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Showing posts from April, 2018

Microsoft is dropping its Windows Phone apps for Teams, Yammer, Skype for Business in May

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Summary: Windows Phone users will lose support for their native Microsoft Teams, Yammer, and Skype for Business apps as of next month. Late last week, Microsoft quietly acknowledged that it will  drop support for the Windows Phone apps for Teams, Yammer, and Skype for Business . This fact isn't surprising to anyone who has been watching what's been going on with Windows Phone over the past few years, but the suddenness of Microsoft's declaration may catch some by surprise. (And based on tweets and emails I am getting, it did.) As of May 20, 2018, Microsoft will no longer make these apps available for download from the Microsoft Store and will no longer support them. The Skype for Business and Yammer apps "may continue to work, but we can't provide any guarantees," said officials in a Microsoft support article. "These apps will no longer receive updates or support." At the same time, the Microsoft Teams app for Windows Phone "will

The greatest resistance to Robotic Process Automation comes from IT departments

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Summary:Prepping for the next wave of automation may be a messy affair, involving tearing up processes and training robots. Lately, I've been hearing some people refer to the incoming wave of labor-replacing, process-enhancing automation as a "digital workforce," which suggests some type of side-by-side pairing with the human workforce, just as contingent workforce gets paired with full-time workforce. Photo: Honda Whether you or not you like these new semantics, the constellation of technologies that are birthing the digital workforce are a force to be harnessed, and if applied with forethought and entrepreneurial spirit, may open up new horizons for companies and their carbon-and-water-based human employees. Such is the perspective taken by Justin Watson, David Wright and Marina Gordeeva, all with Deloitte UK, and authors of a recent  report  based on a survey of 400 executives and finds a majority, 53 percent, have initiated efforts to embed  Robotic Process

Before the IoT leap - Architectural principles, devices and data

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Summary:Before jumping on the boat with an IoT solution, it is critical for enterprise architects to understand the fundamental principals and concepts The concept of the Internet of Things has revolutionised the opportunities for businesses to take their operational efficiency to a new level. The combination of smart sensors, connected devices, and intelligent operation can unearth new dimensions of opportunities in this digital era. Information Technology giants like Microsoft are investing heavily in software offering around IoT. This includes ready to consume SaaS solutions like Azure IoT Central, IoT components-as-a-service like IoT hub, Stream Analytics, and Events hub, and real-time analytics technologies like IoT Edge. Before jumping on the boat with an IoT solution, it is critical for enterprise architects to understand the architectural layers, design principles, and subsystems involved in a solution. Architecture Principles To start with, let's first expl

​Microsoft looks to fix multi-cloud mess with Azure Australia Central

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Summary: The tech giant now boasts four Azure regions in Australia, with its latest, Azure Australia Central, allowing organisations to collocate legacy and modern applications. Microsoft has announced the go-live of two new regions in Australia targeted towards government, financial services, and critical national infrastructure clients in Australia and New Zealand that are making the move to multi-cloud. The new offering, Azure Australia Central, has been designed for mission-critical workloads, and comes after Microsoft achieved official accreditation from the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) in June, allowing the company to offer 50 services on the ASD Certified Cloud Services List across Azure and Office 365. Offered out of Canberra Data Centres (CDC), the two new Azure cloud regions will allow for the storing of unclassified and protected-level data. CDC built its facilities in advance as top secret, which allows Microsoft to offer services from within CDC, inhe