as big as they want to; without being limited by resources. From app development to websites, SQL databases, and content streaming, Azure can be customized for each business.

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Create a Compelling User Experience

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Use Azure for a consistent, cloud-based identity environment creating an unparalleled unified user experience across all devices.
In today’s business communication is immediate and 24/7. Innovation happens overnight and anything is possible. This is where the right technology enters the picture. The advances that are transforming the business world are the same tools that you can use to transform your business. With cloud services and mobile devices, you can quickly adapt to change and expand your business efficiently, without expanding your budget.
PREPARE:
When your business is ready to grow, you can't afford for your technology to hold you back. Quickly equip new employees with the tools that they need without a lengthy deployment process.
ADJUST:
Pay only for what you're actually using in a given month without costly delays or large capital investments when you change capacity.
EXPAND:
Your workers might be wasting time struggling with different experiences across their devices. Standardizing on one platform will improve employee productivity while allowing for broad device choice, be it based on personal preference or job function.

Deploy scalable infrastructure quickly with no maintenance costs:

Azure provides extreme flexibility and enables companies to grow as big as they want to; without being limited by resources. From app development to websites, SQL databases, and content streaming, Azure can be customized for each business. Start focusing on growing their businesses and not what they run on, their SMBs will be given the opportunity to grow.

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Managed Solution’s Team has the experience and expertise to architect Azure solutions tailored for your environment. Call us at 800- 313-2109 or fill out the contact form and someone with get back to you shortly!


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