Pleasure to meet you, Paul and Matthew.
How's it going, guys? Great, thanks. Nice
to meet you too. So I'm a
part of the ETC team here at
Microsoft again, ETC stands for Expert
Technology Consultants. We're A-Team here
at Microsoft. That for
any questions you guys may have, uh,
typically we're known for demonstrations,
information and resource purposes. Our
team actually has no way of doing any
sort of transactions or sales on our end.
So hopefully that shares to you guys. We
are truly here just for information and
resource purposes. We do try our best to
make sure you guys are working with some
sort of Microsoft partner. Um, as we do
work hand in hand with these folks, uh,
typically if you guys have any ongoing
conversations with the partner, we love
to kind of lean in as a point of contact
here at Microsoft to help you guys out if
we can. Now, obviously everything that we
have available to you guys is entirely
complementary on our team is truly at
your guys's disposal for exploring. And
just having discussions around Microsoft
solutions, really we have folks that
specialize in all different areas and
aspects of Microsoft solutions. So
actually more so specialize in cost
optimization as well as security. Those
are my areas. Typically there, you know,
we'll touch on things like licensing
agreements, you know what's all included
in licenses. You guys just, you
know, do you guys have we need licensing
ones? We're always honest.
It doesn't make sense for always point
that out to you as well as you know,
if we can ever give you that clarity and
confidence. We understand that Microsoft
licensing structure gets a bit
complicated sometimes they love to change
it as well. And these days when it comes
to pricing anything like that, acquiring
licenses will always recommend go to your
partner. Is they typically will have the
best deal and they'll help you get it all
set up. Now, rumor
has it you guys are looking for some
data loss prevention kind of stuff,
right? Um, more so for data protection,
data privacy, all the above. Typically
guys, everything that you can imagine
when it comes to data protection is
within Microsoft purview. Let me go ahead
and share my screen. They did both our
presentation really just to give us some
good structure. If you guys have any
questions feel free to put me on the
spot. I will make sure after the call
too. I sent over an e-mail recapping
everything and you guys will have my
point of contact there as well if you
want to shoot me any questions.
I would appreciate you guys bearing with
me. That's sick over here. Just getting
over a little bit of a sickness.
Definitely doing a lot better, but let
you guys know. Umm, yeah. So
just jumping on in here just to give you
guys some additional parity and context
around our team, ETC. As I mentioned,
cost optimization typically there we
touch on licensing. We do also focus on
Azure side of things. Azure services
typically best practices when it comes to
Azure, especially ways you guys could
optimize there if you can, we understand
that. It's common that folks pay for way
more than what they actually utilize on
Azure services. So typically here we try
to help you guys optimize through tools
like Azure Advisor and we do often
recommend Arcadia security evaluation
tool too, as like a way of auditing your
environment. Again, something that is
complementary on the security side, guys,
typically we'll cover just best
practices. Here all security solutions we
do deep dive demonstrations of as well.
These days we see a lot of interest in
AI. Microsoft AI solution being Copilot.
Really the value there is time. You know
how you can save time just through AI as
the AI system helps you kind of boost
productivity. Ultimately really the key
thing is though is making sure you guys
have a lot of baseline. Protection in
place before utilizing any sort of AI
solution these days, Copilot does make
you go through like a a preconfiguration
process just to ensure that things like
MFA and some baseline security policies
are in place depending on where you guys
are. You know, we see a lot of folks
that are all for AI these days. We see
some folks though. But you know, they
need a little bit more time, whether it's
a year or some months down the road.
Wherever you guys are, gladly let us
know. We'll always be willing to back you
up. Now I do
like to start off with looking at our
current agreements in place just to give
us a good idea of what we have already.
You guys have First off, M365 Copa,
awesome to see that. Always copilot these
days typically as it is a newer solution.
I say it's newer. It's been about three
years of active development we've seen.
