By now you've been balancing
a distributed and remote workforce
for a while.
And depending on your industry,
you have folks in store,
on the manufacturing line,
in the hospital, the classroom,
and at home.
And how do you get
all of these workers
using the same tools
to share information faster?
How can IT be the backbone
for this collaboration?
Join Tara Roth and myself,
as we share
how to empower employees,
wherever they are.
Welcome back to
Inside Azure for IT.
I'm Erin Chapple,
CVP of Azure Core.
There are two things
that always seem to come up
in my recent conversations
with IT teams.
First, just how much
continued change
they're experiencing.
Which leads to
"My IT job is just
getting harder, Erin."
Now, you must manage devices
around the world
for your employees
and frontline workers,
and now you're thinking
about security, about networks,
and even logistics
of getting people online.
Then you have the workloads,
VMs, containers,
databases, you need to manage
and keep secure, available,
and in budget.
And if that isn't enough,
you need to prepare for the future
at the same time,
both for the business
and yourself.
It's at times overwhelming,
which is exactly what
I wanted to talk about
on this episode
of Inside Azure for IT.
What are the strategies
to help deal
with the complexity
that stems from what seems
like constant change?
In this first segment,
Tara Roth and I
will share ideas
on how to manage
your M365 workloads
and IT infrastructure
to create adaptive,
resilient environments.
And in our second segment,
Jeff Woolsey joins me
to talk about how to
optimize IT management,
both on premises and in the Cloud.
And if you want to learn
how to better collaborate
with developers and
invest in the future,
join my conversation
with Scott Hanselman
in the third segment
of our episode.
Now, right now, I'd like
to bring on Tara Roth,
the C.V.P. of M365
Customer Success Engineering
for our first segment.
Tara, I'm just delighted
that you could join me
on this episode of
Inside Azure for IT.
- Thank you, Erin.
It's so hard to believe
I haven't seen you in
over two years.
It's so good to be
here today, thank you.
- It is, it's good
to see you in person.
Tara, when the pandemic
first started,
we were helping customers
ensure their employees
could seamlessly transition
from performing
their same role
from the office, but at home.
And things like accessing files,
having a device that's secure.
But now we've been
working from home
and many have started
to partially return
to the office.
So what are the next
set of challenges
you're really seeing
customers face?
- So what I'm seeing
and also feeling myself
is really this inclusive meeting.
We've learned so,
so much about this
and all of us
working from home,
but as we move back into
the office setting,
we really need to
make sure that we take
all that we've learned
and really bring that
into our new experience
of hybrid meetings.
And as many workplaces
open around the world,
I hear from customers every day
that they can't wait back
to get in person
and have that rich collaboration.
But we know how challenging it is.
I've already run a couple
of experiments myself
with hybrid meetings,
and there's so much more
we need to do
in our product experience,
and just the way
we run our meetings
that will make it inclusive
for everybody,
no matter where in the world
they're going to be joining.
So I know I'm motivated
to find new ways
to help people connect
and engage,
regardless of where they are
in the world.
- Absolutely, I've certainly seen
this among work groups
and colleagues, and we've got people
that are living in
different times zones,
in different countries.
And it really takes
focus and care, right?
To ensure that everyone's voice
is heard and they can contribute.
And so personally,
I know we want to support employees
when it comes to where and when
they want to choose to work.
And that often translates into
extra effort on the company
and IT in particular to support.
And so people can be asking like,
"Where do I even start?"
Could you help them with that?
- Well first off, I'll say,
I'm just excited that we are
in a whole different space
where people can live and
work where they want to,
and Microsoft Teams has been
so mission critical
for so many of our customers
to really enable this flexibility.
And Teams brings together
those meetings, the chats,
the calls, the collaboration,
just everything in a single place
where it can make those
just so much easier
for whether it be the employees,
the frontline workers,
the consultants,
or guests that they
wanna bring in from outside,
and really just collaborate together,
and work asynchronously.
That's one thing
that not only are the
live meetings important,
but you wanna be able to
collaborate on those documents
and have people in their
own time zone,
and when it's convenient for them
to be able to contribute.
