Microsoft News Summary – 3 October 2014

The dust has settled a little bit after the craziness of the past few days. Here’s some regular news.

Windows Server

• Windows Server Technical Preview – Storage Survival Guide: Links to articles, blogs, downloads.
• Microsoft Announces Windows Server and System Center Plans: Microsoft has started releasing information on the next versions of Windows Server and System Center, as well as details on how Windows 10 can be managed using System Center Configuration Manager and Windows Intune.

System Center

• Automation–Windows Azure Pack & Service Management Automation–Automated Tenant Deprovisioning: This topic is one that has been coming up more and more as the usage of Windows Azure Pack (WAP) increases.

Windows Client

• Install Windows Server Technical Preview in Microsoft Azure: How to get the new technical preview of Windows Server up and running in the cloud.
• Microsoft’s Windows 10: More on the ‘under the covers’ security, Store features: Mary Jo Foley copy/oasted a Microsoft blog post before it was removed.
• Windows 10 preview for phones and ARM devices isn’t due until ‘well into 2015’: According to Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore

Azure

• Disaster Recovery to Azure using Azure Site Recovery is now GA: The virtual DR in Azure solution is now in production & supported.

How you can currently use ASR

Office

• Announcing Office Sway – reimagine how your ideas come to life: This reminds me of a Google service … it’ll be gone in 2 years.
• Microsoft’s New Office 365 Plans for SMBs Now Available: Microsoft’s Office 365 subscription plan reorganization for small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) took effect yesterday.

Miscellaneous

• Nobody Can Win The Cloud Pricing Wars: The cost is getting so low, it’s almost trivial for anyone to absorb the costs of running infrastructure in the cloud, but you have to wonder as the cloud pricing wars continue, how low can they go and if it’s a war anyone can win.
• Introducing Roku Screen Mirroring Beta for Microsoft Windows and Android Devices: As a Rocku customer (working for a Roku distributor) I cannot wait for this.