Copilot, I'm very secure, very robust,
but very customizable, and you guys could
limit how users prompt Copilot and it has
a lot of extended functionality already
available and more to come. Depending on
where you guys are with Copilot, we'd
love to show you guys any sort of
functionality there that you guys are
kind of considering. Just typically what
we do is just deep dive demos of all the
applications. And some of the most
popular functions and features that are
available. Beyond that, you guys do have
to have at least a Business Standard
license before it does allow you to get
Copilot. But we do typically try to
recommend being on this business premium
license that you guys do have, reason
being it includes all of Microsoft
security solutions typically. For
purposes, if you guys are below
300 users of premium, typically is
the best package you got and
currently get this is premium includes
Microsoft Defender, Defender more so for
applications, right? So things like any
sort of e-mail, inbound and outbound,
phishing and spam. Section as well and
we talking defender, it does do um
application protection, so you guys can
do like sensitivity labels and stuff like
that depending on if you guys need like
content classification, just really more
so for sensitive information purposes. I
think the biggest thing for you guys
could potentially be Microsoft purview.
Microsoft Purview is something you guys
already have access to as well through
Microsoft Business Premium. Per View is
known for information protection as well
as data loss prevention and all data
privacy and ways that data is handled
through your guys's environment.
Something really neat with Purview these
days. Um, they recently enabled DS PM,
which is data security posture management
for AI. So you guys can actually see how
users are benefiting from AI in your
environment. It gives you a ton of data
and reports there, which is quite neat.
So if you guys wanted to see, you know,
how, how your users are prompting
copilot, what kind of responses they're
getting there. And again, just further
just views into how AI is being utilized
there. Beyond that, you guys also have
access to Intune. Intune is awesome for
mobile device management purposes. If you
guys just wanted to essentially one
portal where you can manage all your
devices in one place, Really a neat tool
because it does these days. Populate any
sort of error reports that pop up. So if
you guys wanted to have like a zero touch
IT experience, so to say that's the goal
of Intune. It does these days have like a
timeline where it could show you all the
different error reports users get. So if
you guys wanted to go in as IT and kind
of look at a timeline view and see what
kind of error reports users are getting.
These days it does also pick up on blue
screens. It's kind of funny because I
know Microsoft is in the process of
getting away with blue screens. But
again, if it did populate, it will
showcase to you, you know what that error
code would be, which could be things like
RAM or whatever it may be, but Intune is
really awesome for what is known as
Autopilot. Always got to ask, do you guys
use?Intune and Autopilot or any of that
stuff currently. We're
looking into Intune right now. We
have a mandate from a contract
that we've just gotten that, uh,
we have to restrict data export
on our USB drives or USB
ports for a couple of our
machines. So that's what we're trying
to implement. Currently, OK, umm, I do
have a resource that I could share with
you that will give you guys that direct
guidance. That is something that you guys
do, however, currently have full access
to. It's just a matter of kind of getting
that configured. There's a couple way of
doing that, a couple ways of doing that,
sorry. So Intune is typically where you
guys would begin. As you guys could
configure your endpoint DLP settings
within there endpoints being the devices
more so. Typically when we say endpoint
it always means the devices are.
Sometimes it can mean servers as well.
There's a process where when you guys
onboard users, you guys can set as
your. IT admins can actually
set the configuration so they
can't actually utilize any sort
of USB's. Another thing you
guys can actually do is
through.
Believe it was
Entra. Let
me double check.
I think that's what we've been trying so
far, right Matthew?
Alright, combination with Intune
and Defender.
Yeah. OK. And and
so we've gotten them, we've used the
entry ID to configure them, seems to
be going OK, although we still have
access to the USB drive. So it
hasn't really locked them down yet, even
though we have the policies applied,right?
Let me look into that for you guys
because I do have some guidance here.
That's great and I'll send that over via
e-mail. Thank you. For sure there is
multiple ways you kind of have to go in.
So you guys do already have the policy,
but there is a way that you can block
with override. For any sort of
USB control. So those guys just
can't be used. Um, there is
also, I'm seeing there is a
policy we can put in purview
that would also define actions to
be able to block users from
utilizing that USB for those purposes.
OK. Yeah, I'll give you some good
guidance there. Great bring up. That is
something I had on my one of my previous
calls. So I do have some good information
there and I'll make sure you you guys
have that guidance as you need. Great.
Thank you, Jack. You got it, boss.
