Blogs on Big Hat Group Inc.

RDP Multipath Gains Redundant TCP Transport — GA Rollout Begins for Azure Virtual Desktop

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft has begun the general availability rollout of redundant TCP transport paths for RDP Multipath in Azure Virtual Desktop. This enhancement moves beyond the UDP-only Multipath architecture introduced last year, extending session resiliency to the estimated 20–30 percent of enterprise networks where UDP traffic is restricted or blocked.

Windows 365 Gains Autopilot Device Preparation, Reserve Upgrades, and RDP Multipath TCP — May 2026 Update

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft delivered four meaningful updates to Windows 365 this week, spanning Cloud PC provisioning reliability, emergency access improvements for Reserve users, and a major connectivity upgrade that addresses one of the most persistent pain points in remote desktop experiences.

Here is what changed and what it means for your organization.

xAI Weekly: xAI Absorbed by SpaceX, Anthropic Leases Colossus 1

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The defining story of the week — and arguably the year for the xAI ecosystem — is xAI’s dissolution as a separate entity, with all products folding into SpaceXAI under SpaceX. Same week, SpaceX leased the entire Colossus 1 data center (220K+ NVIDIA GPUs) to Anthropic in a deal worth billions annually. Meanwhile, xAI shipped major product updates: Grok Connectors for enterprise tools, Grok Build as a dedicated coding agent, and Custom Voices for voice cloning. Here is this week’s xAI Weekly.

Copilot Weekly: BYOK, Browser Sharing, and Bidirectional Rubber Duck Reviews

Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

GitHub Copilot shipped one of its most consequential updates yet with the VS Code April releases — Bring Your Own Key (BYOK), live browser sharing for agents, terminal access, and semantic search across workspaces. The Rubber Duck cross-model review agent went bidirectional, GitHub’s MCP Server reached new maturity milestones, and enterprise administrators gained new governance levers with managed CLI plugins. Here is everything that matters for engineering teams in this week’s Copilot Weekly.

xAI Weekly: Grok 4.3 Launches as Cost-Effective Frontier Model, Custom Voices Arrive, Imagine Quality Mode Goes Enterprise

Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This was one of the most product-dense weeks in xAI’s history. Between Grok 4.3’s API launch with aggressive pricing, Custom Voices for near-instant voice cloning, and Grok Imagine Quality Mode targeting enterprise creative workflows, xAI shipped across three major fronts simultaneously. A larger model is already confirmed in training. Here is this week’s xAI Weekly.

OpenClaw Weekly: Claude Code Caught Blocking 'OpenClaw' Mentions

Mon, 11 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

OpenClaw Weekly this week is defined by a collision of two stories: a community firestorm over Claude Code reportedly blocking commits that mention “OpenClaw,” paired with a beta release cycle that sharpens the platform’s enterprise posture through security hardening, Slack channel maturity, and a significant Plugin SDK cleanup. For enterprise teams evaluating OpenClaw’s trajectory, the contrast between corporate gatekeeping and open-source acceleration has never been sharper.

Microsoft Entra Agent ID Reaches GA: What IT and Security Teams Need to Know

Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

AI agents aren’t coming — they’re already here. And the security industry has been playing catch-up.

Microsoft’s answer arrived in earnest last month: Microsoft Entra Agent ID reached General Availability in April 2026, giving enterprise identity and security teams a purpose-built platform for managing AI agents as first-class identities. After spending time with the documentation, architectural patterns, and early deployment guidance, I can say this is one of the most consequential identity releases of the year.

Microsoft Entra ID April 2026: 11 New General Availability Announcements That Matter

Sat, 09 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

April 2026 was a significant month for Microsoft Entra ID, with eleven features reaching General Availability across three strategic pillars: Certificate-Based Authentication, Global Secure Access, and Identity Governance. This isn’t just a routine update — it’s a coordinated set of releases that signal where Microsoft is taking the identity and security platform over the next 12-18 months.

Microsoft Entra ID April GA Wave: CBA Expansions, SSE Maturation, and New Governance Controls

Sat, 09 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

April 2026 delivered one of the largest single-month General Availability releases in Microsoft Entra ID history. Eleven new features reached GA, spanning passwordless authentication, network security, identity governance, and platform infrastructure. For enterprise IT teams managing Microsoft Entra environments, this release wave contains several changes that demand attention — and action.

Moonshot AI Hits $20B as China's AI Monetization Era Begins

Sat, 09 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Moonshot AI, the Beijing-based developer of the Kimi chatbot series, closed a $2 billion funding round this week at a valuation exceeding $20 billion — cementing its status as China’s most heavily funded private AI lab, months after we analyzed the broader ecosystem shifts. The raise, led by Meituan’s Dragon Ball venture arm with participation from China Mobile and CITIC Private Equity Funds, brings total capital raised over the past six months to $3.9 billion. Meanwhile, ByteDance signaled a shift that could reshape China’s entire consumer AI market by introducing paid subscriptions for Doubao, its 345-million-MAU chatbot, and DeepSeek’s V4 continued its march deeper into China’s domestic chip ecosystem — building on the hardware dynamics we detailed in our DeepSeek V4 decision framework. Here is this week’s China AI Weekly.

Azure Virtual Desktop Goes Truly Hybrid — Arc-Enabled Servers Now in Public Preview

Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) has always been a cloud-native VDI service. But starting this week, that description needs an asterisk — because Microsoft just made AVD truly hybrid.

On May 4, 2026, Microsoft moved AVD for hybrid environments with Arc-Enabled Servers from limited preview to public preview. The headline capability: you can now deploy AVD session hosts on any on-premises hypervisor or even bare-metal Windows Server, connected through Azure Arc. The control plane stays in Azure, but your session hosts can live anywhere the Arc agent can run.

Codex Weekly: 4M Users, Chrome Extension, and the Shift to Daily Work Agent

Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This week marked a turning point for OpenAI’s Codex platform — it’s no longer just a coding assistant. The repositioning of Codex as a general-purpose daily work agent, combined with a new Chrome extension and the milestone of 4 million weekly active users, signals that OpenAI sees Codex as the primary interface for AI-augmented knowledge work. For enterprise teams evaluating agent platforms, the feature velocity alone demands attention.

Project Lobster Exposed: Microsoft's ClawPilot Is Live, 3,000 Employees Are Running It, and Your Security Team Isn't Ready

Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Three thousand Microsoft employees are running an AI agent that their own company’s security team classified as “untrusted code execution with persistent credentials.”

That is not an analyst’s warning. That is not a think piece. That is the formal guidance from Microsoft Defender — the same Microsoft Defender that advises your enterprise on endpoint security posture.

Claude Weekly: SpaceX Deal Doubles Limits, Financial Agents Arrive

Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This was a defining week in Anthropic’s trajectory. The company secured 300+ MW of GPU capacity from SpaceX’s Colossus 1 data center — enabling doubled Claude Code rate limits and the removal of peak-hour throttling effective immediately. That compute breakthrough arrived alongside 10 financial services agent templates with Microsoft 365 add-ins, a new enterprise AI services company backed by Blackstone and Goldman Sachs, and creative tool connectors for eight professional platforms. Here is the Claude Weekly for May 7, 2026.

Windows 365 Frontline Is Now Windows 365 Flex — Plus, Admin Insights Enters Public Preview

Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft shipped two significant updates for Windows 365 this week — one purely cosmetic (but strategically important), and one genuinely useful for IT administrators managing Cloud PC environments at scale.

Here is what changed and what you need to know.

xAI Weekly: Imagine Agent Goes Live, X Rebuilds Ad Stack on xAI, Grok's Enterprise Push Gains Steam

Wed, 06 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Note: The research briefing for this week was not available. This post was compiled from available public sources including TestingCatalog, TechCrunch, and the prior week’s research briefing (April 29).

The past week in the xAI ecosystem was defined by product velocity: xAI launched the Imagine Agent — an autonomous creative agent inside Grok — while the X platform revealed a complete rebuild of its advertising stack on xAI’s technology. The Pentagon’s $200 million “Grok for Government” deal continued to resonate as an enterprise milestone, and the voice AI momentum from Grok Voice Think Fast 1.0 carried into expanded API access. Here is this week’s xAI Weekly.

Copilot Weekly: Token Efficiency Prep Ships as Usage Billing Nears

Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

With the June 1 usage-based billing transition now less than four weeks away, this week’s Copilot releases are dominated by a single theme: efficiency. VS Code 1.118 ships aggressive token optimization — 93% prompt cache hit rates, agentic search and execution offload tools, and up to 20% token savings — while the broader ecosystem delivers GPT-5.5 GA, deprecation timelines for older models, cloud agent performance improvements, and a candid GitHub availability post-mortem that reveals the company is planning for 30× current capacity driven by agentic workload growth. Here is everything that changed between April 28 and May 5, and what it means for enterprise teams preparing for the post-June Copilot landscape.

DeepSeek V4 Unleashes Vision, Shakes China AI Chip Markets

Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

DeepSeek went nuclear this week — launching V4, its most powerful open-source model to date, and simultaneously adding AI vision capabilities for the first time, closing what had been a glaring gap against US rivals. The Hangzhou-based start-up’s one-two punch reverberated through Chinese chip markets, sent analysts scrambling to reassess stocks from Cambricon to SMIC, and drew a direct response from Beijing: President Xi Jinping called for “disruptive innovation” at a symposium on basic research. Meanwhile, the week also delivered a landmark Chinese court ruling on AI job displacement and a new push for AI-powered judicial efficiency in Shenzhen. Here is this week’s China AI Weekly.

OpenClaw Weekly: Performance Overhaul, File Transfer Plugin, Breaking Config Change

Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

OpenClaw shipped v2026.5.4-beta.1 this week in a release cycle that prioritizes operational hardening and raw performance over flashy new integrations. The standout addition is a security-first File Transfer Plugin with default-deny path policies, while a breaking change to Gateway config validation — invalid config now fails closed — demands attention from every enterprise operator. The beta also delivers meaningful progress on streaming unification and startup optimization, the kind of infrastructure work that matters more for production deployments than any single feature.

