Azure AD/Office 365 Topics for Global Conference

Hi All,

I’m planning to submit a session to the Global Conference, and would love any feedback on which session you prefer below. I am a systems consultant who works heavily in the Office 365 and Azure Active Directory spaces.

Keeping up with the Joneses – Managing, Preparing for, and Adapting to Change in the Microsoft Cloud

In the days of fully on-premises IT, the IT administrator held all the power. He or she had complete control of all aspects of the system, including updates or upgrades, and was held responsible for any negative impacts.

Now, in the days of cloud-first applications and infrastructure, administrators have lost most, if not all, of the control of updates and upgrades, but are still held responsible for the impact. With Microsoft rolling out new features to Office 365 and Azure every week, the game has changed.

This session will cover not only how to adapt to these rapid changes in the Microsoft cloud, but also how to make them work to the organization’s advantage. We will go into detailed examples of past cloud changes, and how organizations successfully adapted. We will also talk about changing organizational IT strategy to match the new pace of change.

Managing Identities in Azure AD and Office 365

Most, if not all, of the cloud solutions today are completely identity driven. Managing and controlling these identities therefore has become a crucial concern for IT and for security. This session will cover how to properly manage identities in Azure Active Directory. The session will also cover how to manage possible threats to identities using new security features in Azure. There will be a heavy emphasis on exploring real world examples and issues, so come prepared to jump in. We will take a deep dive into identity synchronization using Azure AD Connect and Microsoft Identity Manger, as well as using Azure AD Premium features such as Single Sign-On, User/Group Write-Back and Cloud App Discovery for advanced identity management. Usage of Multi-Factor Authentication and Advanced Threat Analytics to keep cloud identities secure will also be explored.

Any feedback is welcome. Thanks!