Yeah, welcome back to the MC65 and the podcast where we explore Microsoft AI, Cloud and point management and pack,
while the shaping the future of enterprise IT.
Today's guest has an extraordinary impact on Microsoft modern road place journey through the acquisition of FS Logics.
He became the part of Microsoft and had shaped the, well, would become Azure Word will desktop and Windows 365 platform.
Now serving organizational around the globe. Now he has changed to a new employee.
He worked as nerve at NERDIO along the way he contribute to innovations like Microsoft 365,
who to Windows 365 switch and those app next generation Windows AI experience, out of five books and listen.
As an investor on multiple, yeah, the patterns covering cloud computing AI and visualization today.
We'll diving into the evolution of cloud PCs, the rising of agentic AI and the future of into an end point management Windows 365.
Microsoft co-pilot rather enterprise IT is having over the next decade.
Christian, welcome to the MC65 and podcast.
>> Yeah, Mirko, thanks to her having me.
I love to be here. So thanks to the invite and looking forward to our conversation.
>> Yeah, you have an extraordinary way. Can you tell a little bit how that you began and how you end up at NERDIO?
>> Yeah, it's a good question. So first of all, I just like yourself, we were chatting before.
We started recording about a community and a Microsoft MVP and really help each other to learn and share knowledge
and give each other opportunities to share things you learned.
That's really where my career started as well. So back in 2016, all 2015 pretty much like 10, 11 years ago.
I started to embrace the community and share my knowledge and present at user groups and blog and
all these things that's part of that great community work you do next to your day job pretty much too.
And yeah, after that, I kind of got a lot of opportunities and at some point in 2016, 2017,
I got an opportunity to join a company called F is Logic and F is Logic is a profile management solution
that now is part of Microsoft as the core technology.
I got acquired about Microsoft in 2018 and I was in a consultant doing kind of the community work on the side.
And kind of as part of the community work, I created more opportunities kind of a little bit
or let's say community opportunities created kind of new business opportunities for me to join
F is Logic's and then I've got a called a choir. And that after since I've been part of Microsoft for
eight years, A VD, Azure Virtual Desktop, the LVVD back in the days when it was still called like that.
And then eventually in 2020, I moved from the A VD to a project called Project Your Shoots which
turned out to be Winnus 365. So building an installed mode for one and a half years. First in the
Netherlands for nine months and then I moved with my family to Reppman's so I worked, I lived there
for five years. We just came back as that product when Skyrocket with COVID remote working was more
popular than I before. I kind of worked on a couple kind of example scenarios and features you
just called out. But at some point, I really saw kind of the partner landscape evolving AI and
what you said like entry 65, co-pilot, like agent AI. So I saw an opportunity to go work for the
largest partner of Winnus Cloud, so Winnus 365 and actually worked as a which is NERDIO, to build a whole new
platform from scratch and really hands and embrace the Winnus 365 and in tune story. And that's the
platform that I'm currently building and I'm spearheading that team with like roughly 20 people there
and it's really excited to see as the, yeah, the first start of that kind of set of experiences is
coming to life and an age two, this kind of the year we will have more releases there to come but it
all starts from yeah community and people and and we're back from the customer to a better product
because I honestly believe that a product is the representation of the people and the culture who
build it. And yeah, if your product is great then you most likely have a great team that works on
it as well and if your product lacks experiences or suffers and sometimes it's yeah something different
so. So kind of my journey, so I've been in Microsoft for like eight years I sat, I've been
shipping a lot of features, probably a lot of patents, I have a couple of those sitting here that
I brought with me here in my, all museum and my home office here and we can talk a little bit about
it but like fast forward like I think what is important to kind of realize here is that, yeah,
windows and operating systems have been kind of the same for like 20, 30 years. What you're seeing
shifting right now is like in the age of AI, UI and the way how we interact with computers is changing
and cloud PCs are more and more important because they run as a windows PC in the cloud and you can
travel or connect to it everywhere you are without like the complexity of hardware burden or
limitations of of hardware these days where RAM and other hardware is kind of increasing
in terms of price points that that's an exciting area we're in right now and I guess we are going
to I'm going to talk a little bit about that too right, Mikra? Yeah, awesome. So yeah,
then there was my first question, I see, or how Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365
Grunt are complementary? Yeah, it's a good question. So I guess that's probably the one most kind
of a real current question that I'm getting still since the release of Windows 365 still till today.