State of OpenClaw 2026: The Enterprise Self-Hosted Agent

Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

1,336 Hacker News upvotes. 718 comments. Reports of Claude Code scanning repositories for HERMES.md — the OpenClaw agent configuration file — and either refusing requests or routing them to higher-cost billing tiers, with users reporting cost increases of up to 50x. That was the headline community story of April 30, and it broke in the same month NVIDIA shipped NemoClaw alpha, Tencent committed full-time maintainers, and the openclaw/openclaw repository crossed 368,000 GitHub stars and 12 million downloads. v2026.5.4-beta.1 is not just another release. It is the moment OpenClaw stopped being a scrappy open-source project and started being a target.

Codex Weekly: Multi-Cloud Era Begins — Codex Lands on AWS, Symphony Open-Sourced

Fri, 01 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This was a defining week for OpenAI’s platform strategy. Codex and OpenAI models are now available on Amazon Bedrock, the Microsoft partnership was restructured for multi-cloud flexibility, and OpenAI open-sourced Symphony — a complete agent orchestration spec built on Codex. GPT-5.5 rolled out to all tiers, the Agents SDK shipped two updates, and Codex CLI crossed a major feature milestone with persisted goal workflows. Meanwhile, Google committed up to $40 billion to Anthropic, reshaping the competitive landscape.

Claude Weekly: $900B Valuation, GPT-5.5 Pricing Shock, and Anthropic's Code Quality Post-Mortem

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Anthropic is reportedly in talks to raise approximately $50 billion at a $900 billion valuation — more than double its prior $380 billion — placing it among the most valuable private companies on the planet. The same week brought OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 launch at 2× the prior pricing, a transparency-first Claude Code post-mortem confirming a multi-week quality regression, and the broadest product expansion of the quarter: nine creative-tool connectors spanning Adobe, Blender, Autodesk, and Ableton. Below is the full enterprise brief for the week of April 23 to 30, 2026.

Grok Enterprise Buyer's Guide: xAI's Risk-Reward Ledger

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

xAI booked a reported $200 million Pentagon contract for Grok for Government the same week Apple nearly banned the Grok app from the App Store and the NAACP sued over Colossus data center pollution in Memphis. Grok Voice Think Fast 1.0 hit 67.3% on the τ-voice benchmark — beating Google Gemini and GPT Realtime — while a separately published study ranked Grok the AI model most likely to reinforce delusional thinking. That is not a contradiction. That is the actual ledger an enterprise buyer has to read this quarter.

xAI Weekly: Pentagon's $200M Grok Deal, Voice AI Launch, and Enterprise Expansion

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This week in the xAI ecosystem, a landmark Pentagon contract, a top-performing voice AI model launch, and accelerating enterprise partnerships signaled that xAI is moving decisively beyond consumer chat. At the same time, the company faced mounting legal pressure over Colossus pollution, an Apple App Store near-ban over deepfake violations, and fresh coverage of internal talent churn. Here is this week’s xAI Weekly.

Copilot Weekly: Usage-Based Billing Lands June 1, 2026

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Five weeks. That is how long enterprise admins, finance leaders, and developer experience teams have to prepare for the largest pricing change in GitHub Copilot’s history. On June 1, 2026, Copilot transitions from per-user premium request units (PRUs) to usage-based GitHub AI Credits, billed against per-model token rates. The same week brought GPT-5.5 to general availability, BYOK in VS Code chat, a Visual Studio Debugger Agent that loops from issue to fix, and a candid GitHub availability update describing two production incidents and a plan to scale for 30× today’s load. Here is what changed between April 21 and 28, and what to do about it before June kicks the new model into gear.

Enterprise AI Strategy Beyond Microsoft Copilot

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Your Microsoft Copilot rollout is on plan. Your AI risk surface isn’t. Gartner predicts 40% of enterprises will hit a shadow-AI incident by 2030, and the data already shows developers running Claude Code, Codex CLI, and OpenCode entirely outside of IT’s view. Single-vendor AI strategies look clean on a slide and brittle in an outage — Amazon found that out in six expensive hours this March. Copilot license counts are a vanity metric. Tool sprawl is the real telemetry.

OpenClaw Weekly: Google Meet, Voice Overhaul, Security Alert

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

OpenClaw shipped two releases this week with a capability that changes the conversation for enterprise teams: Google Meet is now a bundled participant plugin, meaning OpenClaw can join live meetings as a real-time AI attendee — listening, reasoning, and producing structured outputs. The same releases delivered a massive TTS overhaul with Azure Speech and five other providers, made DeepSeek V4 Flash the onboarding default, and included a critical security disclosure that demands immediate attention.

Secure OpenClaw Meeting Agent on Azure: Reference Architecture

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On April 26, an OpenClaw maintainer opened issue #72283: API keys, tokens, and credentials are rendered in plain text inside the Control UI tool-call display. Forty-eight hours earlier, OpenClaw had shipped Google Meet as a bundled meeting participant in v2026.4.24, meaning thousands of agents are now joining live calls from the same UI that’s leaking secrets. If your IT team is piloting OpenClaw on a laptop, you have a Monday-morning problem. If you’ve been hoping Claude Code stays cheap enough to delay the agent-platform decision, you have a Q2 problem before Microsoft Build 2026 reframes the conversation.

DeepSeek V4 for Microsoft-Shop Enterprises: A CIO's Decision Framework

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A developer on your team has already downloaded DeepSeek V4 this week. Maybe two. The weights went up on Hugging Face under an MIT license on April 24, 2026, and within 24 hours the model was being benchmarked, fine-tuned, and stitched into proof-of-concept agent harnesses across thousands of enterprise dev teams. If you are a CIO at a Microsoft shop, the question is no longer “should we evaluate DeepSeek V4?” The question is whether your AI governance posture can answer to legal, audit, or the board when they ask why a 1.6-trillion-parameter Chinese-origin model is now sitting on a developer laptop inside your tenant.

Kimi K2.6 Takes the Open-Source AI Crown — Enterprise Brief

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Moonshot AI’s Kimi K2.6 just took the top open-source AI benchmark crown — and Moonshot is targeting the workloads enterprise teams actually run: long-horizon coding, motion-rich front-end generation, and agent-based pipelines. Meanwhile, US Congress advanced its largest export-control package in history, the White House released a sharp memo on AI distillation, and Chinese cybersecurity stocks rallied on the back of Anthropic’s Mythos preview. Here is this week’s China AI Weekly.

Codex Weekly: GPT-5.5 Ships, Agents SDK Gets Sandboxes, and Codex Crosses 4M Developers

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This was one of the busiest weeks OpenAI has shipped all year. GPT-5.5 arrived as the new frontier model in ChatGPT and Codex. Workspace agents turned GPTs into cloud-run, scheduled, shareable team assistants. The Agents SDK got a native harness and multi-provider sandbox execution. Codex CLI gained hooks, a plugin marketplace, and a /review command. Codex itself crossed 4 million weekly developers and picked up partnerships with seven of the largest global systems integrators.

Microsoft Foundry Hosted Agents: What Enterprise IT Should Do Now

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft just re-launched Hosted Agents in Foundry Agent Service, and the timing matters. On April 22, 2026, Microsoft replaced its Ignite-era preview with a ground-up rebuild featuring per-session hypervisor isolation, a dedicated Microsoft Entra agent identity for every hosted agent, and true scale-to-zero billing at $0.0994 per vCPU-hour. For enterprise IT teams that have been deferring AI agent production deployments over governance concerns, the governance story just got materially better.

Claude Weekly: Opus 4.7 Lands, Claude Design Launches, and MCP's First Security Reckoning

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Claude Opus 4.7 went generally available this week, delivering substantial improvements in agentic coding, vision resolution, and reasoning control. But the bigger story is the simultaneous launch of Claude Design, the controversial removal of Claude Code from the Pro plan, and the first serious enterprise security test for the Model Context Protocol. Anthropic’s revenue doubled to $30 billion in annualized run rate, the Claude Platform is coming directly inside AWS, and Sonnet 4 / Opus 4 deprecation is now just weeks away. Below is the full enterprise brief for the week of April 16 to 23, 2026.

Copilot Weekly: VS Code 1.116 Builds Copilot In, GitHub Adjusts Individual Plans

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The past week saw GitHub Copilot become a built‑in extension in Visual Studio Code 1.116, reducing onboarding friction for new users. At the same time, GitHub announced significant changes to individual Copilot plans, pausing new sign‑ups and tightening usage limits as agentic workloads increase compute demands. Claude Opus 4.7 rolled out across Pro+, Business, and Enterprise tiers, delivering stronger multi‑step reasoning for complex coding tasks.

gh skill: GitHub CLI Agent Skills Management for Copilot, Claude Code, and Cursor

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

gh skill: GitHub CLI Agent Skills Management for Copilot, Claude Code, and Cursor

GitHub launched the gh skill command in public preview on April 16, 2026, and it quietly solves one of the messiest problems in AI-assisted development: how do you share and govern agent skills when every AI coding assistant has its own directory convention, its own install story, and its own idea of what an “skill” even is?

OpenClaw Weekly: NVIDIA Validates OpenClaw for Enterprise Deployment

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

NVIDIA just published an official reference architecture for deploying OpenClaw on DGX Spark — the clearest enterprise endorsement the platform has received. In the same seven days, a blog post comparing OpenClaw’s security model to “unprotected MS‑DOS” ignited a 159‑comment Hacker News thread, the core team shipped two beta releases plus a feature drop, and Claude Opus 4.7 became the new default model. The week frames the central tension for anyone planning an OpenClaw enterprise deployment: accelerating adoption on one side, sharpening scrutiny of the agent security model on the other. Below is the full executive brief for IT and security leaders.

DeepSeek V4 Multimodal Launch: What It Means for Enterprise AI

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

DeepSeek is about to ship its most ambitious release yet. DeepSeek V4 leaked this week with three distinct modes — Vision, Expert, and Fast — marking the lab’s first multimodal offering. Meanwhile, China’s daily AI token usage blew past 140 trillion in March, Alibaba launched a world model called Happy Oyster, and US lawmakers escalated calls to place Chinese AI firms on the Entity List. Here is this week’s China AI Weekly.