It was a great bring up. Umm, something
else with purview. Umm, you guys can run
an assessment in purview? Do you guys
have like a compliance policy you have to
abide by, like Hippo or Nest or we
do? Yeah. Yeah, We're having the HIPAA
audit right now, but we're starting soon.
It hasn't started yet. We're socked. To
Type 2 certified right now, but the HIPAA
audit as part of the contract, we need
a DLP solution implemented and then you
know, I'm sure we're going to have to
do some of these audits like you're
talking about like Purviews, right? Cool.
Yes. So Purview is going to do all
of that. Especially when it comes to
HIPAA compliance. The best part is it has
built-in assessments these days so you
guys can run like a simulation to see if
your environments compliant and if it's
not, it directly shows you where you need
to make improvements. A lot of the time
it just gives you some links to side
sides of the portal to get some stuff
enabled to become compliant. That's
typically one of the best things we would
recommend. We do have a cloud and
security evaluation tool that also does
the auditing side, but always try to
recommend tools that already exist for
you there. It could be beneficial too if
we demo that to you guys. Do like a
Purview demo or like a Intune demo to
showcase to you guys some of those
features. Yeah, whatever works for you.
Yeah, the purview for sure. We'd we would
need some more guidance on awesome. We
can definitely do that for you guys.
Obviously any other demos you guys may
need down the road typically from this
point, you know, looking at those
add-ons, not going to make any, any
recommendations there? Audio conferencing
plans, Unfortunately there's not a
bundle. That includes these guys today.
Same thing goes for projects. You guys
did do the best thing going for the
add-ons. I will point out however, that
there has been a lot of promotional
offerings through Microsoft recently.
Unfortunately, those are only through
Microsoft partners. So if you guys are
looking at Coke pot licenses or Business
Premium. Instances that you guys already
have, just more users, always check with
your partner first, see if they have a
deal. There's a good chance that they
will just because we're at like the end
and start of the new year, OK? And these
days they're trying to offer business
premium included with Copilot. So you
guys may find that you can actually get
Copilot included entirely free.
So just a good promo there. And again,
that's something through the partner.
Unfortunately, that's not something we
could do for you guys directly.
Typically, we love to give clarity around
Microsoft licensing. Sorry, my slide
actually here is a bit out of date. Not
all these licenses include Teams these
days. We do share out official Microsoft
documentation and give you guys clarity
around. What's included with licenses
typically, as I mentioned before guys,
Business Premium can't recommend it
enough because it has Defender Intune
entry ID and information protection.
Really those are all the security
solutions that you guys need from
Microsoft and anything above that there
could be some specific functionality.
Typically you can get an add-on rather
than going for like the enterprise level
licenses that you guys just. You need the
E Typically if you guys ever hear about
M365 or O365E, the E just means more
so designed for 300 users or more. You
guys look at like some of the portals,
there's just some additional views for
scalability purposes. Beyond
that, you guys already have some sort of
Microsoft partner in place. I believe
I already asked that possibly, um.
I think so. I'm not sure. We we
actually were set up originally by
someone who's a Microsoft employee now.
So she may have done a lot of
this for us, but most likely, yeah.
We could do for you guys. We do have
partner connection managers here at
Microsoft PCM for short. If there's ever
a need for getting connected with your
partner, especially if there's like
promotional offerings and stuff like
that, or if you guys just need assistance
working with your partner on the
relationship. We do see some cases
unfortunately where turn around time.
Communication you know something may not
be the best, so we can always lean in
and introduce you guys to your PC, your
partner connection manager and they'll
always help you guys get all the
necessary resources you potentially need
Intune again, obviously if you guys want
Intune demo per view definitely makes
more sense right now, but down the road.
I'll showcase something like that to you.
Do you guys use any Azure services
currently beyond things like Entra?
You like VM's or storage stuff?
Matthew, what are all the services
that we use?
Uh App Services and,
uh, SQL Server.
OK, it's not usually something.