So Azure Virtual Desktop is a platform as a source of solutions of passing short, I think we're all
familiar with past and past these days. So it's kind of the I always compare it a little bit with the
the pizza kind of menu slash who begs the pizza and who is serving the pizza completely out of
the out of the oven to you on a plate. So that's kind of the difference between Azure Virtual Desktop
and Windows 365. Azure Virtual Desktop you have all the buttons and things you can do with a
traditional VDI solution but then with the control plate and hosted as a pass offering
and then a Windows 365 is really the SAS offering where to VM or to cloud PC and everything
on the back, scalability, image management, all the things you normally have to do yourself in an
IT department is managed for you as part of the NASA lay, which makes it like kind of a democratizing
way of using VDI. So it's a me and you probably are not a VDI expert. I share like more like
M365 and all these things right and like imagine that you can all of a sudden use the VDI technology that
was like very specialized knowledge for a small group of people that could do it. So now all of a
sudden everyone that has M365 and inch of knowledge, you can spend up a cloud PC, manage and maintain
it the same way as a physical PC and then make that work for your business for a very streamlined
way and consolidate the way with the Fender and other services, co-piglet agents all coming to get
as one. And I think that's the real difference between the two. However, Azure Virtual Desktop can be
if you set a power scaling, outer scaling, can be a little cheaper in terms of the price but then
there's a certain overhead that you need to fulfill to manage and maintain that yourself as an
IT department as a partner or a solution like nerdy or where you can help and do it all together
for off-products in one single pane of glass. But that's kind of the beauty of this ecosystem. You can
pick and choose with this best your needs and kind of have something that yeah, it kind of
sits in the in the direction you want to be today and tomorrow and decide where you want to be and
yeah, that's a little bit of a long ass on a short question but I think yeah,
Pass and SaaS is probably the best differentiation of how you define your future and how you should decide
which product fits best or combine them either way to make it fit and use AVD and Winner 365 together.
Yeah, you have see AVD for a long time. How has it evolved over the, yeah, from the early versions to now?
Yeah, it's a good question. I still remember back in 2016, I think it was, I was in Redmond and I think
it was Studio G, one of the buildings in the Redmond campus and we got a sneak peek into what was
called Project RDMI or so remote desktop kind of, modern infrastructure was called. There was
some motor project names before that but that was pretty much the well-known one. And that was the
project name for modernizing RDS into a more kind of past kind of fashion cloud like Azure was just
coming up and everyone in 2016 was looking at Azure ASM and an ARM like the eBTS supporter, you probably
remembered it as well when the old school blew as your portal was still there. And before that we even had
like an other service called Azure Remote App, that one didn't shut well but that was a large set
of learning experiences, the engineering gain to eventually build Azure Virtua desktop or WVD which
was RDMI and that evolved from being a very power shell, heavy kind of setup meaning a bunch of
rolls, power shell scripts and hook up connections to Azure and then spins up something and it was
Azure Marketplace kind of a Roman full but only bit like post-pool creation but didn't do the
initial setup. So it was like let's say a very complex enrollment process at the time and then
yeah we kind of entered the COVID area in like 2019 and it's kind of if you look back it's
a very negative kind of time in our lives like it's like almost like few three years swapped out of
your life and but on the on the positive side from a business perspective or career perspective I'm
gonna say products for remote working were popular than ever before because yeah you were sent back
home and your computer was still at the at the office though how are you the appropriate
applications so all of a sudden Azure Virtua desktop was the most popular Azure service at Microsoft
to yeah enable you for remote working so at that time I joined Microsoft and yeah you can imagine
that people on the team and myself were like parachute it into companies to help onboarding them
to Azure Virtua desktop and that happened in a like rapid pace manner that went from like let's say
100 customers using the service in 2017 as to like thousands of thousands of customers in a year later
when COVID happened and now I cannot disclose the number but it's like it's a very high number using