AI-Generated Code Security: Why Review Is the Next Enterprise Bottleneck

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Forty-one percent of all new code written in 2026 is AI-generated. Gartner predicts that will drive a 2,500% increase in software defects by 2028. And this month, Anthropic demonstrated that its newest model can autonomously find and exploit serious software vulnerabilities – then withheld general release. The industry has shifted from “AI can help write code” to “AI can rapidly discover, validate, and exploit flaws across massive codebases.” The numbers behind that shift demand a new approach to enterprise security and AI code review.

Enterprise AI Automation Just Changed: OpenAI Codex Adds Plugins, Memory, and Multi-Day Agents

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Three million weekly users. Ninety new plugins. Background computer operation. Scheduled multi-day automations. OpenAI’s April 16 Codex update is not an incremental release. It is a platform pivot, and it reshapes what enterprise IT teams need to plan for, govern, and secure starting now.

Anthropic Passes OpenAI: Opus 4.7, Managed Agents, and What Enterprise IT Must Do Before June

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Anthropic just passed OpenAI in enterprise revenue. That sentence alone would have been unthinkable twelve months ago, but here we are: $30 billion in annualized revenue, over 1,000 enterprise customers each spending north of $1 million per year, and eight of the Fortune 10 on the platform. In the same week, Anthropic shipped a new flagship model, a managed agent runtime, and an enterprise collaboration tool with real governance controls. The question for IT leaders is no longer which AI vendor to watch — it is whether your organization’s adoption strategy can keep pace with what is now available.

Grok 4.20 Leads Medical and Legal AI Benchmarks — What Enterprise Teams Should Know

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

xAI’s week was defined by two parallel stories: Grok 4.20 Beta 2 maintained its leadership across medical and legal reasoning benchmarks while the company faced mounting regulatory pressure over its Colossus 2 data center in Memphis. The NAACP filed a lawsuit alleging illegal operation of gas turbines, xAI paused a water-recycling plant to prioritize the supercomputer cluster, and the Enterprise API gained Grok 4.1 Fast with lower agent-tool pricing. Here is this week’s xAI Weekly.

Claude Weekly: Performance Backlash and a Pentagon Fight

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Claude ecosystem had a turbulent week. While Anthropic continued shipping at a furious pace — Claude for Word in beta, the Advisor Tool in public beta, and 10+ Claude Code releases — the conversation shifted to uncomfortable questions. Users reported significant performance degradation in Opus 4.6, Anthropic lost an appeals court bid to block the Pentagon’s “supply chain risk” designation, and the US Treasury banned Anthropic products. Meanwhile, a CoreWeave infrastructure deal and early exploration of custom AI chips signal the company is preparing for compute demands it cannot yet fully meet. Here is this week’s Claude Weekly.

Copilot Weekly: Autopilot, Remote CLI, and FedRAMP Arrive

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This week’s Copilot Weekly is one of the biggest in recent memory. VS Code 1.115 shipped a new companion app for running parallel agent sessions, Autopilot mode arrived in public preview, remote control of CLI sessions launched, and GitHub quietly checked off a major enterprise compliance box with FedRAMP Moderate and regional data residency. There’s a lot to unpack.

Microsoft Copilot Autonomous Agents: What the Ocean 11 Team Means for Enterprise IT

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft is making its boldest agentic AI bet yet. A newly formed team under Corporate Vice President Omar Shahine is building OpenClaw-style autonomous agents directly into Microsoft 365 Copilot — a move that could fundamentally change how hundreds of millions of office workers interact with AI. The earliest public preview is expected at Build 2026 on June 2 in San Francisco.

Microsoft's OpenClaw-Inspired Copilot Initiative: Ocean 11 Team and Build 2026 Preview

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Research Date: April 14, 2026

TL;DR

Microsoft is building OpenClaw-inspired autonomous agent capabilities into Microsoft 365 Copilot. A dedicated team under CVP Omar Shahine, informally called “Ocean 11,” is developing always-on, proactive AI agents for enterprise use. An early preview is expected at Microsoft Build 2026 on June 2 in San Francisco.

OpenClaw Weekly: Anthropic Cracks Down, Microsoft Builds In, Six Releases Ship

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The OpenClaw ecosystem hit an inflection point this week. Anthropic cut off subscription-based access for third-party agent harnesses and temporarily suspended OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger’s account. Microsoft confirmed it is building OpenClaw-style autonomous agents directly into M365 Copilot, with a preview expected at Build 2026 in June. Meanwhile, the core project shipped six releases in five days, crossing 357,000 GitHub stars and delivering first-class inference orchestration, restored memory infrastructure, and a critical security patch. Here is everything that matters for enterprise teams this week in OpenClaw Weekly.

China AI Weekly: DeepSeek V4 Goes All-In on Huawei

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This was the week China’s AI ecosystem stopped hedging on self-sufficiency. DeepSeek confirmed its upcoming V4 model will run exclusively on Huawei silicon — no NVIDIA, no fallback. Zhipu AI shipped GLM-5.1 under an MIT license, an open-weight model that outperforms Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT-5.4 on long-running coding benchmarks. And Alibaba was unmasked as the anonymous creator of HappyHorse-1.0, a video generation model that took the #1 spot on every major leaderboard the day it appeared. For enterprise teams tracking the global AI landscape, this is a China AI Weekly worth reading carefully.

Codex Weekly: DALL-E Sunset Countdown, OpenAI Backs Liability Bill, and AI War Game Concerns

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A quiet week for OpenAI product launches, but the policy front heated up as OpenAI backed an Illinois bill that would limit liability for AI-caused mass harms. Meanwhile, the DALL-E deprecation clock is ticking — developers have just over a month to migrate to GPT Image models before the May 12 shutdown. A new research paper also raised eyebrows after AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google chose nuclear weapons in 95% of war game simulations.

Windows 365 Navigation in Microsoft Intune Has Been Reorganized — Here's What Changed

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Your bookmarks are wrong. Your runbooks are wrong. And if your helpdesk has step-by-step guides for managing Cloud PCs in Microsoft Intune, those are wrong too.

Microsoft has shipped the generally available version of the Windows 365 navigation reorganization in the Microsoft Intune admin center — effective the week of April 6, 2026. The change is purely structural: no features were removed, no RBAC permissions changed, no Cloud PCs were affected. But the paths your team uses every day to get to provisioning policies, Azure Network Connections, and Cloud PC settings have all moved.

Claude Weekly: Managed Agents, Mythos, and a $400M Biotech Bet

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Anthropic had its most consequential product week of 2026. Claude Managed Agents launched in public beta alongside the new ant CLI, delivering a full cloud-hosted agent platform for the first time. Simultaneously, the company revealed Project Glasswing — a restricted cybersecurity initiative powered by the unreleased Claude Mythos Preview model that tops 17 of 18 benchmarks — and closed a ~$400M acquisition of Coefficient Bio. Revenue has crossed $30B annualized run rate, and an October 2026 IPO is no longer speculation. Here is everything that matters for enterprise teams this week in Claude Weekly.

Copilot Weekly: Custom Agents, Semantic Codebase, and CLI BYOK

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This week’s Copilot Weekly covers the April 1–7, 2026 release cycle across Visual Studio, VS Code, and Copilot CLI. The headline: custom agents are now a first-class feature you define in your repo, the #codebase tool went fully semantic in VS Code 1.114, org-wide custom instructions hit GA, and Copilot CLI gained full bring-your-own-key support with air-gapped mode.

Free Study Guide: Claude Certified Architect Foundation (CCAF) Exam

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Anthropic launched the Claude Certified Architect Foundation (CCAF) certification — the first vendor-backed credential for professionals designing production systems on Claude’s platform. Whether you’re building agentic workflows, integrating tools through MCP, or architecting reliable AI pipelines, this Claude AI certification validates the skills that matter.

Claude Weekly: Computer Use, Auto Mode, and a Pentagon Showdown

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Anthropic delivered its most consequential product week of 2026. Computer Use arrived in research preview, letting Claude control your Mac to complete tasks autonomously. Claude Code Auto Mode introduced a safer middle ground for agent permissions using an AI classifier. And in a federal courtroom, a judge called the Pentagon’s “supply chain risk” designation against Anthropic “an attempt to cripple” the company. Here is everything that matters for enterprise teams this week in Claude Weekly.

GitNexus: The Zero-Server Code Intelligence Engine Reshaping AI-Assisted Development

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

AI coding assistants are everywhere. Cursor, Claude Code, Windsurf, Codex — the list grows monthly. They write code faster than any human. But they share a critical blind spot: they don’t understand your codebase’s architecture.

An AI assistant will cheerfully refactor UserService.validate() without knowing that 47 other functions depend on its return type. It edits functions as isolated text, not as nodes in a connected system. The result? Broken call chains, missed dependencies, and subtle regressions that surface days later in production.

Copilot Weekly: Coding Agent Gets Faster, Smarter, and Auditable

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This was the biggest week for GitHub’s Copilot coding agent since its launch. Five separate updates landed — semantic code search, configurable validation tools, 50% faster startup, live log streaming, and commit-to-session-log traceability — collectively transforming the coding agent from a capable assistant into a faster, more transparent, and more governable autonomous developer. On top of that, GPT-5.3-Codex became GitHub’s first long-term support model, GPT-5.4 mini hit GA across all tiers, and VS Code 1.112 shipped with MCP sandboxing and a new /troubleshoot command. Here is everything that matters for enterprise teams this week in Copilot Weekly.

OpenClaw Weekly: NemoClaw, WeChat, and 48-Hour Agents

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This was the week OpenClaw went from open-source phenomenon to enterprise infrastructure story. NVIDIA unveiled NemoClaw at GTC — a security and runtime wrapper designed to make OpenClaw agents safe enough for corporate deployment. Tencent shipped ClawBot, embedding OpenClaw directly into WeChat for 1.4 billion users. And the core project itself dropped v2026.3.22 with 48-hour agent sessions, production-ready secrets management, and a batch of security fixes. Here is everything that matters for enterprise teams this week in OpenClaw Weekly.

Codex Weekly: Astral Acquisition, GPT-5.4 Mini, $110B

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The week ending March 22 was dominated by three moves: OpenAI’s planned acquisition of Astral — the company behind Python’s fastest-growing toolchain — the release of GPT-5.4 mini and nano models purpose-built for coding agents and subagent delegation, and confirmation of a $110 billion funding round that values the company at $840 billion. Two Codex platform releases also landed, and the ChatGPT model picker got a significant simplification.