It's not, not too much, but you guys do
have some answer services. So I'll give
you guys a link to Azure Advisor, a great
tool. It's a lot like Defender, really
just something again, we can't recommend
enough because these guys do have solid
recommendations to give you a lot of very
easily actionable stuff. You just click
on the link, it will bring you to where
you need to go as your advisor typically
has a score. Your goal is to get
that score as high as possible, 100%
ultimately to see if there's ways that
you guys can improve upon cost. It
will, because your Azure advisor has been
existing and collecting information over
since your environment was first
established does have strong
recommendations. It may sometimes
recommend downsizing. Configuration
profiles, if you guys have a case like
that, just because Azure Advisor does
know if that machine is underutilized, so
there's a way that we could potentially
help you guys optimize Azure Advisor
could be a great starting point.
Typically, we'll give you the
recommendations you do need. Again, our
cloud security evaluation tool could be
something so we can get some further
insights where we can actually see.
Utilization report does actually let us
see things like CPU utilization and it
gives us a breakdown of a more optimized
configuration profile for that type of
workload. So you know again, there's a
way we can help you guys optimize. It
does do an auditing part too, where it
kind of lets us see security side of
things so. You know, if if you guys are
running like an out of date Windows
Server version, it will recommend just
being on the latest version say 2024 for
example. But really it's up to you guys
if you do an upgrade like that or not. So
just a great tool. Again, I'll include a
link for it. Copilot not going to take up
too much of your time because I know you
guys are already playing with Copilot.
Just go out. Let us know if you guys want
to see more of what it's all about. Um,
typically Purview is your best bet these
days for everything Copilot as it does
offer that DSPN functionality where it's
just really a neat view to kind of see
how AI is being used as a whole in your
environment. And these days
we do also see a lot of interest
like government based accounts just
because they could limit how users
utilize Copilot. So through things like
predefined templates they can use the
most popular functions and features that
are available through something like
Copilot. And again, we offer deep dive
demos there. So if we could showcase to
you guys anything that maybe you didn't
know already existed. My
final slide for you guys today, Block 64,
again, we refer to these guys as B64A.
Really neat thing happened here with
Microsoft partnered up with these guys,
paid for their services and their
evaluation tool licenses itself. If you
guys Bing or Google Box 64 typically like
the first link that will come up, very
well known these days. They're auditing
purposes. Typically this tool gives us a
360 overview of your environment. It is a
tool that has to run a scan on your
environment. So the process, usually the
way that looks is we have a first call
with Block 64 directly where we provide
you guys like a whole demo of what you
can expect from the reports and insights
of this tool. From there, they explained
to us typically just need one machine
that is connected to the environment to
install the tool on. The tool typically
runs its course for about 5 days. After
that. We're provided with the reports and
insights that were collected and we do a
whole deep dive with you guys and we're
here with you every step of the way. What
you guys can really expect. There are 360
overview of your environment pertaining
to everything over here on the right. It
does go above and beyond the tools there
already exist. So things like Azure
Advisor we could see, Microsoft Defender
we could see, but it goes above those
guys. So typically these days we do see a
lot of like on the security side, out of
date Windows operating system versions.
We do try to. Get everybody up to Windows
11 as in October we, you know, we ran,
we got away from the security updates on
Windows 10, unfortunately. So really it's
just the best practice to get everybody
over to Windows 11. Typically we get some
recommendations to go through things like
Intune for those processes. Again, on the
server side, if there's some
vulnerabilities, it's very common. It's
just out of date server versions. Um,
again, we could see any of the
vulnerabilities and what's being
recommended through Defender as well on
the Azure side. I always say this is like
the best part because we actually get to
see a report of utilization for your
guys's virtual machines and services
within Azure does also allow us to see a
breakdown of. What's the word options
that you guys have? So if there's ever a
way we can help you guys kind of optimize
some of those workloads, gives us a
breakdown of more optimized profiles, but
also just the breakdowns of all the
different price points. Also if you guys
have any overlap with certain third party
services that could be migrated into
Azure and sometimes those are caught and
it does let us know. Exactly what those
price points look like. So just a great
way, you know, to see if you guys could
potentially optimize on the Azure side or
not cost optimization this side. I always
like to say it's really licensing in
depth. Do you guys ever question if all
of those business premium users are
actually using their licenses, certain
licenses if they're actually being
utilized?He gets to see application
insights these days. If you guys look at
the admin portal, it doesn't give you too
much insights in there. It gives you like
a usage tab letting you know if each
license has been assigned to each user
and if they've logged in at a certain.
