Last year’s Inspire event was in the middle of the COVID pandemic, and Microsoft’s focus was on returning to the workforce and schools with inspiring and innovative tools and features. You can read my coverage of Microsoft’s Inspire event from last year here.

If you are a follower of my content, you are most likely familiar with the digital transformation technologies that are reshaping businesses swiftly and without looking back. The COVID pandemic and the need to Work From Home (WFH) have both been catalysts in making full digital transformations in just about every business area. Microsoft has been refining its 365 suite over the past couple of years and this week announced its new Cloud PC offering for business. Let’s take a look at what it is and what it seeks to accomplish.

Remote Windows desktop isn’t a new concept and can be accomplished many ways, so I was most interested in what makes Microsoft’s more unique aside from owning the OS and zero dollar COGS.

Solving the hybrid paradox

The Cloud PC is one Microsoft solution to solve the hybrid work paradox, which, simply put, is a paradox where workers want flexible remote work options and in-person collaboration simultaneously. This paradox makes it difficult for organizations to quickly provide a secure work platform while also giving employees the freedom to work remotely or in the office.

Post-pandemic, people realized that workflows can be done outside of the office and still be productive. Solutions to this paradox have been to bring a work device home to use or only work from home. Organizations then face the problem of having employees work over insecure networks.

Windows 365 helps solves this paradox by offering organizations full Windows 10 or 11 platforms to stream from the cloud. Windows 365 offers organizations the ability to give employees cloud PCs connected securely to the work network and accessible anywhere there is a Wi-Fi connection. It’s more secure as no data actually resides on the client device as a video is streamed of the session resident in the Azure cloud.

The same work environment with the same applications, tools, settings, and personalized Windows, and users can take it home and pick up where they left off. Microsoft says each Cloud PC provides an instant-on boot experience. Since the only reliable connection the user needs for the cloud PC is the user’s connection to the PC and not the PC’s connection to the internet, it has fast and reliable speeds. Microsoft says users can stream personalized applications, tools, data, and settings from the cloud across PC, Linux, Mac, iOS, or Android platforms, with many of these platforms having applications to them.

User experience has always been the challenge whether it be VDI, RDP or any other remote desktop or app execution. Connectivity has typically been the culprit as your experience is only as good as the connection. This will be important for enterprises to consider before committing. Microsoft did tell me it was creating a disconnected mode, container-based, that would enable users to continue work even in a disconnected environment. That is differentiated and new.

Windows 365 is a simpler iteration of Azure’s Virtual Desktop (AVD). Where AVD is a more flexible virtual desktop infrastructure that gives IT maximum control, Windows 365 is simple with a personalized Windows 10 experience. While AVD is priced based on consumption, Windows 365 has per-user pricing.

It is also easier for IT to manage and assign Cloud PCs by categorizing and assigning need-specific Cloud PCs to employees. Admins can also scale up or down a user’s Cloud PC based on need at any point. I like the two options as smaller businesses want a simpler experience with less knobs and gauges.

Windows 365 wants to provide simplicity and security

Windows 365 scales processing power based on a user’s needs with different computing, storage, and business app iterations. Microsoft says it will offer a Windows 365 Enterprise edition and Windows 365 Business edition with simplicity on IT to choose and configure the right Cloud PC iteration being the primary difference.

Microsoft says Enterprise IT can use Microsoft endpoint manager to manage and deploy Cloud PCs for their organization. Small businesses can use a simple, self-service model so that no experience in virtualization needs. Cloud PCs and regular PCs show up alongside each other on Microsoft Endpoint Manager. Microsoft says you don’t need to learn new IT tools to manage Cloud PCs.

Windows 365 also offers data analytics to monitor the health and performance of user’s PCs. Microsoft says its Watchdog service continually run diagnostic checks to ensure connections are running at all time. This is new and differentiated.

When I asked Microsoft about the lack of GPU configurability, they told me that this is coming. This is good as without GPUs, you wouldn’t want to provide the service to anyone with a workstation doing complex development, 3D modeling or even programming.