China AI in 2026: Ecosystem Shifts & Enterprise Implications

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If your AI strategy only tracks what’s happening in Silicon Valley, you’re operating with half the map.

March 2026 brought a cascade of developments from China’s AI ecosystem — leadership upheaval at one of the world’s largest open-source model teams, a wave of multimodal model releases, record investment figures, and hardware shifts that will ripple through global supply chains. None of this is abstract. Every one of these developments has direct implications for how enterprises plan, build, and compete.

FSLogix Troubleshooting Guide: Free Runbook Template for AVD

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you manage Azure Virtual Desktop, you’ve fought FSLogix issues. Profile containers that won’t attach. Start menus that crash on login. Black screens that leave users staring at nothing while the helpdesk queue fills up. Sign-out hangs that lock VHDs and cascade into the next user’s session.

Claude Code Gets 4 Releases & 1M Context Goes GA

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Claude crossed the enterprise rubicon this week. Not with a single headline, but with five independent signals that converged simultaneously: 1M token context at standard pricing, a $100M partner network with Accenture and Deloitte, an AI agent that found 22 real CVEs in Firefox, four Claude Code releases in seven days, and a new research institute dedicated to studying AI’s societal impact. Individually, these are announcements. Together, they’re a phase transition.

Everything Claude Code: The Agent Harness Your Team Is Missing

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Most developers use Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor at maybe 30% capacity — basic chat-based code generation with default settings. Everything Claude Code (ECC) is an open-source configuration system that treats these tools not as chatbots, but as full AI agent orchestration platforms. It has 84,000+ GitHub stars, 108+ skills, 25+ specialized agents, and a continuous learning system that gets smarter across sessions.

AI Governance in 2026: The Compliance Cliff Enterprise IT Can't Ignore

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The EU AI Act’s high-risk system deadline is August 2, 2026 — five months out — with fines up to €35M or 7% of global revenue
Colorado’s AI law is already in effect as of February 1, requiring impact assessments for hiring, lending, and insurance AI
The Trump administration created a DOJ task force to sue states over AI regulation — but hasn’t filed anything yet, so state laws stand
73% of enterprises are unknowingly non-compliant with at least one active or pending AI regulation
The U.S.-China AI competition has fundamentally shifted — DeepSeek and ByteDance’s DAPO proved that export controls drive efficiency innovation, not surrender

If you’re running an enterprise IT organization in 2026 and you haven’t built an AI governance function yet, the window is closing fast.

BHGBrain 1.3: Multi-Device Memory, Data Resilience, and the Repair Tool

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Three days after shipping tiered retention and hybrid search, we hit the exact failure mode that justified building a persistent memory server in the first place: the SQLite database on one machine was empty, while Qdrant Cloud still had every vector. All the content — the actual text of every memory — lived only in SQLite. The vectors were intact but useless without the text they encoded.

NVIDIA NemoClaw: Enterprise AI Agents Get a Security Layer at GTC 2026

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On March 16, NVIDIA announced NemoClaw at its GTC 2026 conference in San Jose — an enterprise-grade security and orchestration layer for the OpenClaw AI agent platform. If you’ve been watching the autonomous AI agent space but holding off due to security concerns, this is the announcement that changes the calculus.

Microsoft's Copilot Leadership Shakeup: What Actually Changed and Why It Matters

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft retired one of its most senior executives and promoted four leaders to report directly to Nadella — flattening the hierarchy around AI
All Copilot teams — consumer and commercial — are now unified under one EVP for the first time
Mustafa Suleyman is pivoting to full-time superintelligence and frontier model development, signaling Microsoft’s intent to reduce dependence on OpenAI
For enterprise customers, this means a clearer, more coherent Copilot roadmap is coming

Two announcements hit Microsoft in the span of five days this month. Together, they represent the most consequential organizational restructuring the company has made in years — and if you’re an enterprise customer betting on Copilot, they matter more than the typical executive shuffle.

The Death of Coding Has Been Canceled

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

AI-assisted coding is producing more developers, more code, and more applications — not fewer
Organizations that limit their AI strategy to workflow automation are missing the biggest competitive opportunity
The real transformation happens when AI changes what you build, not just how you work
Every dollar invested in generative AI returns 3.7x on average — leaders achieve 10.3x

You’ve heard the narrative: AI is replacing software developers. Coding is dead. Learn to prompt or learn to starve.

Windows 365 Cloud PCs Now Achieve Compliance During Provisioning — What IT Admins Need to Know

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Key Takeaways

Windows 365 Cloud PCs now evaluate Intune compliance policies during provisioning — devices are compliant before users sign in.
The “Not Evaluated” compliance gap that blocked users on first boot is eliminated.
Gallery images already include the update; custom images require KB5070311 or later.
Organizations should audit and remove Conditional Access workarounds that were compensating for the old behavior.
Windows 365 Frontline and shared Cloud PC scenarios benefit the most from this change.

Windows 365 Closes a Critical Compliance Gap in Cloud PC Provisioning

Microsoft has shipped one of the most practical improvements to Windows 365 in recent memory: Cloud PCs now evaluate Intune compliance policies during provisioning, concurrent with MDM enrollment, without requiring a user to sign in first.

BHGBrain: Tiered Retention, Hybrid Search, and Smarter Memory Lifecycle

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

BHGBrain launched a week ago as an open-source MCP memory server: a shared vector brain for AI agents built on SQLite and Qdrant, with semantic recall, automatic deduplication, and hybrid search. The initial release covered the core architecture — dual-store write pipeline, memory types, namespaces, collections, enterprise auth, and multi-agent scenarios.

Codex Weekly: Security Scanner, Pentagon Fallout, GPT-5.4

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Three stories defined the OpenAI week ending March 15: the launch of Codex Security — a vulnerability scanner claiming a 50%+ false-positive reduction — GPT-5.4 hitting the public API with a 1M-token context window and built-in computer use, and a leadership departure over OpenAI’s Pentagon contract that’s reverberating across the industry. Also notable: the acquisition of Promptfoo, used by a quarter of the Fortune 500 for LLM red-teaming, and a new Open Source Support Program that names third-party Codex interfaces by name.

GitHub Copilot CLI Enterprise: The Agentic Harness Your Governance Model Isn't Ready For

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

GitHub Copilot CLI Enterprise: The Agentic Harness Your Governance Model Isn’t Ready For

GitHub Copilot CLI is now generally available, and most enterprise teams are framing it wrong. This isn’t autocomplete in a terminal. It’s a full agentic harness — it plans multi-step work, delegates tasks, reads and modifies files, runs shell commands, and connects to external systems through MCP servers. If you’ve been thinking of GitHub Copilot CLI enterprise adoption as “chat for developers,” you’re underestimating both the capability and the risk.

Windows 365 Weekly: Teams Media Optimizations Expand to iOS, Android, and macOS

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft has expanded Teams media optimizations for Windows 365 Cloud PCs beyond Windows endpoints for the first time, bringing locally processed audio and video to iOS, Android, and macOS devices connecting through the Windows App. This is a significant step toward platform parity that directly impacts call quality for mobile and Mac users accessing Cloud PCs.

AI-Enabled Small Teams: Optimize for Capability, Not Layoffs

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every time someone publishes an article about “optimizing teams with AI,” half the audience hears one thing: layoffs.

I get it. Twenty-five years in enterprise IT, and I’ve watched every productivity wave get weaponized into a headcount reduction exercise. But that reading misses the actual opportunity — and it’s a costly misread.

Claude Weekly: Anthropic Sues the Pentagon

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Anthropic’s biggest story this week isn’t a product launch — it’s a federal lawsuit. After the U.S. Department of War designated Anthropic a national security supply chain risk, CEO Dario Amodei confirmed the company will challenge the ruling in court, alleging unlawful retaliation and First Amendment violation. In parallel, Anthropic shipped three significant enterprise features: the Claude Marketplace, Code Review for AI-generated PRs, and cross-platform memory import — all while the Claude Code CLI hit version 2.1.72 with voice mode and direct file writing.

OpenClaw vs GitHub Copilot: An Enterprise Comparison

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Two AI assistants. Two fundamentally different philosophies. If your enterprise is evaluating AI-powered development and automation tools in 2026, you’ve almost certainly encountered both GitHub Copilot and OpenClaw. They’re often mentioned in the same breath, but treating them as direct competitors misses the point entirely.

Claude Code Review: Anthropic's Multi-Agent AI System for GitHub PR Analysis

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Claude Code Review: Anthropic’s Multi-Agent AI System for GitHub PR Analysis

Anthropic launched Claude Code Review on March 10, 2026 — a multi-agent AI system that automatically analyzes GitHub pull requests for bugs, security vulnerabilities, and architectural problems before a human reviewer ever opens the diff. For engineering leaders evaluating AI-assisted development workflows, this is one of the most significant releases in the agentic coding space this year.

OpenSpec vs Spec Kit: Choosing a Spec-Driven Framework for AI-Agent Development

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

AI coding agents write code faster than any human. The bottleneck has shifted: the spec is now the product. If your agent doesn’t have a clear, structured specification to work from, it hallucinates architecture, invents requirements, and produces code that passes tests nobody asked for.

Windows 365 Weekly: New Regions, Bigger Policies, and Smarter Boot Connectivity

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This week, Microsoft delivered three targeted improvements to Windows 365 that collectively reduce deployment friction, expand compliance options for European organizations, and close a connectivity gap that has frustrated frontline deployments. Whether you’re managing Cloud PCs at enterprise scale or rolling out Windows 365 Boot to a distributed workforce, these updates have direct operational impact. Here’s what you need to know.

Using ACP with OpenClaw and Claude Code to Prevent Agent Hangs

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you’ve run AI agents against real infrastructure — Azure deployments, Terraform plans, network provisioning — you’ve hit the wall. Your agent fires off a long-running CLI command, and the entire main loop goes dark. No responses, no status updates, no way to cancel. Just silence until that network call decides to come back. Or doesn’t.