the service and then when is 365 happened exactly at the time that more and more simplification was
needed and SaaS to kind of build on top of that demand for more customers so yeah it's
it has been an amazing journey to see and demand and feedback from customers if all the service to
how good it is right now in Azure and in in in June yeah what what would you say are the biggest
technical challenges from AVD so Microsoft say okay we built something new we built Windows
365 yeah it's I think I think it really depends on what type of customer you are so if you're a
customer and you have been using virtualization for the last 10 20 years primarily Citrix or
VMware or like Omnisah or Ryzen how it's called right now or maybe Amazon Workspace is there
various of these virtualization services out there and if you're used to that then you have that
knowledge and expertise of virtualization in your IT department so you know kind of what to do and
that the incremental delta changes that you need to make in order to to relearn a little bit the
platform but the basics of virtualization remain to be the same then Azure Virtual Desktop is a
very logical pick for modernizing from on-premises to like let's say Azure but we also see a lot of
customers going straight from traditional virtualization to Winnus 365 and then kind of work backwards
to Azure Virtual Desktop so they kind of use it in a hybrid way but they shoot for Winnus 365 to go
straight for modernization to anything in June I'm 365 and then if it doesn't work like you have
these PCs you probably have been doing them as well and then you pick a couple of these like
applications that like stress tests the rest of your environment and if it goes true then
let's go production and we still see a lot of customers struggling sometimes but hey I have a
a database or an internet or some some data sovereignty like things need to just run in my own
data center close back to the machines or back-end or there's a server running there and we cannot move
or migrate it so and there's a solution for that now too called Azure Virtual Desktop Hybrid
so AVD Hyde in short and then it allows you to have AVD as a control plane so that pass off-ring
but still connect to your own on-prem data center if it runs like Nutanix or the Broadcom VM
where ESX solution or IPv so there are new ways now to kind of mix and match AVD on-prem, AVD in the
cloud or Winnus 365 and kind of overarge that altogether as a whole is something I think is
his very important these days because imagine your customer and you kind of on that journey and you
have AI or you have AVD here Winnus 365 there and all these solutions come together can be pretty
complex to kind of navigate and know hey what's the best pick for my business so combining them in a
good way and making sure you make these decisions while not upfront kind of going in a direction you
don't want to so kind of paved the way towards the future without making decisions to go in a direction
that I don't know let's say you decided to build a new house and you set the foundation for your
house and you make a decision on the foundation that in five years or so you need to kind of
completely rep out the foundation and rebuild your house you don't want to do that you want to kind
of build the foundation in a way that the new parts of your house will be sustainable future and
I think that's where like solutions like a Nordeo kick in that really overlays that and do the things
that you can kind of simplify as a solution for you to not make the decision faster but it still
hooks into the native solution so you're not like let's say you're not making a decision like
you open a door and you kind of go back out so it's like easy to to leverage and simplify and as
well to yeah kind of in the future go completely native you can do that too easily without removing
your completely in a fire and I think that's the key to success as well as where you want to be
making your decisions on like that you yeah bet on a on a future that is sustainable and
guide you to and I think that's important the more complexity as well is what are kind of what's
being added right now with AI it's it's more and more important there to yeah kind of pave that
way towards a unified story because AI is great and AI can do a lot of things it can
from summarizing creating docs to automating your calendar or to
build a whole code base that normally takes months to build but there are so many models so many
solutions out there that it kind of asks for the need of more governance and orchestration in that
space too so I feel I'm frustrated that's becoming more and more important that all these solutions are
kind of kind of kind of coming together as one but like from different layers as well so
so yeah I'm curious would you think Daryl Michael what would you be in your in your space where