Finally, IT can change configurations on the fly, up or down, based on how a user uses the service and I thought that was valuable as it saves money and delivers an optimal experience. I’d like to see this feature automagically upgrade or downgrade users in a similar fashion to “auto balancing” of cloud workloads.

Since Cloud PCs have a continuous connection to the work network, so there is no need to worry about the personal device compromising the network when streaming. Windows 365 also follows a Zero Trust Architecture by only storing information in the cloud rather than the streaming device. It also uses multi-factor authentication to ensure that login attempts are verified and integrated with Microsoft Azure Active Directory.

Microsoft says you can pair MFA with dedicated Windows 365 conditional access policies to assess login risks instantly inside Microsoft’s Endpoint Manager. All data at rest and in transit has encryption in Windows 365 from end to end.

Microsoft has addressed many but not all problems and concerns that organizations might have with deploying Cloud PCs to its users. I think Windows 365 does an excellent job of mirroring its scalability with its simplicity. Cloud PCs can be managed and deployed with complex configurations or managed simply with data analytics and Zero Trust Security. Windows 365 is competitively priced and priced differently from other virtualization platforms, priced per user per month rather than computing resources.

Windows 365 is a direct competitor with Amazon’s Workspaces DaaS solution (Desktop as a Service). You can read more here on Amazon Workspaces, but one of the differences I notice right off the bat was the difference in pricing. Amazon Workspaces is priced based on the minutes used in Workspaces rather than a flat monthly rate for Windows 365. I have tested out Amazon Workspaces before, and it has tested in real-world cases, but I will have to get my hands on Windows 365 to compare the two better.

Wrapping up

Windows 365 seems like a powerful tool that answers the hybrid paradox of desiring to work remotely while also working collaboratively in person. Microsoft has emphasized the simplicity of its service so that medium and small businesses can acquire the service while also having integration in the depth of an enterprise.

I am interested to see the adoption rate of Windows 365 in the coming years. I think Windows 365 will solve many problems some businesses have with digital transformation. Virtual desktops have many benefits over the traditional PC setup, and I will be interested in seeing how Microsoft partners shift and adjust to this new form of hybrid work. The connectivity to QoS ratio has always been important in remote desktop and apps and I’m intrigued how Microsoft will help solve this.

Note: Moor Insights & Strategy co-op Jacob Freyman contributed to this article.

The post Microsoft Announces Windows 365 Cloud Desktop at Its Inspire Partner Event appeared first on eWEEK.

To help better understand the trends in SASE, I recently interviewed Craig Connors, VMware’s CTO and VP of Service Provider and Edge, in my most recent ZKast interview. See highlights below.

Watch the video:

Highlights of the interview:

