Does Your IT Teams Need to Use Windows Analytics?

Does Your IT Team Need Windows Analytics? I’ve been working in the IT world for most of my adult life which is give or take a few decades. Having managed IT teams that were challenged with supporting desktop environments, Windows Analytics is a topic that is close to my heart. Not only does it provide […]
The General Data Protection Regulation in Review

General Data Protection Regulation in Review Unless you have been living under a rock then it is pretty likely you will have heard about something called General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR! As a Director of a company I am responsible for ensuring we are GDPR compliant and this article shares my view and findings […]
System Center Configuration Manager in a Cloud Era

System Center Configuration Manager in a Cloud Era System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) has long been the industry leading platform for managing devices within an organisations environment.Focused primarily on workstations (desktops and laptops), it is also quite at home managing servers as well across inventory, application deployment, patching, operating system deployment, endpoint security and compliance […]
Reporting on Azure Backup by utilising PowerBI

In my last blog, I talked about Azure Backup along with the simplicity and how beneficial it can be for implementation into your current infrastructure. So that’s great, you’ve got your backups configured, everything is running… but how do you know it’s working? To check if your backups have been successful or have failed you […]
Analysing Azure Cost Estimation and Management

Azure Cost Estimation and Management The interest in Cloud continues to gain momentum and as a result, an increasing number of organisations are researching Cloud to establish how/if the fit would work for them. Identifying specifications from a technical view is simple. However, customers find that analysing Azure costs while managing commercials effectively from optimisation […]
Are you ready for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)?

All companies processing personal data are responsible to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) from the 25th May 2018. The process surrounding the collection, storage and use of personal data is the driving force behind the EU directive. GDPR includes how you: Identify and secure the personal data in your systems Accommodate new […]
Connector to OMS in ConfigMgr 1606 Release

Connector to OMS in ConfigMgr 1606 Release Microsoft are adding features all the time these days and with the latest System Center Configuration Manager 1606 release one of these is a connector to Operations Management Suite (OMS). Official guidance for data syncing can easily be found on the Microsoft website. Written by on 01 Aug […]
Using Azure Automation DSC to configure and deploy the new SCSM Portal (Part 1)

Using Azure Automation DSC to configure and deploy the new SCSM Portal (Part 1) On Nov 10th Microsoft released a new HTML portal for System Center Service Manager 2012 R2. The installation is fairly straight forward, however there are still some pre-requisites that need to be in place, I also thought it would be good […]
System Center Orchestrator Migration to Azure Automation

Microsoft have made no secret of its love of all things cloudy, that same feeling certainly encompasses the System Center components. Microsoft’s cloudy re-imagining of System Center Orchestrator also known as OMS Automation ( known and still branded as Azure Automation). This has grown over the last couple of years from a cloud hosted version […]
Using Azure Automation DSC to configure and deploy the new SCSM Portal (Part 2)

In the first post, I outlined creating a basic configuration file for DSC to deploy the new HTML5 Self-Service Portal for System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager. In this post I thought I’d produce a quick video showing adding a server as a DSC node, applying the Configuration to it and checking the configuration applied. […]