P-Seller Update for Friday August 11^th

 

7 topics for this week update

·         Azure Batch Rendering public preview

·         OMS – Log Analytics Upgrade

·         InTune partner integration

·         Azure AD: New sign-in user interface | Public Preview

·         Microsoft Cloud App Security | Enhanced Investigation Features – GA

·         Deploying Office 365 ProPlus with Microsoft Intune

·         The Intune Data Warehouse – now in public preview!

 

Azure Batch Rendering public preview

Enabling customers such as artists, engineers and designers to submit rendering jobs seamlessly via client applications such as Maya and 3ds Max or via our SDK, Azure Batch Rendering accelerates large scale rendering jobs to deliver results to our customers faster.

As part of this offering, Azure is working with Autodesk, Chaos Group and other partners to enable customers to run their day to day rendering workloads seamlessly on Azure. The Batch Rendering feature will provide tools such as client plugins offering a rich integrated experience allowing customers to submit jobs from within the applications with easy scaling, monitoring, and asset management. Additionally, the SDK, available in various languages, allows custom integration with customer’s existing environments. We are also excited to announce a preview of Batch Labs, a desktop management tool, which includes job submission capabilities for supported applications.

For more info, please visit the Rendering on Azure webpage.

 

OMS – Log Analytics Upgrade

Azure Log Analytics, part of the Azure monitoring services, enables customers to collect and correlate data from multiples sources and provides actionable insights about your IT environment. Using these insights, customers can reduce the mean time to resolution of issues and get time back to focus on their next big innovation.

Starting today, the Azure Log Analytics service is rolling out the upgrade to existing customers – offering powerful search, smart analytics, and even deeper insights. This upgrade provides an interactive query language and an advanced analytics portal, powered by highly scalable data store like what Azure Application Insights, an application performance monitoring service part of the Azure monitoring services, offers today. Thereby creating a consistent monitoring experience for IT operations and developers.

The query language offers flexible search functions and machine learning constructs to help customers get deeper insights from their data. For instance, the autocluster operator helps analyse failures such as exceptions and crashes by finding common patterns of discrete attributes in the data. The analytics portal supports multiline editing of queries, new visualizations, and advanced diagnostics such as click to diagnose capability based on machine learning.

In the initial phase of the roll out, when the customers Log Analytics workspace is ready to be upgraded they will see a banner in their workspace with a call to action. Once they click and upgrade, they can start using the new capabilities and continue to use the solutions and views, they had prior to the upgrade, without any interruption. If they are new to Log Analytics, during the initial phase, they will need to start by activating their free account and then upgrade to the new capabilities. Once the roll out is complete across all Azure regions, new users can get started without having to upgrade.

Please visit the Azure Log Analytics documentation page and read the blogpost to learn more and get access to additional resources.

 

InTune partner integration

New Intune integrated partners: Check Point and Saaswedo – now generally available!

• Check Point SandBlast Mobile (Mobile Threat Defense)
  The integration between Check Point and Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security helps secure mobile devices from advanced cyberthreats, and help ensure that only compliant devices have access to company resources. Check Point SandBlast Mobile provides a centralized, comprehensive security solution that safeguards against progressive mobile cyberattacks—while ensuring employees’ privacy. SandBlast Mobile protects employees’ devices from: malware attacks via infected apps, Man-in-the-Middle attacks on compromised Wi-Fi networks and hotspot logins, exploitation of operating systems for rooting and jailbreaking, and malicious links sent on SMS messages. This integration makes it easy to apply SandBlast Mobile’s threat intelligence as an additional input into Intune’s device compliance settings. Once a threat is detected, SandBlast Mobile immediately applies on-device protections and notifies Intune to enforce device status changes and conditional access controls to ensure that company data stays protected until the issue is remediated. Visit Check Point’s product website for more information on their service.
• Datalert from Saaswedo (Telecom Management)
  This integration between Saaswedo and Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security gives customers more control over managing their data and roaming costs. It brings Datalert’s real-time mobile data usage management capabilities together with Microsoft Intune’s MDM capabilities, providing customers the ability to monitor and managing real time mobile data usage by their employees on smartphones and tablets. The integration streamlines the deployment of the Datalert app onto user’s devices and connects the Datalert data to Intune to block data and/or roaming for users once usage thresholds are hit, automating the process for IT to ensure that data thresholds are not exceeded. 
  Visit Datalerts product website for more information on their service.