Something along those lines. This will
actually let us know if they're fully
utilizing all the applications available
to them. That's common too looking at
this side of things, excuse me, that we
will see inactive solutions like Intune.
So we'll you know we'll mention like hey,
if you guys aren't using Intune could be
a benefit here we could show you what
it's all about. We do see inactive
licenses too, working with partners it's.
Very common. They have some sort of
agreement in place, so there's a lot of
additional licenses kind of set aside to
prepare for onboarding some needs.
Hello.
That is more so right now. Let us
know how your guys's environment stands
when it comes to AI. A lot of
this is DLP and data protection. More so,
referring to Purview gives us a lot of
great recommendations to give or
implement and configure some policies
within Purview Intune as well. Yeah, umm
defender. So again, you know, if you guys
wanted to kind of see ways you can
improve upon security for AI a great way
and more is any third party stuff, any
third party solutions you guys may
potentially be using doesn't hurt to have
them. You know, typically if you
guys want to optimize, we could
definitely help you get all over to
Microsoft. There's a lot of security
solutions and 3rd party solutions out
there that have some extended features
and functionality. So it's really on you
if you want to keep a lot of those guys.
It doesn't hurt to have additional layers
at all. Yeah, this is the tool
that's always available to you guys. I
mean, I say that it's been like 3 years
now. Really, you just reach out, we
scheduled the demo and you can always run
it, you know, multiple times. So if you
guys wanted to run it out the gate, see
where you're at, run it, you know, a
month or two or three or however long
down the road you always can to see, do
you want to do this?OK. I'd
like to schedule it. So that's great.
What's what's the time that we work good
for you guys? Usually we just need 24
hours heads up for any sort of our
consults.
Well, we can. Let's see, we could
do something on Friday.
Sweet deal. Friday. What? Same time
Friday. Work. Work. Anytime during during
the day. Matthew, are you in?
You're in office, right? On Friday
the 5th. OK, yeah. Anytime from
like 12:00 to 3:00 we could
do. 12:00 to 3:00 Eastern.
Yeah. So we'll do 1:30 PM if
that's OK. That's great. Thank you.
You got it boss, so I will make sure I
send a ticket over. So we're here with
you guys with block 64 and then I will
also include some additional information
on that for you guys via e-mail. Umm the
way the data is handled is very simple.
Your data is your data. You guys get to
share whoever has access to those reports
too if you want to. Um, we are able
to help us, uh, send over that meeting
invite to you guys as well. So we'll look
forward to doing that with you guys on
Friday after that, You know, we could
definitely do that per view demo showcase
to you guys, that functionality. We can
get that on the bucks an hour. You know,
if you guys just want to wait till after
that call is fine too Well, I mean. We
do need that DLP solution in
place, so yeah, that has to
happen. I'm um. Yeah,
we could do it. We could do it that day
also, or we can do it on Monday. Yeah, we
we could definitely do it on Friday.
Let's see, I have Friday at 12:30. Does
that work for you guys? Yeah, that'd be
fine. And then an hour later, we'll do
the demo for you guys too. OK OK,
cool. This will be pretty good. All
right. Sweet. Well, I will get that on
the bucks with Abe here shortly. Umm
again, guys, look forward to an awesome.
You know, here I'll make sure I include
some additional information. I wanna look
into that USB stuff too. I I do have some
good guidance on that for you. OK. And
obviously if you guys any questions,
shoot, shoot in my way. OK, OK, Thanks
Jack and thank you. No
worries. Um, did you want me to? So
what time did you wanna do the purview
one at 12? You said that would be
12:30 on Friday. 12:30 on Friday. OK,
excellent. I'll send over that invite
here shortly and we'll assign an ATC call
Rep for that one.
Yeah, and then and then the 1/3 and
then we're doing an hour later the Block
64. OK, sounds good. And for the Block
64, you want to submit the ticket, Jack?
And then for the purview, I'll submit
that ticket. Perfect. OK. Yeah, no
worries. No worries. Thank you so much.
OK. All right, guys. Thank you. Yeah,
thank you. Take it easy. Have a good
one. Bye.
Uh.