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 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.

January 16, 2023 . Season – 2 · Episode – 1 · Duration – 23m 48s Analyzing Microsoft’s Migration to .NET In this episode of the Directions on Microsoft Briefing, Mary Jo Foley and Directions analyst Rob Sanfilippo discuss Microsoft’s case studies of its migration from the .NET Framework to .NET. What were the benefits gained and lessons learned, what is missing from Microsoft’s narratives, and under what circumstances is it best to migrate to .NET? Mary Jo and Rob also discuss the value of Microsoft case studies in general.