SPECIAL SPEAKERS – MARY JO FOLEY AND PAUL THURROTT

We are delighted to announce that we have two special speakers at Cloud Camp 18, the top two Microsoft watchers and awesome tech journalists, Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley.

 

Mary Jo Foley

has covered the tech industry for 30 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline.  She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). She also is the cohost of the “Windows Weekly” podcast on the TWiT network. Got a tip? Send her an email with your rants, rumors, tips and tattles. Confidentiality guaranteed.

 

Paul Thurrott

is an award-winning technology journalist and blogger with over 20 years of industry experience and the author of over 25 books. He is the News Director for the Petri IT Knowledgebase, the major domo at Thurrott.com, and the co-host of three tech podcasts: Windows Weekly with Leo Laporte and Mary Jo Foley, What the Tech with Andrew Zarian, and First Ring Daily with Brad Sams. He was formerly the senior technology analyst at Windows IT Pro and the creator of the SuperSite for Windows.

 

 

Who are Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott?

Even if you don’t know Mary Jo and Paul by name, you probably know some of their work. When some secret Microsoft thing is leaked, when some hidden nugget of information becomes public, there’s a very good chance that one of these two was the first to publish it. When Microsoft wants to know what Joe-public thinks, they often ask Mary Jo and Paul. When Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, bumped into Mary Jo, he asked her how her Microsoft experience on her new Android phone was going. When a Microsoft staff member feels like sharing, Paul often receives the classified docs. Got some Windows 10 questions – Paul knows the features, the previews, the tricks, better than anyone. When Microsoft wants to launch a new Surface, Mary Jo and Paul are invited to the event. When Steve Ballmer announced his retirement, Mary Jo was one of the very few to be granted an interview. These are “next level” people and we are honoured to have them come to Cloud Camp.

Mary Jo (@maryjofoley) and Paul (@thurrott) know more about Microsoft than anyone. They know the history, the know what’s happening today, and they often know what’s coming in the future. And that’s why we have asked them to wrap up Cloud Camp with a keynote, talking about what’s happening in Microsoft today and tomorrow. If you’ve seen or listened to these two on their Windows Weekly podcast, on the TWiT network, then you know there will be lots of good information and some laughs.

And speaking of the Windows Weekly podcast … how would you like to be an audience member when Paul and Mary Jo host it live from Dublin? The recording will start a few hours after the conference just a few minutes’ walk from the Cloud Camp venue. Seating will be limited and we will announce ticket plans very soon. There might even be some craft beer to drink!

 

Moving everything into The Cloud isn’t always the right strategy. You might have on-premises systems that are still relatively new. Some services need to be local to run a factory, manage a ship, or because of special regulatory/security needs. And Microsoft has you covered.

Microsoft believes that cloud is how you work, not where you work. Because of this, Microsoft’s cloud strategy has covered three areas that can be tightly integrated:

• Public cloud: Such as Office 365, CRM 365, and Azure.
• Hosting partners: Systems that can offer specialist equipment, skills, locations, run by Microsoft partners.
• On-premises: Featuring Microsoft’s on-premises products.

No cloud company has done more for the on-premises investment than Microsoft. For example, Azure features many hybrid solutions including:

• Azure AD
• Azure Backup for VMware & Hyper-V
• Azure Site Recovery for VMware & Hyper-V
• StorSimple on VMware & Hyper-V
• Azure File Sync
• Database integration/replication
• App Services hybrid connections
• Service Bus
• Log Analytics (OMS)
• Security Center
• Automation hybrid workers
• And more!

As you can see, “hybrid” is more than a network connection – which Microsoft can handle through VPN and WAN connections. We haven’t even mentioned the private cloud solution, Azure Stack!

The common foundation for all of this is Windows Server. Many have the incorrect notion that Microsoft has abandoned development of Windows Server; nothing could be further from the truth. Microsoft is nearing the completion of Windows Server 2019 (complete with a GUI) for their long-term servicing channel release – there is also a semi-annual channel release for those applications that need the latest features as quickly as Microsoft develops them. We expect that Windows Server 2019 will be launched at the Microsoft Ignite conference in Orlando at the end of September, probably with availability in mid-late October (if history is a good indicator). There’s lots of new stuff in Windows Sever 2019, particularly if you like hyper-converged infrastructure, high performance networking, clustering, containers, security, and more.

We have a whole track at Cloud Camp focused on the on-premises investment – we’re treating this event as the unofficial Irish launch of Windows Server 2019. Thomas Maurer (MVP) has a session on the new features of the LTSC release, Kartik Pullabhotla (Microsoft Azure) is doing a session on protecting on-premises Windows/VMware assets using Azure, Gregor Reimling will discuss improving your file servers with Azure File Sync, Eric Berg (MVP) will discuss the HTML5-based Windows Admin Center, and Thomas will return to talk about Azure Stack, Microsoft’s private cloud package that is sold by a number of hardware partners.

So, if you want to learn about what Windows Server 2019 can offer, the new ways to manage your Windows servers/hosts, improving existing investments in your IT, or bringing cloud to your location, Cloud Camp has an entire track for you.