• SASE is the convergence of networking and security in the cloud. This is driven by the unique requirements created by the shift to cloud in the past year and half, requiring a better way to secure our networks and applications.
• SASE brings security and networking together by distributing cloud points of presence and centralizing the security operations.
• VMware’s differentiation comes from its acquisition of VeloCloud, which was a pioneer in cloud delivered SD-WAN.
• The pandemic has raised the awareness of SASE but isn’t the primary driver of it.
• There are three main motivators for SASE
  • Businesses are moving applications from their data centers to the cloud. Applications are no longer sitting in one central place making them harder to secure.
  • Modernized applications are built on microservices so a single application might be striped across multiple clouds. The data can be stored in one location and the compute in another.
  • Users are distributed and people are working remotely removing the perimeter from the enterprise network.
• Apps, users and data are everywhere and now security needs to also be everywhere.
• The distributed nature of businesses has created a rise in new threats that must be protected against causing the industry to rethink the way security techniques have been applied.
• The pandemic accelerated SASE like a “rocket ship” as all of a sudden, businesses had to secure tens of thousands of users overnight.
• Emerging complex threats require sandboxing, remote browser isolation, threat analytics and machine learning. This requires massive compute power that most businesses do not have on premises.  The cloud can scale to meet the security needs of distributed enterprises.
• VMware has been using the term “intrinsic security” for years. This means having security built directly into the product, seamlessly, everywhere the organization has a presence.
• Intrinsic security allows for threat protection to be integrated into every aspect between the user and the device, the network and the application.
• VMware recently announced its secure web gateway (SWG).
• A SWG is a forward proxy protecting users from threats that come from the web.
• This protects users against attacks when the users are off the company premises, that is, the Internet.
• The SWG can terminate TLS sessions so they can be inspected, and various security techniques can be applied whether its URL filtering, CASB (cloud access security broker) or data loss prevention.
• The rise of web based attacks has shifted a SWG from being a “nice to have” to a “must have” technology.
• In addition to having its own SWG, VMware partners with best of breed vendors, such as ZScaler and integrates their SWG into its SASE framework.
• VMware has excelled on building agile overlays to physical infrastructure. For example, its NSX SDN product creates a virtual overlay to a physical network in the data center.  The SD-WAN solution does the same with the wide area network.  Now its SASE solution can create a virtual threat protection layer over best of breed partners, simplifying the deployment for customers.
• While SWG capabilities are fairly standardized, VMware differentiates itself in the area of analytics.
• Machine learning based analytics isn’t quite ready to be the primary mechanism to secure a network, but we are close to that point.
• VMware’s analytics can be used to set baselines and then understand a deviation from the norm that might indicate a threat.
• For example, an IoT device that typically talks to the same cloud resources likely has been breached if the traffic patterns change and it attempts to access an accounting server.
• The analytics VMware has is part of its overall XDR solution.
• Final advice from Connors:
  • Evaluate your SASE providers based on current and future requirements.
  • Understand what the adoption of IoT looks like?
  • What kind of cloud apps will the organization be adopting?
  • What is the adoption of microservices based containerized applications be?
  • Understand how to evolve your network from where it is today and plan where it goes in the future.

The post VMware’s VP Craig Connors Discusses SASE and its Secure Web Gateway appeared first on eWEEK.

Listen to the podcast:

Watch the video:

The general manager of HPE GreenLake discusses the rapid changes in the cloud market, including how cloud users are focusing on growth past-pandemic.

→ Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:52 Cloud trends
• 2:15 The future of the data center
• 5:10 Post-pandemic changes
• 6:40 What problems are customers facing?
• 8:32 HPE’s product and service offerings
• 11:35 Cloud infrastructure comparison 1
• 14:15 The future of the cloud
• 16:05 Wrap up

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Chris interviews Anand Babu Periasamy, CEO and Co-Founder of MinIO. Periasamy gives an overview of MinIO, its deployment options, and SUBNET Helath.

→ Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:57 Periasamy’s background
• 3:08 MinIO overview
• 8:07 What are MinIO’s deployment options?
• 9:10 What is SUBNET Health?
• 11:30 Use cases
• 12:40 Wrap up

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The post Interview with MinIO CEO Anand Babu Periasamy | eSPEAKS appeared first on eWEEK.

What makes this generation of Echo different is that it has a 10 inch screen that attempts to follow you around the room, making it ideal for use where and while you are doing projects.  It reminds me a lot of the 2^nd Generation Apple iMac, which I maintain was the best desktop PC design of all time.

Let’s talk about whether the Third Generation Amazon Show could become the perfect future desktop PC.

Second Generation iMac

What made the Second-Generation iMac uniquely beneficial is that it placed all the system weight in the base and had a swivel mount for the attached flat panel display.

This unique design made it incredibly stable, far more stable than the iMacs that came after it (and most other all-in-one configurations), and the swiveling display made it far easier to put the display where you needed it even if that was on the other side of the desk. This design made this Second Generation offering far safer and far more helpful if you tended to move around the desk or the working space rather than just sitting in the same place all day, every day.

Third Generation Echo Show 10

As noted, the Third Generation, Echo Show 10, has similar structural advantages to the Second Generation iMac. Its weight is in the base with a screen that is supported above the base.