So you just wanna make sure
all voices are heard,
whether it's in the room,
or like I said,
in those asynchronous docs,
and Teams has really
become the place
for so many of our customers
to really do this great work.
So, and I know, IT is really
the part of the industry
can really make this happen.
And I want to really pause
for just a moment
and emphasize that.
IT can really be the champion
to really enable
a flexible work environment
for their own end users
and their own employees.
So I just hope folks
can take advantage of that
and really be a game changer.
- Yeah, and I have seen
it'd be a real game changer
for customers.
The one thing I love is
that all of the features
really that IT can set up
on the backend
to support their role, right?
In a way that the customer
doesn't even need to
know about it, right?
So if you just think, Tara,
about the remote workforce,
it certainly means
just this move to remote,
and increased focus on security,
and IT plays a critical role in that.
And so if you're already
using Azure Sentinel,
say for VMs or
on premise infrastructure,
you can now connect
that Azure Sentinel
to the Microsoft 365
audit log for Teams,
and that gives you that
insight and information
and helps you with
your security posture,
or you can ensure guests
are managed by AAD.
- Well, and it's interesting
to when COVID first started
our customers,
I talked to them and
it was all about,
"how do I get people
to successfully work
"in a remote situation?"
And now it's shifted the
conversation to be more about,
"Ah, I need to make sure
it's actually secure."
And so this better together
story with Azure and M365,
just love to see that
developing here as a way,
whether it's Microsoft Defender
for end points
or for Office 365,
that that can all come
together in one place,
and provide a security center
that gives our IT leaders
a way to really look at those
potential threats
and recommended actions
that they can take.
- So let's shift gears
a little bit,
let's dig into an example
that seems even more common
in the home environment,
and I know I've had it
happen on my team.
You have an employee
who is working from home,
and they spill coffee
on their laptop,
and it's just fried, right?
And they're panicked,
and they're like, "What do you do?"
And so can you talk to us Tara
a little bit about how IT
can help them really stay online
and be productive?
- Yeah, well, coffee, or
also like dropping laptops,
it's just another,
I mean there's so many ways
that you can get
into this predicament.
But really the best practices
for getting users
up and running again
with a new machine,
that's something that's
really changed dramatically
in the last five years.
The model used to be
that an IT department
would need to create
a custom image,
make sure that all the hardware
had all that customer image
prior to it going to the user,
and keeping that customer image
up-to-date
was super expensive, super complex,
and it had the IT department
having to touch every PC
before it went out to their user.
Now there's different options.
One lightweight option,
you can stick just to standard
OEM image machine,
and just have that user log in
with their credentials,
and the device then just
automatically gets enrolled
with the policies and the
apps start flowing down
to that device.
So the IT leader didn't have
to actually touch that machine.
- Super simple.
- Yeah.
And then to take it
one step further,
IT can pre-register
those OEM devices
with autopilot and
make it even easier.
And then there's been,
and I know you know
about Windows 365,
but Windows 365 also
just got announced
and released to our customers.
And this would allow you that
situation where let's say,
you've dropped your laptop,
it broke,
you've got a personal device
sitting there on your counter,
but you know that your IT department
isn't going to be happy if you
log into your corporate
information with that personal device.
But now with Windows 365,
you can do that.
You can get a personalized
Windows desktop, all your apps,
settings, and content from
the Cloud to any device,
whether that's your personal device,
or another work device.
So, as that employee,
you could take that personal computer
and just be back online in minutes.
So it just takes that risk of
using that unmanaged device,
and still having secure access
to company resources.
So I don't know,
just a couple of options,
but hopefully it doesn't happen.
Don't spill that coffee
or drop your machine.
But if it does, know that there's
a couple of new options
that can make it so much easier.
- Quick and cost-effective options,
and they really help IT
be as flexible and adaptive
as the workforce, right?
You can get people access
to any device
with Windows 365 deployments
from endpoint manager,
and it's way faster
than having to RDP
into a corporate domain.
Now all of this really
helps IT get out
of that super hands-on management
so that they can build processes
and applications that scale.
And if I step back
the way I see it,
it gives IT more authority
and recognition
so they can stop managing processes
and start owning programs
that have a measurable ROI.