Agentic Coding Harnesses: Claude Code vs Codex vs Gemini CLI — An Enterprise Guide

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The three major agentic coding platforms — Anthropic’s Claude Code CLI, OpenAI’s Codex CLI, and Google’s Gemini CLI — have matured into production-grade tools. They’re no longer experimental toys. They write code, execute shell commands, manage git workflows, and orchestrate multi-agent pipelines across entire codebases. If you’re an enterprise IT leader and you’re not evaluating these tools, you’re already behind.

BHGBrain: Give Your AI Agents a Shared, Persistent Memory

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every AI coding agent you use — Claude Code, Codex, Copilot, Gemini — starts each session with amnesia. Yesterday’s debugging breakthrough, that architecture decision from last week, the coding standard your team agreed on three sprints ago — all gone. You either re-explain everything or hope the agent infers it from whatever files happen to be open.

AGENTS.md Guide: The Universal Config File for AI Coding Agents

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I published our CLAUDE.md guide for enterprise teams. Within hours, three people asked the same question: “What about teams that aren’t all-in on Claude Code?”

Fair point. If your organization uses GitHub Copilot for some teams, Cursor for others, Codex for background tasks, and Claude Code for complex refactors — and that’s increasingly common — you need something that works everywhere.

Windows 365 Frontline Dedicated Cloud PCs Now Support Resize — Here's What Admins Need to Know

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

As of March 2, 2026, Microsoft has made resize support for Windows 365 Frontline Cloud PCs in dedicated mode generally available. This means you can now change vCPU, RAM, and storage on Frontline Cloud PCs without reprovisioning — preserving user data, profiles, and installed applications in place.

The Anatomy of a Claude Code Project: 5 Layers Every Repo Needs

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Most people treat CLAUDE.md like a prompt file.

That’s the mistake.

If you want Claude Code to feel like a senior engineer living inside your repo — not a chatbot that happens to have file access — your project needs structure. Claude needs four things at all times: the why (what the system does), the map (where things live), the rules (what’s allowed), and the workflows (how work gets done).

The CLAUDE.md Guide for Enterprise Teams: Templates, Structure, and Best Practices

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There are at least a dozen popular CLAUDE.md guides floating around right now. Builder.io published one. ClaudeFast ships a full kit. Dometrain, Gradually AI, scotthavird, Claude for Designers — everyone has a template.

They’re all good. And they’re all aimed at solo developers and startups.

Windows 365 First Sign-In Restore: What IT Admins Need to Know About Windows Backup for Organizations

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft quietly shipped one of the most practical quality-of-life improvements for Cloud PC deployments in February 2026: the Windows first sign-in restore experience. It extends Windows Backup for Organizations to Windows 365 Cloud PCs, hybrid-joined devices, and multi-user machines — and if you manage endpoint fleets, this changes how you think about device provisioning and business continuity.

Anthropic's Skill Creator and Google's Workspace CLI: New Tools That Make AI Agent Skills a First-Class Workflow

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Two releases dropped recently that enterprise IT teams should pay attention to: Anthropic published an official skill creator in their skills repository, and Google shipped gws — a Rust-based CLI for all of Google Workspace that includes 100+ agent skills and a native Gemini CLI extension.

OpenAI's GPT-5.4: What Enterprise IT Needs to Know Right Now

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

OpenAI released GPT-5.4 today. It’s available in ChatGPT, the API, and Codex. If you’re running enterprise workloads on OpenAI models — or evaluating whether you should be — this is a significant release that deserves your attention.

Here’s what shipped, what it means for your organization, and what you should do next.

The AI Coding CLI Wars: What This Week's Releases Mean for Your Enterprise

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The four major AI coding CLIs — Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, and OpenClaw — all shipped significant updates in the last seven days. But beneath the feature announcements, a bigger story is emerging: the question is no longer “can AI write code?” — it’s “can AI safely operate inside real enterprise workflows?”

The "Budget Approval" Roadblock for Intune Suite Just Disappeared.

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One of the most significant challenges to implementing Intune Suite features wasn’t the technology—it was asking for the licenses. These features were easy to show value with but it often wasn’t enough. For many IT teams, the conversation often stalled at “we need an add-on budget for that.” You knew Endpoint Privilege Management or Cloud PKI would secure your environment, but the extra PO was a barrier. For many, this is about to change. 🚀 Microsoft has announced that key Intune Suite capabilities are being added directly to Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 plans at no additional cost. What’s changing? If you are on these plans, you are likely gaining access to premium features that previously required the separate Intune Suite or Plan 2 add-ons: 🔹 Microsoft 365 E3 (and EM+S E3) now includes:

Windows 365 Now: The Fastest Zero to Hero Instructor Led Course

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Windows 365 Training: The Complete Cloud PC Deployment Course

Master Windows 365 Cloud PC & Expand Your Knowledge for the MD-102 Exam

Windows 365 has rapidly become the most transformative technology in the modern workplace, offering organisations a secure, consistent, and scalable Windows experience delivered from the cloud. Whether you’re pursuing Windows 365 certification or need a comprehensive Cloud PC training program, bridging the knowledge gap between Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and Windows 365 requires deep architectural knowledge and hands-on experience with Intune, Entra ID, and Azure networking.

Understanding Servicing Stack Updates and Hotpatching in Windows 11 24H2

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, CheckYourLogs.net published an insightful blog article discussing the importance of Servicing Stack Updates (SSUs) and the introduction of Hotpatching in Windows 11 24H2. These updates are crucial in maintaining Windows devices, ensuring seamless updates, and reducing downtime.

To help expand on the key concepts covered, I’ve also published additional resources that dive deeper into Windows Servicing Stack Updates and their impact on IT management.

Navigating the Windows 11 Transition: A Proactive Roadmap by Kevin Kaminski, Principal Architect at Big Hat Group Inc.

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

At Big Hat Group Inc., we understand that navigating the ever-evolving landscape of technology can be both challenging and rewarding. As the principal architect, I, Kevin Kaminski, have witnessed firsthand how a proactive and meticulously planned approach can transform a potentially disruptive system upgrade into a streamlined evolution of your IT infrastructure.

Big News at Big Hat Group: Embracing the MSIX Revolution in Windows Application Deployment

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

At Big Hat Group, we’re always keeping our finger on the pulse of the latest developments in IT and software deployment. Today, we’re excited to share our newest blog article, The Evolving Windows Application Deployment Landscape: Embracing the MSIX Era, which dives into how the industry is transforming the way applications are deployed on Windows.

Big Hat Group + PortalFuse: Shaping the Future of Intune & M365 Management

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

At Big Hat Group, our mission has always been to empower IT teams with modern, intelligent, and scalable solutions. As a founding partner in PortalFuse Inc., we are taking that commitment to the next level—bringing automation, AI-driven insights, and advanced management capabilities to Microsoft Intune and M365.

Celebrating the Windows Manageability Champion - 2024 Badge

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction
In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, staying ahead of the curve often means diving into new tools, methodologies, and best practices before they even reach the mainstream. As IT professionals and tech enthusiasts, we know that the future belongs to those who adapt, embrace innovation, and shape the way forward. That’s why I’m thrilled to share some fantastic news: I’ve just earned the Windows Manageability Champion - 2024 badge!

Autopatch, Better Compliance Through Automation

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Maintaining system updates can be daunting for IT professionals in the age of constant software updates and security patches. Recognizing this challenge, Microsoft introduced Windows Autopatch last year, intending to streamline the patching process and ensure system security even when timely patching may not be feasible. But has it lived up to its hype?

Join Kevin Kaminski at TechMentor Redmond 2023: Exploring WinGet and Windows Autopatch

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As technology evolves and shapes our world, the need to stay updated and share knowledge becomes crucial. Today, I am thrilled to announce that I, Kevin Kaminski, will present three engaging and enlightening sessions at TechMentor Redmond this year.

Unveiling the Future of Application Delivery with Winget

Virtually There with Kevin Kaminski Episode 3: Bob Kelly @ Ignite 2017 #MVPBuzz #MVPHour #Canitpro

Sun, 22 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Categories: MVPTags: AdminStudio, App-V, Flexera, Microsoft Application Virtualization, Microsoft MVP, MSI, MVP, Virtually There with Kevin KaminskiIn this episode I sit down with Bob Kelly who has been a long time member of the application packaging and the setup and deploy communities. He is a three time MVP who has founded sites such as AppDeploy.com (now ITNinja.com) and his latest effort AppDetails.com. In the video take a few moments to talk [â€¦](Read more…)

SupTool: Using Azure to Monitor Windows Endpoint Health #MVPHour #CanITPro #MVPBuzz

Wed, 11 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Categories: SCCMTags: Azure, Configuration Manager, Monitoring, sccm, SupTool, Windows Enpoint HealthAre you one of the few remaining administrators who double checks that the Configuration Manager client has been completely deployed to all endpoints? Despite there being fewer hours in the day (at least it feels that way), I still make time to assess the health of each agent and remediate issues as efficiently as I [â€¦](Read more…)

Building Bridges: Co-Management with Intune and Configuration Manager

Thu, 28 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

On Monday, Microsoft finally announced the rollout of the capability to manage a Windows 10 device with Intune MDM and the Configuration Manager agent. This long-sought-after capability has been requested by many of my Enterprise customers after theyâ€™ve embarked on the journey to modern management with Windows 10. If you want to unlock this superpower, read on.Before diving into co-management, letâ€™s take a moment to differentiate between modern management and traditional management. At the onset, I would characterize the fundamental difference between the two management methodologies by how they deploy and manage a machine. On one end of the spectrum, traditional management designs and deploys a Windows machine with a high level of customization defined by the corporate IT department. On the other end of the spectrum, modern management prioritizes simplicity with a simple and minimal image that has little to no customizations.I see the value of the modern approach; however, it is worth noting that it brings its nuances, which if not handled well can become problematic. Let me elaborate briefly what I mean by that. In a modern, Enterprise-scale IT environment, when I provision a user for a client, I must either coordinate with a deployment technician internally or a hardware vendor to image the machine with my highly-customized version of Windows. After successfully coordinating the device image, I need to ensure that