However, unlike the old iMac, the Echo Show 10’s screen will automatically follow you around the room, freeing you up to be mobile while listening to music, watching videos, or searching on the web. You interact with it hands-free, and while its AI isn’t yet that smart, it is generally adequate for things like entertainment or looking at directions while building or cooking something.  Its functionality is limited by its relatively small (compared to PCs) screen and evident entertainment focus. Still, nothing says it has to stay focused on entertainment, and two weeks ago, I wrote about how Amazon is already exploring the laptop PC space with a Fire Tablet.

Coming Advancements

Speech and voice have had several significant problems. It takes a lot of time to train a system for your voice, and the results tended to lack punctuation, so you had to spend a ton of time in training and then in editing after dictation.

But as we advance Artificial Intelligence, our ability to quickly adapt to an individual speaker, automate editing, and add punctuation will reach a point where many of us may prefer speech input to keyboard input in a few years.  In short, we can begin to dictate to our PCs things we’ve used a keyboard and mouse for in the past.

Dictation

Now I grew up when secretaries and dictation weren’t unusual. For most, it was beneficial to be able to pace around the office while doing dictation. But you’d still want to look at the screen from time to time to see if the computer was accurately capturing what you were saying and successfully executing the commands you were giving it.

So having a screen that followed you around the room would be helpful, though adding automatic vertical tilt and locomotion would also help keep the computer close to you while you are moving. Initially, just allowing the screen to follow you would provide most of the flexibility you’d likely need to pace while doing dictation.

Connecting it back to AWS for its intelligence and capabilities would further provide for system longevity and open additional possibilities for subsidies in what is already, at just under $250, an aggressively priced digital assistant offering.

Eventually, we’ll move to head-mounted displays and wearable technology for this function. Still, the computational power to blend your environment with what you are working on is very resource-intensive. We don’t yet even have a single example of the headset that would be needed, let alone the Cloud service suite of applications allowing for complete hands-free work. But this implementation could address most of the requirements and became an ideal platform to create the hands-free software we’ll need when head-mounted displays become viable.

Wrapping Up

The Third Generation Echo Show 10 is arguably the first proper personal robotic solution that has hit the market. Yes, it is limited to swiveling its screen, but there is no doubt it will be followed by products that are more mobile, more capable, and tied to an AWS back end that can provide a level of Artificial Intelligence we’ve never seen before.

You add the ability to translate speech into text with punctuation coupled with the natural language capabilities that NVIDIA was talking about at their GPU Technology Conference earlier this year, and you have the opportunity for something revolutionary.  A personal desktop PC with a voice interface as a default and a screen will allow you to walk and work simultaneously.

At the very least, I expect this would get us off our collective butts and allow us to work healthier over time. Amazon seems to be dancing all around the next-generation PC without crossing the line, much like Apple danced around Smartphones with the iPod Touch and then caught the Smartphone market sleeping when they announced the iPhone.

We have another iPhone-like revolution coming, and it looks like Amazon is setting up to take a page out of Apple’s book to get there first with a cloud-connected hands-free solution. Oh, and if you think this is impossible, remember we thought Apple taking the Smartphone market away from Nokia, Microsoft, Research in Motion (BlackBerry), and Palm was impossible too at one time. We don’t think it is impossible anymore.

Unlike Apple, Amazon subsidizes their hardware, suggesting they’ll enter with the As-A-Service model that the traditional PC OEMs are just wrapping their arms around.

The post How The Third Generation Amazon Echo Show 10 Will Become The Future Desktop PC appeared first on eWEEK.

The fundamental challenge is to create code that performs the same business process or returns the same result on the new platform, rather than simply making the old code run on the new platform. This traditionally involves a long, manual process of copying the data, converting the code, testing the code and verifying that the migrated code has the same behavior as the original code.

Philosophically there are three different migration approaches – listed in increasing order of risk:

1. Lift and shift

• Move the existing code functionality to the cloud

2. Lift, adjust and shift

• Complete some code redesign during the migration

3. Total redesign

• Rebuild everything from the ground up

Whatever approach you take, keep in mind the Five Hidden Costs in code migration:

Hidden Cost #1 – Underestimating the scope of the challenge

Migration projects are large, and timelines are unpredictable. The decision to migrate must take into account the cost, but without an accurate estimate of the challenge timelines slip and costs balloon:

Questions to ask include:

Where is the data processing code and how much code is there?

