Podcasts

With more than 30 years of experience covering Microsoft, Directions on Microsoft provides unique perspectives about the shifts in Microsoft technologies, roadmaps and licensing policies that matter most to enterprise-size companies. Twice each month industry veteran Mary Jo Foley interviews a different Directions analyst for informed insights and advice to help you derive full value from your Microsoft investments.

March 13, 2023 . Season – 2 · Episode – 5 · Duration – 21m 58s Teams or Outlook? Why Not Both People forget, but Teams isn't Microsoft's only collaboration solution: Exchange combined with Outlook is by far Microsoft’s most mature and popular collaboration platform. In this episode, Mary Jo Foley talks with Directions' Rob Helm and Jim Gaynor about where Teams and Outlook overlap, integrate and compete — and what it means for customers planning their collaboration strategies.

March 2, 2023 . Season – 2 · Episode – 4 · Duration – 21m 36s Microsoft Licensing for Non-Microsoft Clouds Microsoft licensing rules are written to favor customers that use Azure and penalize customers who run their Microsoft software on competitors’ cloud platforms, especially AWS, Google, and Alibaba. In this podcast, Mary Jo Foley and analyst Wes Miller discuss the extra licensing costs Microsoft customers face when they use non-Microsoft clouds to run their Microsoft workloads – including recent and upcoming rule changes that further increase the pressure to use Azure.

February 13, 2023 . Season – 2 · Episode – 3 · Duration – 19m SQL Server 2022’s New Azure-Connected Features In this episode, Mary Jo Foley and Andrew Snodgrass discuss the advantages, limitations and workarounds of Azure-connected features in SQL Server 2022. They cover the activities you need to take, and other services required, for use of certain features. Final considerations before adoption are summarized as well.

February 2, 2023 . Season – 2 · Episode – 2 · Duration – 30m 29s The World of Microsoft Regulatory Compliance Solutions Regulatory compliance is a challenge for most large organizations. In this podcast, Mary Jo Foley and Directions analyst Barry Briggs discuss the headaches regulatory compliance creates for IT departments and the “good news-bad news” of new cloud solutions Microsoft offers to help.