How major tech vendors are approaching the cloud market

What are the major tech companies doing to win in the cloud, and how might the market shake out?

There's an old joke that starts: How do you make God laugh?

The answer, of course: Make plans.

Larger services companies bent on world domination have poised a lot of capital into developing cloud resources, and some aren't doing well. Let's ignore Software-as-a-service/SaaS and pure-play cloud services companies, and instead let's focus on some new entrants that staked their claims in other markets beside cloud.
Dell

What They Did: Clouds are made of up disk and virtual stuff, and Dell just bought EMC – whose disk empire is legendary – and with it, a huge chunk of VMware, whose feisty formula for virtualizing all-things-not-nailed-down is legendary.

What Might Happen: In one huge private (not public) transaction, Dell gets The Full Meal Deal, and makes up for a half-decade of losing ground.
Amazon

What They Did: Like all good B-School grads, they took a key success ingredient in their rapidly evolving IT infrastructure and resold excess capacity at such a price as to make it highly attractive to the IT-Maker hybrid community, thus launching still another way to make Amazon more fluid whilst spawning developer and service provider imaginations.

What Might Happen: All leaders are the biggest targets of competitors, who learn by a leader's mistakes, and find cracks to drive hydraulically powered wedges. They've captured imagination, and to keep the pace of that attractiveness and fluidity, must imagine products that don't go stale easily through a long revenue cycle. I say: spin-off.
Microsoft

What They Did: Dawdled, then attempted to take an increasingly brittle if varied and successful computing infrastructure for businesses, along with a huge user base, then not only adapted it for the web, but also made licensing suitable for actual virtualization—then cloud use. Their cloud offering, Azure, now mimes appliance, DevOps/AgileDev, and ground-floor services of their strongest competitors, if a little green in places.

What Might Happen: Microsoft will continue to try to leverage a huge user base into forward-thinking capabilities to extend but not destroy F/OSS initiatives, gleaning the good stuff and vetting as much as is possible into the user cloud model, and also the hybrid and public cloud models. Profit!
Oracle

What They Did: After the indigestion of Sun and MySQL, Oracle wrestled with evolving their own vertical cloud, knowing that their highly successful DB products required comparative platform (and also customer) control. Attempts at virtualization weren't very successful, but the oil well in the basement, SQL infrastructure, continued to produce oil. Cloud offerings were designed for their target clientele and no others, holding ground while not losing ground.

What Might Happen: Oracle's enterprise clientele has a love/hate relationship with Oracle, and migration to another platform makes them shudder and perspire. Core line-of-business functionality continues to evolve but at a comparatively/competitively lower pace than visible progress made in the arena Oracle plays in.
HP

What They Did: HP purchased Eucalyptus, a burgeoning cloud emulation and DevOps/AgileDev integration software organization known for their AWS emulation private cloud capabilities. HP evolved the purchase into the HP Helion Cloud, which offered private, public, and hybrid clouds. Development appeared (to me) to languish at least in the public space as smaller competitors, notably Rackspace (and other pure-play cloud services organizations) evolved. HP announced last week that they're dropping the public portion of their Helion Cloud, after changing management earlier.

What Might Happen: As a hardware company, HP competes potentially with cloud services organizations on the cloud front. Its support for initiatives like OpenStack may change. Now that competitor Dell will digest EMC and VMware, the game has changed.

“If you do one thing, do it very well.” That mantra seems to ring true, and each of these organization has struggled to keep up with the pace of change and competitive pricing, all while attempting to gain, rather than hold, ground. Juggling clouds, to coin a metaphor, isn't easy.

There's one motivating a migration to the cloud that must be absorbed by cloud services organizations that no one likes to talk about: shifting depreciation. Each of these organizations (and more like them) faces cost models while the sands of depreciation fall through the ROI glass.