Pro Tip: Beware of the Aftermarket Video Cards with Secure Boot

Fri, 28 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

If you have some older video cards in your environment,you might not realize until deployment time that some of your systems will fail to display video or Windows will simply not use the card at all. The root cause of the is due to older video cards not being Secure Boot compatible. To fix the issue,you have three paths that are all valid,but I believe have to be evaluated carefully.The first option is to remove the video card that wasn’t supplied by the hardware vendor of the motherboard and use the onboardvideo. In some cases, this might be satisfactory, but depending on your needs you may need to look at another option such as disabling Secure Boot in the BIOS. Disabling secure boot is cheap but will not protect your system against malware that infects the boot environment of your machine,so you have to question the value of such an approach in an enterprise environment.A more expensive approach would be to modernize your hardware, this could be as simple as giving the user a new PC because at this point with Windows 10 most enterprise hardware that currently has Secure Boot capability. The other choice is to replace the display card, but before buying that display card, you should evaluate the cost of a new card on hardware with a limited remaining lifespan versus purchasing

Come join us! Calgary Citrix User Group Local Kickoff Meeting

Fri, 12 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve entered into a new venture into IT user group communities by helping form the Citrix User Group Community for Calgary headed by RodÂ MacCormack. We saw the need to get the local Citrix community reestablished so that Citrix professionals could get together and share their experiences while keeping updated on the latest trends with the technologies they work with on a day to day basis. Essentially our goal is to allow our user base to build their knowledge on Citrix and Citrix related products so they can better perform their job.Now that we have finally got all the initial logistics out of the way our first event will take place at Craft Beer Market on Thursday, June 8. Our sponsor this round is Nutanix, and they will be present for a technical presentation on their latest offerings for VDI. Citrix will also be present to recap some of the announcements from Synergy. We will also have room for open table discussions so we can all get to know each other, share experiences, and of course ask questions!We also have giveaways. food and refreshments so be sure to pop by.Please join the Calgary Citrix User Group CommunityÂ and register for the event over here:Â https://www.mycugc.org/page/calgary-jun8-2017?source=5

Azure Global Bootcamp with the Calgary Microsoft User Group

Mon, 24 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

April 22, 2017, the Calgary Microsoft User Group held its first Azure Global Bootcamp event by holding a hands-on event about creating virtual machines. We had a well-attended event having over 30 people in the room.The focus was about deploying Windows and Linux virtual machines in Azure using different management methods. We started off with the Azure Portal then moved into the Azure CLI and eventually Powershell to show the different ways that Azure can be managed.We plan to hold more hands-on Azure events as they are very popular with the group. We’d like to thank our sponsors that helped make this event a success and contribute to ensuring that we can do future events!AMTRA SolutionsMicrosoftOpsgilitymygetSentryOneJet BrainsCloudMonixSentryOneServiceBus360

New Windows 10 IoT Core Images Available!

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Today Microsoft has released a set of images for running Windows 10 IoT core on the Rasberry PI, DragonBoard, and MinnowBoard MAX. The announcement had me interested in what the capabilities of the platform would be since I usually end up managing devices through Configuration Manager and/or Intune.First, let’s start off with what this version of Windows is meant for. The Windows 10 IoT Core edition is the smallest footprint of Windows 10 available for devices. If you look at the infographic below, you can see that Windows 10 IoT comes in many flavors with different levels of functionality. Essentially the Windows 10 IoT Core version of Windows 10 is intended for single purpose use cases. There is no Windows shell and no command prompt, but you do get the ability to run Universal Windows Platform applications. Win32 applications are still supported, but they will not output to the console.Many may wonder what is the point to running Windows under such limited circumstances, but I believe there are some very valid use cases that should be considered. There obviously is the hobbyist market, and though Linux is currently the dominant platform, some developers may feel more comfortable using a pure Microsoft stack to build out their custom creations. The other side is the business market where you want an IoT device that leverages existing developer

Windows 10 Creators Update (1703) Available for Download!

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The Windows 10 Creators Update has hit current branch but will not be available via Windows Update until April 11, 2017. What this means for customers/enthusiasts that want to start using this release of Windows 10 they need to go out to the Windows 10 download site to get the latest release. This installation is driven by the upgrade assistant where you can create media or perform the in-place upgrade to Windows 10 1703.For enterprise customers and developers, the ISO media for Windows 10 1703 can be found on your volume licensing site or MSDN. If you are building Windows images for deployment be sure to update your ADK environment to 1703 as well hosted over in the hardware developer center. There has been some news about potential issues with the new ADK so review the following blog articles by MVP Mikael Nystrom:OS Deployment â€“ Installing ADK 1703 on Windows Server 2016 could failhttps://deploymentbunny.com/2017/04/06/os-deployment-installing-adk-1703-on-windows-server-2016-fails/OSD â€“ App-V tools are missing in ADK 1703 when being installed on Windows Server 2016 (sometimes)https://deploymentbunny.com/2017/04/06/osd-app-v-tools-are-missing-in-adk-1703-when-being-installed-on-windows-server-2016/Need to know what is new with 1607 for IT Pros?No problem, Microsoft has published documentation over here.https://technet.microsoft.com/itpro/windows/whats-new/whats-new-windows-10-version-1703

Curious About Modern VDI?

Thu, 30 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

For the latest set of MVPDays events in Western Canada, I had the opportunity to speak about VDI. The MVPDays team was really on the ball this time around to record some of the presentations, so I had the opportunity to have my video posted to Microsoft’s Channel 9. It was a great time to reconnect with fellow MVPs and customers in Calgary, Edmonton,and Vancouver. Hope to do it again next year. The session looks atÂ how new hardware, software and the cloud is changing the world of VDI.Â ManyÂ smaller organizations have found traditional VDI to be too complex and expensive to adopt while enterprises have struggled to manage it. In this session, I have an overview of some of the modern challenges facing VDI and the options you have to overcome it. I will review some of the latest trends in hardware to create easy to deploy VDI environments on-premises and look at how the cloud is simplifying the design and operation of VDI. I also explore other technologiesÂ at the software level that manage the VDI environment from theÂ hypervisor all the way up to the user data. It hasÂ been a long journey for VDI, but I believe we finally see cost effective solutions that make a stronger case for organizations to phase out traditional desktop computing devices.

MVPDays Western Canada

Thu, 30 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Alan Rafuse, Crystal and DaveRecently I finished the latestÂ tour of MVPDays in Western Canada and it was a great time reuniting with fellow MVPs and IT professionals. In case you haven’t been to an MVPDays event yet you should keep track of the dates, news and speaking opportunities via the MVPDays official Twitter account @MVPDAYS. This conference has been the brainchildof local MVP Dave Kawula and his wife Cristal who is a Veeam Vanguard. Both of them have worked tirelessly to put together these community events featuring Microsoft MVPs talking about some of the hottest technology out there. The event was originally put together to fill the void that was left when TechDays Canada was no longer being put on by Microsoft Canada. Dave felt that these sorts of events were very important to the community and started with a round of events in Western Canada. Soon MVPDays expanded to Central Canada and the USA featuring more MVPs from across Canada and the USA. I’ve been personally amazed at the dedication and enthusiasm of everyone involved especially Dave and Crystal has this can sometimes feel like a thankless job.Speaker preparation the night before in VancouverI’ve been glad to be a part of most of these events as I believe it is important to have more technical events that are independently run rather than being driven

Sequencing with App-V on Windows 10 Enterprise

Fri, 30 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The holidays are almost over, but I have been busy with many little side projects. I’ve meant to produce some instructional videos for years, and I finally got around to making something. I’ve been teaching App-V since the SoftGrid days and maintain a set of courseware with fellow MVP Tim Mangan.My first video is a simple overview of sequencing a simple application. In these 15 minutes, you should have enough information to get a quick primer as to how to sequence an application on using App-V 5.1 on Windows 10 build 1607.I hope you find the video useful and I hope to produce some more. In my next video, I will cover running the sequenced application on a Windows 10 1607 client.

When Does Driver Injection Make Sense?

Tue, 10 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Over the years I’ve generally stayed with a specific piece of advice when performing driver injection when deploying Windows images using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit or System Center Configuration Manager. You start with the expanded driver files and import them while removing drivers that are not relevant to the platform you are deploying. Then you deploy the operating system with driver injection to see which drivers successfully install then remediate the remaining by installing them manually and using a tool such as Driver Magician to export the drivers for import into Configuration Manager. Or you might need to make silent installations of the OEM driver installers that get installed as packages via the task sequence after the Windows operating system has been applied.All of these techniques generally works well with the exception of storage and network drivers because if Windows PE does not have network or more importantly storage drivers that work with your hardware you won’t be able to image the machine. If you look deeper you might realize that there is even more that needs to be considered when deploying drivers with your Windows operating system. For example the most obvious issue is the front end software a driver might have to perform tasks such as further configuring the behavior of the device to updating the device software on a regular basis. For example

How do I Force an Intune Policy Sync on Windows 10

Sun, 24 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

When testing or trying to resolve an issue the default sync settings with Intune can be lacking. If the device is enrolled the initial behavior is every 3 minutes for 30 minutes, and then every 24 hours. If a policy or application is sent to the device Intune will try to notify the device within five minutes, otherwise the device should check in every 24 hours. To force the policy sync on a device open the Start menu and select Settings.Select Accounts.Select Work access then the organization you are subscribed to. At this point there should be additional buttons that appear below. Click the sync button to do a policy synchronization with Intune.To get more information about the sync action you can click the Info button.You can see if the last sync was successful, when the last sync was successful and the last attempted sync. The URL of the management server being used is also displayed.

Azure AD Join Error: System policies prevent you from connecting to a work or school account.

Wed, 06 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I had some fun getting to the bottom of this error and I found some potential issues that can cause this error to pop up that might not be apparent. We had the Azure AD user account configured for Azure AD Join and the user was not over the limit of devices they could enroll (default 5). What we did run into is two items that were generating the error.Don’t perform Azure AD Join with the default administrator account.Make sure the user performing Azure AD Join on the device is a local administrator.FYI: Also make sure the machine is not domain joined.Hope this helps your experience go a little more smoothly.

