Information Technology Navigator

Microsoft has a well-known yearly user conference in Orlando called Ignite. But did you know there is a smaller, free version of this conference? Microsoft Ignite The Tour is set to hit 30 cities around the world in 2020, including two U.S. cities: Washington DC, Feb 6-7th and Chicago, April 15-16^th.

I had the benefit of attending the first 2020 event in Toronto earlier this month. In this blog, I’ll review the unique format of this event and share my personal highlights. Hopefully, I’m able to convince a few admins and business users to attend.

Format:

Read More

Microsoft Teams is the cloud-based collaboration solution in the Office 365 suite that integrates business messaging, calling, video meetings and file sharing. It is Microsoft’s replacement for Skype for Business.

Read More

Why Office 365?

The speed of business is requiring IT to create, secure, and scale resilient services, prompting enterprises to move away from on-premises data centers to the cloud. Microsoft Office 365 (O365) is an attractive option for organizations that need to innovate at what feels like “escape velocity” speeds. 

Read More

The benefits of migrating applications to Microsoft’s Azure cloud make a very compelling business case – agility, scalability, a pay for what you use cost model, etc. But as you move workloads to Azure, don’t assume they are automatically protected, because while Azure does ensure a secure infrastructure, you are responsible for ensuring protection of your data – not Microsoft.

It’s all detailed in Microsoft’s Shared Responsibility Security Model. Understanding where the Shared Responsibility model starts and stops is critical to ensuring your data is secure and compliant. Here are some key considerations:

Read More

Time is running out. Microsoft deadlines for SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 end of support are quickly approaching with Extended Support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 ending on July 9, 2019 and Extended Support for Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 ending on January 14, 2020. Don’t risk possible security or compliance gaps of unsupported software.

Security Options

End of support for these releases means the end of regular security updates. With cyberattacks becoming more sophisticated and frequent, running applications and data on unsupported versions can create significant security and compliance risks. With these risks and end of support dates coming soon, Microsoft has provided a cost-effective alternative to allow you to keep your 2008 release servers by migrating to the Azure cloud.

Read More

 

A large number of businesses are increasingly embracing all that Microsoft Office 365 cloud technology has to offer and are getting there using a hybrid model. This model is based on - maintaining their on-premises Exchange infrastructure while slowly migrating mailboxes into the O365 cloud tenant. It’s a strategy that makes sense when organizations have large numbers of mailboxes or don’t have sufficient staff to support a “big bang” cutover approach.

Read More

Last week, 5 members of the Daymark Cloud Consulting team traveled down to Orlando, Florida to attend the annual Microsoft Ignite technical conference. As always, the first day of the conference was filled with several major announcements. This blog will focus on the Azure related enhancements that were announced and Daymark’s thoughts on how they could help our clients in the future.

Read More

With end of extended support for Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 quickly approaching within the next year, Microsoft has announced a program that will provide an additional 3 years of extended support if these workloads are migrated to Azure. Since this announcement in July, customers have been trying to figure out the most efficient way to migrate these workloads to Azure while preventing any security or compliance issues.

Read More

On July 12, 2018, Microsoft announced new options for SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 end of support. End of support is quickly approaching:

Read More

In part one of our blog, Key Considerations for an Azure Deployment,  Corey Roberts, Daymark’s Director of Managed and Cloud Services, addressed some of the common questions clients have regarding migrating workloads to Azure. Now he moves on to talk about benefits, application performance, and how to best prepare for an Azure deployment.

Read More