• The obvious place to start is in data processing pipelines, but customized code can be found in all manner of places, including BI reporting tools like Tableau.

Does everything need to be migrated? Is some code being run for no good purpose?

• As a result of history and growth, frequently a significant portion of data processing code has been running for no good reason.

How do you structure and plan a large migration?

• Converting the code and testing must be staged. Best in class migrations include a solid, driven roadmap based on end to end data processing. Ideally a DAG that covers all the processing code is available to plan the migration in logical phases.

Hidden Cost #2 – Target Platform Qualification

Can the target platform actually perform everything in a similar way to the source platform? If not then major code rewrites are required, project timelines slip and costs over-run.

Typically the target platform has been tested and qualified based on a selection of data processing pipelines. Inevitably when the entire codebase is explored features not available on the target platform are found. Working around these problems requires the support of subject matter experts (SMEs) on the source platform – access to the wide variety of SMEs become blocking issues which delay the code migration.

With accurate, automated code conversion, an entire code base can be qualified against the target platform without relying on the memory of the SME. Discovering all potential issues early in the process helps scope/cost/solve Amdahl’s law.

Hidden Cost #3: The Non-Standardization of SQL

“Standard SQL” is a myth. It’s tempting to imagine that because a syntax is legal in any two SQL dialects, that it means the same thing and returns the same value. A manual code translation, particularly by an engineer who is not an SME in both dialects, will tend to focus on successful execution first, and rely on a long tail of testing and validation to confirm that the correct calculation is being performed on the new platform. This takes time, and is prone to error.

The hidden cost is not only delays in migrating code, but also issues/errors that are discovered long after the migration is complete. A typical manual migration has errors show up for around a year after switching to the new platform, and it’s common for an automated migration to discover bugs in SQL code left over from a previous migration, or otherwise latent and undiscovered in core infrastructure code.

Hidden Cost #4: Quality and Consistency, or Monday Morning and Friday Afternoon

The cost of ownership of code is not only in authoring and testing it, but also maintaining the code. If quality and consistency is not maintained then there will be ongoing, unexpected maintenance costs on the target platform.

Migration teams must learn accurate, effective and consistent coding patterns on an unfamiliar target platform. With an obvious steep learning curve, the result is often inconsistent code quality, particularly in the first pipelines migrated. This problem is exacerbated at the start of the project resulting in technical debt on what should be a fresh, clean platform. Issues are most frequently encountered  around a misunderstanding of the behavior of date-time operations, and changing coding practices as experience is developed.

The result is a long tail of issues discovered in testing towards the end of the migration, which in turn leads to timeline slips and cost overruns, and the worst cases are caused by timeline pressures reducing the testing, leading to bugs remaining in production code which “executes fine,” but does not have the same behavior as the code on the original platform.

Hidden Cost #5: Avoid Stopping the World

Switching over to the new platform is a major milestone that migration project managers strive to achieve. The best outcome that can be hoped for is “things just work.” Of course there is a major risk that problems will arise which stop the core of an enterprise’s data processing.

To avoid stopping the world, the legacy and target platforms can be run in parallel, and the results be confirmed correct. This simplifies testing and increases confidence in the correctness of execution on the new platform. Typically this is completed in stages on segments of the data processing infrastructure. The challenge is to correctly “size the segments” to avoid the project timeline exploding — if the segments are too small then testing cycles take too long. If they are too large then identifying issues takes too long.

If you can address these five hidden costs in code migration then you are on track to a successful migration project.

About the Author:

Shevek is the CTO of Compilerworks

The post Five Hidden Costs in Code Migration: How to Avoid Surprise Expenses appeared first on eWEEK.

For those reasons and others, the new and updated servers recently announced by Lenovo’s Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) are particularly impressive. The announcements underscore that Lenovo ISG is more than the legacy System x assets and they are now providing Edge to Cloud solutions for all sizes of Lenovo customers.

Let’s take a look at those offerings, where they stand in marketplace terms and what the company has accomplished.