Quick Query to Find Devices without Forefront Endpoint Protection

Mon, 19 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The status of the endpoint protection agent is stored in SMS_G_System_EPDeploymentState view but the key to the query is filtering on the DeploymentState field. The query below will return any machine that is not fully managed via Configuration Manager.select SMS_R_System.Name, SMS_G_System_EPDeploymentState.DeploymentState, SMS_R_System.Active, SMS_R_System.ADSiteName, SMS_R_System.IPSubnets, SMS_R_System.IPAddresses, SMS_R_System.SystemOUName from SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_EPDeploymentState on SMS_G_System_EPDeploymentState.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId where SMS_G_System_EPDeploymentState.DeploymentState != 3What you need to understand is the different values of the DeploymentState column as the value 3 is the only true successful state. The values can be described as follows:1 - Unmanaged2 - To be Installed3 - Managed (Success)4 - Failed5 - Reboot PendingHappy reporting!

Where Can I Find App-V Training?

Tue, 22 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

IntroductionApp-V training takes many forms and I recommend you take a look at the various offerings available to determine what best suits your needs from both a delivery and content perspective. Training for App-V is offered by Microsoft and a number of customized options also exist outside of that offering but I will first start with what Microsoft offers and go from there.Microsoft TrainingMicrosoft offers a five day course for App-V 5 that is not lumped in with the rest of the MDOP suite as App-V 4 was. This exam also covers virtual desktops so it is not 100% App-V but I do believe the additional content in the exam will be relevant to many users of App-V. This exam is 70-694 and can be found on the Microsoft Learning Website.In addition to the traditional learning track at Microsoft there are a couple courses on Microsoft Virtual Academythat I have personally took that offering and has quite a bit of useful knowledge for free. The first course is done by Aaron Ruckman the senior product manager for MDOP at Microsoft where he delivers a session titled MDOP Application Virtualization Deep Dive. The second course is hosted by Steve Thomas aka the Gladiator who is a senior consultant for Microsoft that often is engaged with very large accounts using App-V. His course is titled Deploying Office

Welcome to the new website. New classes starting November 16, 2015 and December 7, 2015. Check the Courses page for more details.

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

MVPDays is Back! 9 Canadian Microsoft MVP's to Present Content!!! (and counting)

Tue, 02 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

MVPDays is a community roadshow for Canadians that wasÂ co-founded in 2014 by Dave and Cristal KawulaÂ of Tricon Elite consulting to give the Microsoft IT PRO community an in person event that they could attend and get real world advice from recognized experts in the field. This year is the second year for MVPDays and the event is confirmed for Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. The content offered will feature Cloud, IT Pro and Black Belt tracks including sessions that cover and assortment of technologies. Expect to see sessions on hyper converged infrastructure, hypervisors, Windows Server, SharePoint, System Center, PowerShell, Microsoft Azure and other cloud technologies.Interested? Go to www.mvpdays.com and register for one of the locations nearest you. Also if you register in the month of June you can use the promo code earlybird15 for free registration. Yes, we have to wait until the fall for MVP days but feel free to register and join the discussion on the Facebook site https://www.facebook.com/mvpdaysÂ or Twitter at #CDNMVPDAYS.

Confirmed App-V 5.0 SP3 Masters Class LAX May 11-15, 2015

Mon, 23 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

For those of you watching the schedule the LA class for GridmasterTraining’s App-V 5.0 SP3 course has been 100% confirmed to run. The course will be taking place at the Best Western Course held at the Best Western Carriage Inn, 5525 Sepulveda Boulevard, Sherman Oaks, CA. The course will run May 11-15 and is a full five day run of our masters level courseware for Microsoft App-V. More details of this event can be found using the following link.http://www.tmurgent.com/appv/index.php/component/content/article/107-trainingappvclass/325-2015-may-app-v-public-class-kkFor other class options and more information about the training course visit www.gridmastertraining.com.

Microsoft Virtual Academy

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I thought I would post a note over here. I did a quick piece on some of the new courses in the Microsoft Virtual Academy that you can take at your own pace online. I’ve gone through some of the courses and actually was surprised by the quality so I’m encouraging people to take a look at the course list I’ve compiled.http://myitforum.com/myitforumwp/2015/01/05/microsoft-virtual-academy-then-and-now/

Configuration Manager 2012: Query for Machines without Client and Show Last Machine Logon Time with Operating System

Wed, 12 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The title is a mouthful but this is a quick way to get a list of machines that may be potential clients. This query assumes that Active Directory system discovery is enabled with the default attributes.select SMS_R_System.Name, SMS_R_System.LastLogonTimestamp, SMS_R_System.OperatingSystemNameandVersion from Â SMS_R_System where SMS_R_System.Client = “0”

PowerShell: Export Computer Accounts with Last Account Password Change

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

When looking for machines sometimes it is nice to know if they have even talked to the domain recently. Here is some quick PowerShell to get you on your way.Get-ADComputer -Filter ‘ObjectClass -eq “Computer”’ -Properties PasswordLastSet | FT Name,PasswordLastSet > output.txtFYI: Make sure to install the Active Directory Module for PowerShell

UE-V Throws an Exception on Install

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Now that I’ve been using UE-V lately for customer environments I’ve noticed a very bizarre error that can pop up when installing the UE-V 2.0 agent or tools. As you can see below the error message that comes up is rather frightening and suggests that there is something very wrong with the installation.If I navigate to the %temp% folder on the machine I am attempting to install the UE-V agent on you will notice that the Microsoft_User_Experience_Virtualization_Agent_.log isn’t exactly making the issue obvious.[0E70:0E74][2014-09-27T10:40:27]: Burn v3.6.3303.0, Windows v6.1 (Build 7601: Service Pack 1), path: D:UE-VInstallers2.0AnyCPUAgentSetup.exe, cmdline: ‘-burn.unelevated BurnPipe.{87244650-D62D-4444-979C-45197BB6BDD0} {4F666BD9-6261-485E-B93B-0C66CB718C68} 3676’[0E70:0E74][2014-09-27T10:40:27]: Setting string variable ‘WixBundleLog’ to value ‘C:UsersADMINI~1AppDataLocalTempMicrosoft_User_Experience_Virtualization_Agent_20140927104027.log’[0E70:0E74][2014-09-27T10:40:27]: Setting string variable ‘WixBundleOriginalSource’ to value ‘D:UE-VInstallers2.0AnyCPUAgentSetup.exe’[0E70:0E74][2014-09-27T10:40:27]: Condition ‘VersionNT >= v6.1’ evaluates to true.[0E70:0E74][2014-09-27T10:40:27]: Setting string variable ‘WixBundleName’ to value ‘Microsoft User Experience Virtualization Agent’[0E70:0E74][2014-09-27T10:40:28]: Loading managed bootstrapper application.[0E70:0E74][2014-09-27T10:40:28]: Creating BA thread to run asynchronously.[0E70:0EAC][2014-09-27T10:40:29]: Running WixBa[0E70:0E74][2014-09-27T10:40:29]: Detect 2 packages[0E70:0E74][2014-09-27T10:40:29]: Setting string variable ‘ISNETFRAMEWORK40’ to value ‘1’[0E70:0EAC][2014-09-27T10:40:29]: Creating a UI[0E70:0E74][2014-09-27T10:40:29]: Detected package: AgentSetupx86.msi, state: Absent, cached: None[0E70:0E74][2014-09-27T10:40:29]: Detected package: AgentSetupx64.msi, state: Absent, cached: None[0E70:0E74][2014-09-27T10:40:29]: Detect complete, result: 0x0[0E70:0EAC][2014-09-27T10:44:03]: Setup has thrown an exception. Please check the log.[0E70:0EAC][2014-09-27T10:44:03]: The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070422)[0E70:0EAC][2014-09-27T10:44:04]:Â Â Â at WuApiTypeLib.IUpdateServiceManager2.get_Services()Â Â at Microsoft.Uev.Deployment.ManagedBootstrapperApplication.Views.RootView.CheckMuOptIn()Â Â at Microsoft.Uev.Deployment.ManagedBootstrapperApplication.Views.RootView.NextButton_Click(Object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)Â Â at System.Windows.RoutedEventHandlerInfo.InvokeHandler(Object target, RoutedEventArgs routedEventArgs)Â Â at System.Windows.EventRoute.InvokeHandlersImpl(Object source, RoutedEventArgs

Summer Device Update

Sat, 23 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Here are some highlights from the summer device update from Kalvin Falconar at Microsoft.Surface Family Flyer PDFWindows Device Choices June 2014IntroductionEarlier in June the Surface Pro 3 was announced and Surface Authorized Device Resellers are already shipping the i5 version.Â Surface Pro 3 will also be available in i3 and i7 sometime in August, along with a new Surface Pro 3 Dock.Â Â See attached for general specifications on the Surface Pro 3 and the Surface 2.Â The Surface Pro 3 is already making an impact on healthcare, see below for details.Â For availability, pricing and details please contact any Surface Authorized Devices Reseller or drop by a Microsoft StoreAlso this month Xplore Technologies launched their new rugged tablet named â€œBobcatâ€.Â And from Lenovo the fabulous new ThinkPad 10 started shipping!Â All very cool devices.Windows PhoneAs Canadian cellular operators are getting prepared to push out the new Windows Phone 8.1update out shortly, this an opportunity to review an extensive list of new features for WP 8.1. Â Check out â€œwhatâ€™s newâ€!http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/how-to/wp8/basics/whats-new-in-windows-phoneAlso, check out some of the new apps for Windows Phoneâ€¦Project My Screen App for Windows Phone - If you want to project your phone screen to an external display, you can use a USB cable to connect to a Windows device.Adobe finally brings Photoshop to Windows PhoneFiles App- Windows Phone now lets you browse your filesHealthcareSurface