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70-687 Configuring Windows 8.1

70-687 Configuring Windows 8.1
Published: 17 September 2012
Languages: English, Chinese (Simplified), French, German, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil)
Audiences: IT professionals
Technology: Windows 8.1
Credit towards certification: MCP, MCSA, MCSE

Skills measured
This exam measures your ability to accomplish the technical tasks listed below. The percentages indicate the relative weight of each major topic area in the exam. The higher the percentage, the more questions you are likely to see on that content area in the exam.

Please note that the questions may test on, but will not be limited to, the topics described in the bulleted text.

As of January 2014, this exam includes content covering Windows 8.1.

Install and upgrade to Windows 8.1 (10–15%)

Evaluate hardware readiness and compatibility

Choose between an upgrade and a clean installation; determine which SKU to use, including Windows RT; determine requirements for particular features, including Hyper-V, Miracast display, pervasive device encryption, virtual smart cards and Secure Boot

Install Windows 8.1

Install as Windows To Go, migrate from previous versions of Windows to Windows 8.1, upgrade from Windows 7 or Windows 8 to Windows 8.1, install to VHD, install additional Windows features, configure Windows for additional languages

Migrate and configure user data

Migrate user profiles; configure folder location; configure profiles, including profile version, local, roaming and mandatory

Preparation resources

Utility spotlight: Are you compatible with Windows 8?
Install, deploy and migrate to Windows 8
Windows 8 upgrade paths

Configure hardware and applications (10–15%)

Configure devices and device drivers

Install, update, disable and roll back drivers; resolve driver issues; configure driver settings, including signed and unsigned drivers; manage driver packages

Install and configure desktop apps and Windows Store apps

Install and repair applications by using Windows Installer, configure default program settings, modify file associations, manage access to Windows Store

Control access to local hardware and applications

Configure application restrictions, including Software Restriction Policies and AppLocker; manage installation of and access to removable devices; configure Assigned Access

Configure Internet Explorer 11 and Internet Explorer for the desktop

Configure compatibility view; configure Internet Explorer 11 settings, including add-ons, downloads, security and privacy

Configure Hyper-V

Create and configure virtual machines, including integration services; create and manage checkpoints; create and configure virtual switches; create and configure virtual disks; move a virtual machine’s storage

Preparation resources

Device drivers and deployment
Managing client access to the Windows Store

Configure network connectivity (10-15%)

Configure IP settings

Configure name resolution, connect to a network, configure network locations

Configure networking settings

Connect to a wireless network, manage preferred wireless networks, configure network adapters, configure location-aware printing

Configure and maintain network security

Configure Windows Firewall, configure Windows Firewall with Advanced Security, configure connection security rules (IPsec), configure authenticated exceptions, configure network discovery

Configure remote management

Choose the appropriate remote management tools; configure remote management settings; modify settings remotely by using MMCs or Windows PowerShell; configure Remote Assistance, including Easy Connect

Preparation resources

Managing the new wireless network (IEEE 802.11) policies settings
Windows Firewall with advanced security and IPsec
Deploy remote server administration tools

Configure access to resources (10–15%)

Configure shared resources

Configure shared folder permissions, configure HomeGroup settings, configure libraries, configure shared printers, set up and configure OneDrive

Configure file and folder access

Encrypt files and folders by using Encrypting File System (EFS), configure NTFS permissions, configure disk quotas, configure file access auditing

Configure authentication and authorisation

Configure user rights, manage credentials, manage certificates, configure biometrics, configure picture passwords, configure PIN, set up and configure Microsoft account, configure virtual smart cards, configure authentication in workgroups or domains, configure User Account Control (UAC) behaviour

Preparation resources

Microsoft Virtual Academy: Windows 8 security insights: Module 7—SmartScreen filtering
Windows authentication overview

Configure remote access and mobility (15–20%)

Configure remote connections

Configure remote authentication, configure Remote Desktop settings, configure virtual private network (VPN) connections and authentication, enable VPN reconnect, configure broadband tethering

Configure mobility options

Configure offline file policies, configure power policies, configure Windows To Go, configure sync options, configure WiFi direct