Note that any necessary licenses for Check Point and Saaswedo products must be purchased separately from EMS/Intune licenses.

 

Azure AD: New sign-in user interface | Public Preview

Microsoft continues to make progress on converging the Azure Active Directory and Microsoft account identity systems. One of the big steps on this journey is to redesign the sign-in user interface so both systems look consistent. Starting today this updated design is in public preview for Azure Active Directory and will be available for testing on the Office 365, Azure and other Microsoft cloud sign in pages. 

What's changing:

• Redesign of Azure Active Directory and Microsoft Account sign-in experiences
  Azure Active Directory and Microsoft account sign-in pages will both change to have a consistent look and feel.
• Pagination of the Azure Active Directory sign-in page
  Pagination means that instead of collecting the username and password on the same screen, we’ll be collecting the username first followed by a credential or proof (typically a password) on a second screen. This improves the user experience and allows new forms of authentication like phone sign-in and certificate-based authentication.

Starting today, A banner on the Azure Active Directory sign-in page will provide users the option to opt-in to the new experience so they can test if it works as expected with possible automations or custom branding you have deployed for your organization. This new interface will become the default option during the last week of September 2017. 

 

 

Microsoft Cloud App Security | Enhanced Investigation Features - GA

Enhanced Investigation Features for Microsoft Cloud App Security

·         Automated log uploads for custom log formats – In this release we have embedded custom logs formats  into our log collectors and the automated log upload. This means that it is easier than ever to use custom log formats in automated log uploads, for example, from SIEMs or other custom log formats.

·         More IP insights – IP address information is crucial in investigations; this release extends user insight functionality for IP addresses. You can now view detailed information about IP addresses in the Activity Drawer. From within each specific activity, click on a specific IP address tab to view consolidated data about the address, including the number of open alerts, a trend graph of recent activity and a location map for the IP address.

o   Performing more actions directly in the IP address drawer enables tagging and filtering of IP addresses in support of your policies and investigations.

·         Better Salesforce Event Monitoring visibility – Now customers have enhanced visibility into Salesforce activities objects when Salesforce Event Monitoring is enabled. This includes (leads, accounts, campaigns, opportunities, profiles and cases, for Microsoft Cloud App Security policy configuration on these objects. An example; configuring an alert when a user views an unusually large number of account pages.

·         More filters in the Investigation Pages – When right clicking on an activity in the investigation pages, new filters have been added for advanced investigation and filtration. These new filters are: view related activity, view related governance, view related alerts, view owned files, and view files shared with this user.

 

 

Deploying Office 365 ProPlus with Microsoft Intune

We have been hard at work with Office 365 and Windows 10 teams to create Microsoft 365, a modern workplace solution that empowers everyone to be creative and work together, securely.

We are excited to announce the latest innovation in this space – the ability to deploy Office 365 ProPlus applications to Windows 10 devices from the cloud with Intune. This development marks the first step towards having simple and enterprise-ready ProPlus deployment capabilities with Intune with more enhancements to come in the near future.

We worked to make it easier for you to select specific Office 365 ProPlus apps (using Click-to-Run or C2R technology), deploy them to enrolled devices running Windows 10 Creators Update, and view deployment metrics through the new Intune portal on Azure. This works nicely with Windows AutoPilot that enables employees to get their new devices work-ready by just providing their company credentials during OOBE while Azure AD and Intune work in the background to register the device, deploy the necessary configurations, and now also install Office 365 ProPlus apps.

Read more here.

 

 

The Intune Data Warehouse: enabling deeper reporting capabilities – now in public preview!

Having the right data at your fingertips is a must for busy IT teams managing diverse mobile environments. That’s why Intune’s reporting graphs and charts are mainstays of our administrative experience – allowing you to monitor your environment and view the status of devices and apps across several dimensions, including device compliance, device configuration, app inventory, and deployment status. These reports make it easy for you to see what’s happening in real-time in your environment and take the appropriate actions if something needs to be adjusted or tended to.

The new Intune Data Warehouse takes our reporting capabilities a step further, giving you more powerful custom reporting around your environment over time. With a dataset spanning up to 90 days of historical data, you can connect the Data Warehouse to Power BI, Excel (or another analytics tool that supports OData feeds) to view historical trends, get daily snapshots and create other custom reports across multiple tables.

To get started using the Intune Data Warehouse, open your Intune admin console on the Azure portal, click on the Intune Data Warehouse tile, and then follow the instructions on the subsequent blade.

Read more here.