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Insights on planning, crafting, delivering and enjoying a keynote

Today I was on stage with my good friend Maarten Eekels to deliver a keynote together. We were invited to deliver the keynote for SharePoint Saturday Brussels a few months ago, and we took this opportunity with enthusiasm as you never have too many opportunities to co-present with someone you respect. First things first – you can view our slides here: The goal of our keynote was to showcase, demo and present what’s possible today to secure and maintain a secure posture on Office 365, Microsoft 365 and Azure. We had 50 minutes, so we knew we wanted to include a lot of content, but not too much to make it messy or hard to digest. I wanted to write… Read More »Insights on planning, crafting, delivering and enjoying a keynote
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A new Microsoft Flow whitepaper has been released, and it’s interesting

A quick heads up, that a new Microsoft Flow whitepaper, titled A guide to building enterprise-ready flows has just been released. It’s authored by Jerry Weinstock, and I had the privilege to be one of the technical contributors for the guide. It covers detailed guidance and strategy on how to create integration and automation solutions using Microsoft Flow for enterprises. You can download the whitepaper here.
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Building a simple backup solution for Hyper-V-based virtual machines using OneDrive for Business and PowerShell

At home, I run several PCs – a few laptops, and one workstation which is a bit more performant, so that I can run Hyper-V and virtual machines on it. It’s also my server for Plex, the amazing multimedia system that effectively allows me to have my own private Netflix wherever I go. At the moment, my server runs on Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, which is the special edition for high-performance PCs. Among others, it provides a new power plan named Ultimate Performance, for a little bit of added push. It also supports Hyper-V, so I can comfortably run virtual machines locally instead of relying on Azure for everything. I run my VMs off from two disks – one… Read More »Building a simple backup solution for Hyper-V-based virtual machines using OneDrive for Business and PowerShell
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What’s up?

In June this year, I wrote a brief update on what I’ve been up to lately. Weeks fly by so fast, I realized it’s time to provide another brief update after almost 6 months has passed. Hello from Haarlem I’m attending the Office 365 & SharePoint 2019 Connect even in beautiful Haarlem, The Netherlands. I think this is the 9th year for this event, and sadly also the last time it’s being held. It’s bittersweet I won’t get to visit this charming little town next year anymore. I presented two sessions, you can access the content through these links: Getting started with Azure Container Instances Azure Blackbelt: 30 essential skills I’ve done fewer conferences and events this year, than in… Read More »What’s up?
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Top 10 Windows 10 shortcuts you didn’t know existed

I currently own three mice – a Microsoft Arc mouse, and two MX Master 2S from Logitech. I carry the Microsoft one with me, as it’s lightweight and folds neatly to consume space, and the Logitech ones I use at home. These are all excellent devices, yet I wish I could use them less. I love using a keyboard when I’m working. It’s so efficient, and I don’t need to switch my thoughts or move my hand to point to a thing with a mouse. I’m a black belt when it comes to keyboard shortcuts, and efficient keyboard use. But even after three decades of heavy keyboard use I still need to use a mouse (or a touchpad on my… Read More »Top 10 Windows 10 shortcuts you didn’t know existed
TechDays Finland 2020

TechDays Finland 2020 Call for Speakers is open – and you need to submit today!

TechDays Finland 2020 will be held in Helsinki next year, March 5 to 6 (Thu-Fri). The Call for Speakers just opened about 45 minutes ago, and you can submit your session proposals here. We’re using Sessionize, so if you already have existing sessions listed, it’s very easy to submit them. But perhaps take a few minutes to update your submission details, if you haven’t done that recently. We are expecting about 1000 attendees, and through Call of Speakers about 40 speakers will be selected. I’m part of the content team, together with Jouni Heikniemi (Offbeat) and Karl Ots (Zure). I’m anxious to see the different content proposals for the event, and I’m even more anxious to meet many of you… Read More »TechDays Finland 2020 Call for Speakers is open – and you need to submit today!
My certs

How I prepare and (often) succeed with technical Microsoft certification exams

I’m an avid fan of challenges, especially those that are just hard enough but where I can still prepare to have enough confidence for accomplishing my goals. Certification exams are among my favorite types of challenges – they are challenging, fairly easy to prepare for but hard to master and pass. In 2019 I’ve completed four certification exams. This year it’s been a lot of upgrades and transition exams on Azure and Microsoft 365. Last year I completed five. It’s a passable pace, but I could have done much more now that I think of it. Some exams are hard, while others are easier – yet they all still require you to put some serious time aside for preparing, studying… Read More »How I prepare and (often) succeed with technical Microsoft certification exams
SPSHEL 2019 Speakers

Passing the torch: New leadership for SharePoint Saturday Helsinki

We had our fourth annual SharePoint Saturday Helsinki event this past Saturday. Weather was great, and overall the event was a huge success! If you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s a global event where different cities organize a free event on a Saturday of their choosing, with often tens of breakout sessions and networking opportunities. You can read more about the SharePoint Saturday concept here, and also see the upcoming events around the world. I want to take one more opportunity to thank our sponsors: dox42, our Platinum Sponsor Valo Intranet, our Gold Sponsor ShareGate, our Gold Sponsor Innofactor, our Silver Sponsor The first SharePoint Saturday in Helsinki was organized by myself and Mr. Jussi Mori in 2015. Our… Read More »Passing the torch: New leadership for SharePoint Saturday Helsinki
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Building a secure remote access solution using Azure Bastion Host

I wrote about my experiences and challenges when building a secure remote access solution for Azure-based virtual machines back in February 2019. It’s one of my more popular posts in this blog, and I guess it’s helpful for many because it travels through the options and provides justification for the choices. As that’s often one of the challenges when working with Azure and architectures – there is plenty of choices, and it might be burdensome and frustrating to understand the differences and best options on each. I was delighted to learn this Summer that Microsoft released a preview of Azure Bastion Host, which more or less resolves the issues I had back in February for building a remote access solution… Read More »Building a secure remote access solution using Azure Bastion Host
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Understanding and getting started with Azure Sentinel

Today, Microsoft announced that Azure Sentinel is now Generally Available (GA). What this means, is that Azure Sentinel can be used in production, the pricing has been revealed and it’s stable for enterprise-grade usage. In this post, I’ll have a look at what Azure Sentinel is, how to get started and what to keep an eye for in the future. What is Azure Sentinel? Azure Sentinel is Microsoft’s vision of a cloud-based SIEM – which stands for Security Information and Event Management. The intention of a SIEM is usually to provide real-time analysis for security alerts throughout the enterprise. I hear consultants often referring to SIEM when they mean a centralized place to process logs, generate alerts and react to… Read More »Understanding and getting started with Azure Sentinel