Configure security for mobile devices

Configure BitLocker and BitLocker To Go, configure startup key storage

Preparation resources

Windows 8 VPN get connected
Deploy Windows To Go in your organisation
BitLocker Group Policy settings

Monitor and maintain Windows clients (10–15%)

Configure and manage updates

Configure update settings, configure Windows Update policies, manage update history, roll back updates, update Windows Store apps

Manage local storage

Manage disk volumes and file systems, manage storage spaces

Monitor system performance

Configure and analyse event logs, configure event subscriptions, configure Task Manager, monitor system resources, optimise networking performance, configure indexing options

Preparation resources

Windows Update PowerShell module
Windows Performance Monitor
Windows 8: Task Manager retuned

Configure system and data recovery options (10-15%)

Configure system recovery

Configure a recovery drive, configure system restore, perform a driver rollback, perform a refresh or recycle, configure restore points

Configure file recovery

Restore previous versions of files and folders, configure file history, recover files from OneDrive

Preparation resources

Repair and recovery
How to: Set up and use file history on Windows 8
Windows 8 Jump Start Module 6: Recovery and security

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QUESTION 1
A company has 100 client computers that run Windows 8. You need to assign static IPv6
addresses to the client computers. Which Windows Powershell cmdlet should you run?

A. Set-NetTCPSetting
B. Set-NetIPInterface
C. Set-NetlPv6Protocol
D. set-NetIPAddress

Answer: D

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QUESTION 2
A company has an Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) domain. All client computers run
Windows 8. Portable client computers no longer connect to the corporate wireless network. You
need to ensure that when the corporate wireless network is available, the computers always
connect to it automatically. Which two actions would achieve the goal? (Each correct answer
presents a complete solution. Choose two.)

A. Create a Group Policy object (GPO) to configure a wireless network policy. Link the GPO to
the organizational unit that contains the computers.
B. Configure the corporate wireless network as an unmetered network.
C. Configure the corporate wireless network as a preferred network.
D. Manually connect to the corporate wireless network and select the option to connect
automatically to that network.

Answer: CD

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QUESTION 3
A company has client computers that run Windows 8. The corporate network is configured for
IPv4 and IPv6. You need to disable Media Sensing for IPv6 on the client computers without
affecting IPv4 communications. What should you do on each client computer?

A. Run the Disable-NetAdapterBinding Windows PowerShell cmdlet.
B. Run the Disable-NetAdapter Windows PowerShell cmdlet.
C. Run the Set-NetlPv6Protocol Windows PowerShell cmdlet.
D. Run the Set-NetlPv4Protocol Windows PowerShell cmdlet.

Answer: C

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QUESTION 4
DRAG DROP
A company has an Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) domain. All client computers run
Windows 8. Two computers named COMPUTER1 and COMPUTER2 are connected to one network
switch and joined to the domain. Windows Firewall is turned off on both computers. You are
planning a remote management solution. You have the following requirements:
* Ensure that COMPUTER2 can run remote commands on COMPUTER1.
* Test the solution by successfully running a command from COMPUTER2 that executes on
COMPUTER1.
You need to select the commands to run on COMPUTER1 and COMPUTER2 to meet the remote
management requirements. Which commands should you run?
To answer, drag the appropriate command or commands to the correct location or locations in
the answer area. Commands may be used once, more than once, or not at all. You may need to
drag the split bar between panes or scroll to view content.
Select and Place:



Answer:

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QUESTION 5
A company has 100 client computers that run Windows 8. The client computers are members of a
workgroup. A custom application requires a Windows Firewall exception on each client computer.
You need to configure the exception on the client computers without affecting existing firewall
settings. Which Windows PowerShell cmdlet should you run on each client computer?

A. New-NetFirewallRule
B. Set-NetFirewallSetting
C. Set-NetFirewallRule
D. Set-NetFirewallProfile
E. New-NetIPSecMainModeRule

Answer: A