IT can show your leadership,
and "Hey, we built
this entire program
"and it saves employees
this many hours a week."
- Yeah, I love that Erin.
It's what really motivates us
to build better tools
for both the users and the IT admin
so everybody can do their job
better and really just,
there's so much changing
in this world,
and we need to take advantage
of that change
and be able to change
the way we work
in a whole different way.
And so, thank you.
- So another topic that
we talk about a lot
in the Azure side is
around common tooling
and automation and
consistent experiences.
And big thing working
from home has exposed
is how manual certain
processes were beforehand.
With our M365 workloads,
what are the ways
that we're helping IT
in this area?
- Yeah, so in Microsoft 365,
when we first started,
we didn't even have a
Microsoft 365 admin center.
And we knew that in order
to really simplify
the experience for
our IT customers,
we really needed to bring
together the experience
in a coherent way, whether you're
a small business owner,
I like to call it
accidental admins,
where you are the
one that happened
to give your credit card
when you bought Microsoft 365,
and all the way up to those
IT admins that are managing
30,000, 100,000 of
their own end users,
we need to make sure that
that admin center
is a coherent experience
and works for,
if you're a depth specialist
on exchange,
or a depth specialists on security,
we wanna make sure that
you are connected into this
admin@microsoft.com experience
in a way that you've
got a single console
where you can customize it and
really make it work for you
every day, get that information
that you need
in order to run an effective business.
- Now, Tara, one thing I often
hear from customers is,
"How do I make the most
out of my M365 licenses?"
There's so much value to get
out of the M365 license,
but how can companies really
see the opportunities
to realize this value for their
employees and organization?
- Yeah, this is something
I see every day.
One of the things we spend
a lot of time on
is how can we really help
folks more easily adopt
and engage with the value
that they have purchased?
And it really comes down
to investing in yourself,
and in your organization.
We've tried to give you
a lot of flexible options
that match the way you learn,
because we know that people
learn in different ways.
So for one, you can go
to the admin center
that I was mentioning before,
and there's a lot of documents,
there's a lot of videos and articles
that can really help you
as the IT leader
understand how to adopt
and engage your end users,
as well with Microsoft Learn,
you can go there and be certified.
So if you've been in
IT for a while,
getting that Microsoft 365
fundamentals course
under your belt can give you quick,
and a lot of credibility
in the marketplace.
As well, you can focus
on those cross-cloud
training sessions.
So there's training programs
that help you learn
about Azure, dynamics
and the power platform,
and it just has been so fun
to see how companies
like hospitals or manufacturing
plants, or Telcos,
what they can do when they combine
these platforms together,
it's really just an amazing impact
that they can have
for their business.
And then lastly,
we wanna make sure that
you have what you need
to skill up your
employees as well.
And with the Viva
learning app,
the idea here is that
we wanna be able
to be right in line with Teams,
be able to get the
end user training
that your end users will need.
And then you can do things
like track and report
on those successful
training initiatives
that you've been rolling out
across your company.
So if let's say you're
trying to really shift
from using attachments in email
to let's figure out how to
collaborate in real time,
that's something that you
can give training on,
and then track,
how is that rolling out
across your organization?
Are you seeing behavior change,
are you seeing the
increase in productivity
that you would expect?
- What I love about this
is we know
different people learn
in different ways.
And so it's great to see
just the ton of options
for both IT end users
to skill up in a way
that's really best for them.
And just our commitment
to supporting them
in the way that they need.
We've come to a close, Tara.
It was so nice having you
on Inside Azure for IT.
I spend so much of my time
talking Azure,
I've loved hearing just what's
new for Microsoft 365.
- Well, thank you, Erin.
And thanks for having me.
And I know you probably have a
ton of feedback for us too.
So keep it coming on the
Microsoft 365 side.
Great to see you.
- Fabulous.
Be sure to check out
the other segments
of Inside Azure for IT
with Jeff Woolsey
and Scott Hanselman.
And for all of our videos
and deep dives
and skilling content,
head to Azure.com/InsideAzureforIT.
Thank you for joining us today
and see you next time.