you're active then yeah I see that virtualization becomes yeah in the last 20 years more and more
important yeah I think when you're an admin I think the most people yeah don't have anything to do
with this topic remotely so yeah I see it's it's really interesting what lessons from virtualization
still apply today while you think the basics pretty much so so you still have a protocol you still have
a client you still have latency and bandwidth and throughput and yeah download and upload speed
that you need to take care of but the good thing is that the protocols have been commoditized
pretty much and so like let's say 20 years ago there was always like you had the ctrux HDX and then
you had the VM your blast protocols and then this one is better than the other and I'm always at
quite you probably remember that time the even colored protocol wash or something at some time
that time is over I think there might be still some slight differences but nobody knows is that
anymore it's like commodity it's like it's like streaming like from your best I don't know you have
Amazon prime you have Netflix you have all these streaming engines and they all stream with a
click of a button and you expect it to work that's kind of what protocols kind of work these days too
like if you stream something if you have like the speed upload and download speed of what can
stream in that like series you can stream like virtualization these days and that's the beauty
of a SaaS solution is that at whole kind of let's say TCP UDP stun turn that kind of optimizing the
the streaming engine like that normally requires a lot of knowledge and I don't know
napscaler or firewalling settings and that's all gone so so I think that's that's one of the things
that you need to kind of have a little bit of understanding of like what it is because it helps with
the troubleshooting if you're like having network issues or let's say you're I don't know your
company decided to change from ISPs or there's a different set of firewall rules coming true or
VPN tunneling is reconfigured that you need to kind of have a little bit of knowledge there how to
routing and re-riring and that flow works but for the rest I think yeah clients are still the same
from the fact that you need a client in order to have the redirections and the streaming happening
and the windows client like the windows app for example is still the best client out there with the
most feature rich capabilities because of course Microsoft owns windows and that's the code base
my phone so that kind of is naturally always the best solution but it doesn't mean that
that the solution for windows and Microsoft is the only one that works great like Mac and all
these other platforms like even Android has a windows app now that feels agnosticly the same as the
other platforms and have teams optimizations and folder redirection disc redirection,
clibboard redirection, condition access one way, two way all these capabilities are now in there
cross-plat per client which originally was only like windows or weps so I think a great enhancement
that we have seen over time when the windows 365 and I should first start to come out there
okay miko where are you
here?
you
[ Silence ]
-Negro, are you back?
-I'm back.
-I was kicked out.
I don't know what's happened.
-We were talking about streaming and incidental,
and download, and listen.
-That is the fun part.
Damn, I have to look at this as records.
-It's still recording here, so I think we're good.
I just kept going, so you can just after that cut it out and stitch it.
-Yeah, sorry.
-I'm using it.
-I can just go with the flow.
-Yeah.
-I think that's really interesting,
but you're expert in Windows 365,
and there are a lot of buzzwords.
There are two.
What is Windows 365 boot?
-What is Windows 365?
-Yes, it's a fun story.
Originally, Windows 365 boot,
so there was a person, part of Microsoft,
called Melissa Grand.
I think she works for Amazon now.
She was the marketing director for Windows 365,
and we were brainstorming about a feature, like, let's say,
I think it was three, four years ago, four years ago.
I think right now, to kind of solve the challenge of virtualization
for end users,
where, like imagine you're, like, walking down to your office,
and you need to explain to just a normal user
that isn't a technical savvy user,
to log onto a VDI environment.
So that's very hard.
It's almost requiring a PDF, a couple calls,
an upset user, because a couple of tanks don't work,
and then all of a sudden, you're a couple hours later,
and the user is on their first day ramping up into the new system,
and it's not satisfied.
So we were like, thinking, how can we streamline that?
From, hey, you have a PC,
and then you need to install a client,
and then in the client, you feel as a user,
hey, you go from Windows to another Windows solar in the cloud,
like, how does that work?