Lenovo New Data Center Solutions

Lenovo ISG has made three major announcements over the past month:

1. On March 16, the company introduced new servers and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) offerings based on AMD’s new EPYC 7003 Series processors. These included ThinkSystem 1-socket (SR635 and SR655) and 2-socket (SR645 and SR665) rack servers designed for edge-to-cloud infrastructure deployments. The new ThinkAgile HCI solutions include four (VX3575-G, VX5575, VX7575 and VX7576) optimized for VMware VSAN and two (HX3375 and HX3376) optimized for Nutanix technologies.
2. On April 6, Lenovo announced new ThinkSystem servers based on Intel’s latest 3^rd Gen Xeon Scalable processors. Those included four solutions (SR650 V2, SR630 V2, ST650 V2 and SN550 V2) designed to support enterprises’ flexibility, scalability and compute requirements. The company also launched four performance-optimized ThinkSystem solutions (SD650 V2, SD650-N V2, SD630 V2 and SR670 V2) designed to support Lenovo’s “From Exascale to Everyscale” promise. These offerings include system innovations, including Lenovo Neptune Thermal Transfer Modules (TTMs) and direct water cooling for NVIDIA GPUs, enabling significant improvements in system density and compute-intensive performance.
3. On April 15, Lenovo announced five new ready to deploy artificial intelligence offerings developed in collaboration with strategic partners. They include a solution (with Addfor) to track COVID-19 safety protocols, retail visual AI solutions (with Everseen), a scalable machine learning operations solution with cnvrg.io, an analytics solution for Lenovo Edge AI (with SAS) and an edge-to-core data management solution with NetApp. The company also noted that it is collaborating with Intel (via programs at Lenovo’s global AI Innovation Centers) to help universities and students develop new AI solutions.

Lenovo ISG and the Enterprise IT Marketplace

What do these new solutions mean for Lenovo in terms of the market? Overall, they reflect both how the company has successfully leveraged the products and IP derived from the System x acquisition and is delivering new innovations designed to benefit customers. In addition, the new offerings reflect Lenovo ISG’s continuing, successful collaborations with strategic partners.

In the first case, while the new solutions build on the established ThinkSystem brand, they also reflect key shifts that have occurred in enterprise data center requirements during the past half decade. Those include tapping into substantial increases in compute performance enabled by new generation CPUs and GPUs, as well as gaining advantage from muscular improvements in memory, networking and interconnect technologies.

In addition, enterprises of every size and kind are rapidly adopting and adapting to working with a variety of cloud technologies and public cloud service providers, with hybrid environments leading the way. These same customers are also seeking to enhance the performance of vital business applications and workloads, scenarios that HCI appliances are designed to address, as well as specially optimized solutions for workloads, such as the SAP HANA in-memory database.

Finally, organizations are increasingly examining how artificial intelligence (AI) and related machine learning technologies can benefit their businesses. Some large-scale enterprises are exploring these areas broadly, partnering with vendors with significant research efforts. However, far more companies are looking for practical solutions that can deliver measurable benefits quickly, effectively and dependably. That point goes to the heart of Lenovo’s longstanding strategic efforts with innovative software, hardware and silicon partners.

Final Analysis

Lenovo ISG’s latest servers, HCI solutions and appliances touch all these areas. They illustrate the company’s continual efforts to improve its server and system portfolios. At the same time, the new ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile offerings reflect Lenovo’s successful collaborations with strategic partners, including Intel, NVIDIA, AMD, VMware, Nutanix, NetApp and SAS.

In essence, these new solutions offer the company’s myriad global enterprise clients practical support for their immediate business requirements, from Edge to Cloud, from traditional servers to hyperconverged offerings – optimizing for needed applications. Just as importantly, they demonstrate Lenovo ISG’s dedication to evolving and adapting to meet its customers’ future needs.

About Pund-IT®
Pund-IT® (www.pund-it.com) emphasizes understanding technology and product evolution and interpreting the effects these changes will have on business customers and the greater IT marketplace. Though Pund-IT® provides consulting and other services to technology vendors, the opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author alone.

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