Problem Starting SQL Server: Unable to Initialize SSL Support

Fri, 22 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Today I ran into a bit of a surprise trying to start a SQL server up from a reboot. The server was working before the reboot so I had a bad feeling that this issue might be difficult. The first thing I did is check the SQL server log to see what happened.2014-08-23 02:09:44.63 Server Â Â Â Microsoft SQL Server 2012 (SP1) - 11.0.3128.0 (X64)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Dec 28 2012 20:23:12Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Copyright (c) Microsoft CorporationÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Standard Edition (64-bit) on Windows NT 6.2 (Build 9200: ) (Hypervisor)2014-08-23 02:09:44.63 Server Â Â Â (c) Microsoft Corporation.2014-08-23 02:09:44.63 Server Â Â Â All rights reserved.2014-08-23 02:09:44.63 Server Â Â Â Server process ID is 3704.2014-08-23 02:09:44.63 Server Â Â Â System Manufacturer: ‘VMware, Inc.’, System Model: ‘VMware Virtual Platform’.2014-08-23 02:09:44.63 Server Â Â Â Authentication mode is WINDOWS-ONLY.2014-08-23 02:09:44.63 Server Â Â Â Logging SQL Server messages in file ‘E:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL11.MSSQLSERVERMSSQLLogERRORLOG’.2014-08-23 02:09:44.63 Server Â Â Â The service account is ‘DOMAINdatabaseservice’. This is an informational message; no user action is required.2014-08-23 02:09:44.63 Server Â Â Â Registry startup parameters:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â -d E:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL11.MSSQLSERVERMSSQLDATAmaster.mdfÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â -e E:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL11.MSSQLSERVERMSSQLLogERRORLOGÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â -l E:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL11.MSSQLSERVERMSSQLDATAmastlog.ldfÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â -T 8295Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â -T 41992014-08-23 02:09:44.63 Server Â Â Â Command Line Startup Parameters:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â -s “MSSQLSERVER"2014-08-23 02:09:44.77 Server Â Â Â SQL Server detected 1 sockets with 2 cores per socket and 2 logical processors per socket, 2 total logical processors; using 2 logical

Troubleshooting the Migration Manager: Configuration Manager failed to gather data from .

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I was working on setting up a migration manager connection from a Configuration Manager 2012 site of questionable health to a clean site. In the process I got hung up on an error message that suggested several potential causes for my issue but wasn’t terribly concise.The next step was to figure out what the text logs have to say about this because I thought I had covered off all the culprits listed above. When I checked the migmctl.log on the site server I was performing the migration to I noticed there was something SQL related I wasn’t expecting.[MigrationManager]: Set the schedule item 16777217 to Failed.ERROR: [MigrationManager]: Error occurred when trying to make sql connection to server.domain.com. Contact product support for help. Error Information -2146232060, Login failed. The login is from an untrusted domain and cannot be used with Windows authentication.I didn’t really troubleshoot why the authentication was not happening in depth because the account to be used for the SQL connection was in the same domain as the SQL server. As I result I opted to create a local account on the source server and give it SA rights to SQL. This in turn resolved the issue and I could continue on to making migration jobs.

April / May Windows Devices

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Here is the latest list of devices:https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=D1376BA87A35887F%215462A Note from the Author: Kalvin Falconar @ MicrosoftThe attached Windows Device Choices â€“ April 2014spreadsheet contains many new mobile devices.Â It has been reorganized with tabs for Device Choices (Commercial Tablets & Phones), Rugged + Specialized, Retail and Healthcare specific.Â When I discover specific unique devices, or accessories, I will continue to update this spreadsheet.Windows Phone 8.1 â€“ Cool New FeaturesLast week Windows Phone 8.1was announced â€“ more personal and even smarter than Windows Phone is today. Some of the cool things showcased:Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Cortana - your personal digital assistant. With a name inspired by the popular AI character from Halo, Cortana builds a relationship with you by learning about your interests and habits and then brings information to you as you need it. You can talk to Cortana through your voice or your keyboard, and when she replies youâ€™ll notice she has a real personality!Â·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â An enhanced Start screen: Between the ability to customize your Start background with a photo and the option for a third row of tiles on all phones, Windows Phone 8.1 provides you with an even bolder canvas for expressing your individualityÂ·Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Delighters such as Action Center, which lets you see notifications from any app, a new Calendar with week view and integrated weather like you get in Outlook, and the new Word Flow

New Windows Tablets for March (yes, I',m late)

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Just a FYI here is another list of new Windows tablets being made available.https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=D1376BA87A35887F%214480Also if you are curious about business cases I have a total economic impact report on using Windows tablets in retail.https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=D1376BA87A35887F%214481

Briforum 2013 Application Packaging Smackdown is Available for Streaming

Tue, 10 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Over the summer Nicke Kallen and myself put on a presentation called the Application Packaging Smackdown in Chicago for Briforum 2013. Our goal was to help people understand some of the tooling available for packagers when making both traditional and virtual application packages.Â You can view the presentation over here at BrianMadden.com:http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/videos/archive/2013/08/13/briforum-2013-chicago-session-video-application-packaging-smackdown.aspxIf you are interested in the slide deck it can be found over on SlideShare:http://www.slideshare.net/kkaminsk/briforum2013-applicationpackagingsmackdown-publicFeel free to send feedback to

HOW I GET IT DONE WITH OFFICE 365

Thu, 07 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Iâ€™ve been a skeptic about cloud and mostly writing it off as a fad but once in a while you see where different types of cloud infrastructure can come together to form a beautiful solution that empowers the end user. Keep in mind that Office 365 is more than just Office but a suite of applications running in a data center with most of the mundane administration taken out of the experience. This service is built on enterprise grade architecture and data centers so even the smallest user reaps the benefits of the backend design. This post isnâ€™t to get deep into the details of cloud architecture but more to talk about what Office 365 means to me.One of the most heavily used features for me is SkyDrive Pro because I am finding myself using the same device less throughout my day or I am test driving a new operating system but donâ€™t want to be tied down to the details with migrating data. Think of this as your file server for your documents that can be accessed from a web browser or a native Windows application. If you are in a bind there are web based versions of several common Office applications so you can open and edit from a web browser. You can also share the data with co-workers inside the organization or

Need App-V 5.0 Training?

Fri, 01 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

It is not often I get a chance to break from the usual pace of consulting to take the time to share some of my knowledge through the classroom. I thought it would be worthwhile to do some shameless self-promotion and mention a few course dates coming up where Iâ€™ll be teaching App-V 5.0. The first course is one Tim Mangan and myself developed for Flexera to help people better understand packaging for App-V 5.0 using Flexera AdminStudio over three days in Boston. Check Flexeraâ€™s education schedule over here for registration information.http://www.flexerasoftware.com/services/training/application-readiness-courses/adminstudio-appv-packaging/The other two offerings are an expert level class that Tim Mangan and I maintain around App-V 5.0 with a little CM 2012 thrown in. This class runs a full five days because of the need to discuss a larger set of concepts such as the administration of App-V servers and application deployment with CM 2012. The first date is in Calgary, Alberta (Canada) and the second one is an online offering if you have issues getting budget for travel. Because the online class has some challenges keeping on top of the classroom it is limited to five seats but the course in Calgary is a standard ten seat limit I have. If you are interested in either of the five day classes email me directly (kevin.kaminski@bighatgroup.com) and take a look at the following

Calgary Systems Management User Group Fall Meeting 2013.1: Atea Solutions for the Enterprise

Fri, 20 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This meeting we will explore some of the solutions from Atea that integrate into System Center to optimize operations in a typical enterprise IT environment. We will be exploring thier new take on software asset management using an Azure based solution that can easily plug into most existing environments within minutes. Below is a quick overview from the vendor:Cloud Software Asset ManagementWhy purchase a complex solution when it is the resulting reports that matter? Various tools offer different ways of handling Software Asset Management, but all of them require repetitive administrative work. Atea is able to minimize this work by offering Software Asset Management as a service.Atea Cloud Software Asset Management (Cloud SAM) is a cloud based solution delivering accurate License Compliance Reports with minimal administration required from you.In 2011 Microsoft recognized Atea Cloud SAM as the world’s 1st SAM solution built on the Windows Azure platform.KEY FEATURESWe provide you with online reports that show all necessary information about license compliance and software usageAtea SAM specialists keep reports updated on a daily basisSoftware recognition identifies all licensable and also blacklisted software such as gamesThe service is offered on a subscription-basis with a fixed price per pc/server per monthBENEFITSLower your license costs dramatically. Reports show the actual usage of licenses to help you cut license costs by uninstalling unused software. There are also specific features showing

Missed the Briforum 2013 Application Packaging Smackdown Session?

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This year at Briforum Chicago 2013 Nicke Kallen and myself were selected to deliver a presentation titled Application Packaging Smackdown. What we attempted to do is bring some sort of clarity as to the tooling options that are available to packagers since much has changed recently. These changes include features such as application compatibility analysis, automated application repackaging and support for virtual application packaging. This presentation has been an interesting journey for both of us as we have discovered some surprises along the way as we took a close look at what is currently available for application packaging. One notable surprise was the inclusion of MSI Studio with ChangeBASE. The significance of this discovery has us wondering if this is the new competition to AdminStudio since there isn’t much that supports Windows Installer editing, application compatibility, automated repackaging, and virtual application support into one suite. We also take a look at more niche tools that could be used to complement other tools and make them more comparable to a suite. Unfortunately I am not going to go into deep detail at this time as we are wrapping up a whitepaper to better describe our findings. What we are doing as a bit of a teaser is to publish the slide deck used at Briforum. We’ve decided to release this deck on Nicke’s blog

CM 2012 Software Center Error 0x87D00324 and App-V Detection Methods

Thu, 25 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Generally when deploying App-V 4.x packages with CM 2012 the publishing is one thing you don’t worry about because the information harvested from the package is often sufficient. The problem is that I’ve found one instance where this can be broken, for example I have a package for HP Quality Center that delivers to the users machine but then the installation is marked as failed. If I look closer in Software Center I have an error 0x87D00324 as shown below.The Internet suggests that this is a detection method error but this shouldn’t be happening with an App-V package. In order to get a better idea of what is going on I decided to load up CMTrace.exe and merge a few CM client logs to get a better idea of what is going on. More specifically in the File -> Open dialogue I selected theÂ Merge selected filesÂ checkbox then selected the AppDiscovery.log, AppEnforce.log, AppIntentEval,log and the VirtualApp.log files.Below in CMTrace you can see the App-V sequence being installed but no errors.As I went further info the logs I finally spot an indication that there is a problem. I’ve highlighted in the red box the App-V detection method being marked as failed.This is where things get interesting because you have to manually validate a few things to find out the cause of the detection failure. Â Unfortunately in this

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