And then the user, you know, you need to use the Windows
to use the Windows computer,
and then you can use the Windows computer,
and then you can, you know,
you need to use the Windows computer,
and then you can use the Windows computer,
and then you can just use the Windows computer,
and then you, you know,
you can use the Windows computer,
and then you just, you know,
you can use the Windows computer,
and then you can use the Windows computer,
and then you need to, you know,
and then you need to use the Windows computer,
and then it's part of that creation,
canpanas, got Manchester,
came together with Brent Anderson,
and that farmed the whole team.
So I think going back to your question,
what's the best and most impactful feature?
I think that's the decision we made,
in the early stage, to build Windows 365,
and that is inside Microsoft Engine.
Because imagine that, hey, you know Microsoft Engine,
and now it's just a subset of provisioning and cloud PC,
and then all the policies and everything else,
is just merging together.
So I think that's just a very powerful combo.
I think the other parts of what has been very impactful,
is the decision to make,
to make from the Windows 365 app,
and the RDP or the remote desktop app,
you probably know that like old school rat icon,
not on, to merge that together to the Windows app.
And of course, there's a little of debate online,
whether it should be called the Windows app,
because every Windows app that runs on Windows
is called the Windows app,
so it could be very confusing sometimes to use this,
but if you think about the story and the vision of the Windows app,
connecting to Windows and the cloud,
and that's the only Windows app you need in order to do so,
and make complete sense.
So having a unified app now for AVD, Windows 365, RDP,
and all kinds of other features and services,
merging into that coming together,
I think has been another very impactful one,
that has been creating a little of satisfaction amongst users,
to really, yeah, streamline that end-use experience,
because nobody wants to have like separate clients
for separate solutions they use, right?
You don't want to confuse the user,
but hey, you use this app,
not all of a sudden, you need to use this app for these apps.
So it's very, yeah, very confusing to explain that.
So having one app that you can just use,
and then streamline in the app where you go to,
as of course, it might better experience.
Yeah, things are really interesting.
The another big topic where you end,
it's the AI Copilot, AI Agent AI topic.
How different is this,
this is a gender AI from the standard Copilot?
Yeah, I think, well, I think the UI for AI is still an evolution.
I feel I think the UI for AI is no UI in my opinion.
It's more a most minimal UI on the front end
with the maximum outcome as kind of the back end
and the models working on what you want to achieve
and push that back to you and create what you want to do,
what it's code or dark or presentation or something else
or just a markdown file.
But I think the evolution we have been going through is AI
being an assistant on the site, like let's say Copilot or Claude,
just open it up and type from something in or talk with it
and then create something to a multi-agent like orchestrator
that, hey, you want to do this and that simultaneously.
And then build a whole code base or a set of capabilities
or respond to things in social media or your email
or categorize things in your email completely automated.
That part, I think, is happening right now.
And time will tell how fast that is going to be embraced by customers
because you have now Agent 365 and a new capabilities
like Winner 365 for agents that kind of embraces that
and builds kind of a new chapter in this age of AI
of how we do interaction with computers and orchestration
and security and I think that the part that I think is important there
is that we have the traditional software, the GUIs,
the layers of how we interact with systems
that haven't been changing for like 20, 30 years
to changing to completely augmented kind of automation
and that could be MCP or MCP enabled AI first apps
or a computer using Agent or the AI,
the model goes straight into the database like we set, of course, too.
So the GUI gets wrapped out completely
and then the agent is kind of talking directly with the data
and I think that's pretty much right now
when new models like Fable is the neckt big wave
in terms of AI innovation in my opinion
and time will tell how fast that is going.
As the technology is there, the technology can do much more
that currently the business processes of companies are doing.
So I think that the shift there is like,
technology is here, businesses are here
and then of course you have folks like yourself
being early innovators like the frontier innovators
that really go fast but that's still like a handful
or let's say 10, 20% of the big kind of IT industry
arrests is still using co-coded assistance,
kind of UI components in their daily habits
and then moving to agents but still like a human
and the loop kind of agent kind of human and control
agents is doing the work but very much on an individual
one-to-one basis.
The next big wave is doing multi-agent kind of parallel
kind of creation of agents and then autonomous management
and and layers in there are involved.
And I think that's a very exciting space to be in
and that's where I feel that in tune is evolving to as well.
And 365 too with agent 365.
Yeah, I have looked a little bit in your employee Nurdio
and there are some really interesting headlines.
This one is from a PR. Nurdio brings AI to Microsoft Cloud Management
and the other Nurdio Manager for Enterprise name.
This is the, yeah, no, this was the wrong one.
So, I think that's the video enhanced Windows 365
management with AI.
So, what is AI operator agent IT departments look like?
Yeah, well, I think that question,
to ask to that question is kind of variable.
I think from my perspective, what I foresee that's happening
is that traditional UI will still be there for a while
for a couple of years.
And the effect is happening is that part of management
will consolidate to a more unified UI.
So, I met in that you embrace CLAW
or you embrace co-pilot.
Then most likely to co-pilot UI is the one that you use the most
on a daily basis to do your work.
So, what if you want to manage Cloud PCs, physical PCs,
ABD, Android 65, all these things?
Do you then want to kind of step out of the co-pilot UI
you use for 80% of your daily habit, kind of work,
and then go to a traditional one?
I think yes, for you.
Oh, you want to kind of connect that all to get in
that single point of glass view in that AI assistant layer.
And that's what Nurdio, what we are building there,
is really kind of stringlining that MCP enable
the autonomous management layer of booking that in on whatever
front end of UI you want to have,
Cloud and Tropic, OpenAI, co-pilot, it doesn't matter.
But then on the backend, it automates that and streamlines
that for you so the complexity will be gone.
What I feel is imagine you are like an IT manager
and a decision maker and you walk into the IT department
and you are asking normally,
hey, can somebody give me a report of the capability
of the finance department last week because the IT
or the finance manager complained to IT saying
a couple of the users couldn't log on
because there was an error or something occurring.
So, no, there's a very normal thing that happens sometimes
that they want to know what's going on.
Imagine that the IT manager just goes straight to co-pilot
and asks, hey, can you create a report for this department
for me by including these time working hours
and create a PDF for me?
And then it does it completely.
And then what if it can also find a root cause
and then send it straight to the support desk as well
or to the IT department to give them a heads-up
if they couldn't see it or haven't received that message
or the availability concerns or something like that.
So, I think that's the part of where it is
traditional system is evolving to.
So, GUI and the reports and making things visible
is still very important.
But I think the UI will evolve more to,
yeah, personally, UI, did you want to see it at time?
So, you promised, for example, can you create this dashboard
and then it creates a reporting dashboard
where exactly the metrics you're looking for
as you can show and look into based on the exact data
coming from your environment.
And then after that, you can maybe save that for later
or just destroy it and then you recreate it next time
when you need it again.
And that intuitive, kind of adaptive, kind of UI
is something I foresee and it's already happening right now
where a partner is in this ecosystem is evolving to.
And you see it with Agent 265 a little bit happening right now.
But I think the part that is missing there is the adaptive
and legacy and backward compatibility
part of Agent 365 towards other solutions
that customers are using.
I think Agent 365 is amazing for if you're completely
in the native and 365 share point and all these
set of features.
But what if you still have an older server,
an older legacy component running in your own data center,
like older software?
And I think that's the part where I think
the most attention is needed now for IT departments
as well as consultants like MBPs,
like really help there in that journey to AI.
And that's not different from on-prem to cloud.
And like all these other transitions that happened
in the last 20, 30 years,
I guess a previous point in time and there is a new point in time.
How does this kind of intersect?
That's where yeah, partners, consultants,
all come into play.
The part that I haven't seen happening yet
in a very large kill is governance in terms of like training
and help on how can we help a large enterprise
to train to use AI the best way possible.
And we used to have that with Office 365.
I'm 365 and it feels like when we went from exchange
to exchange the line and you probably remember that
time frame beat pause to Office 365.
There were businesses built around explaining
how it works to users.
They came into businesses, they trained like three, four weeks
and then they went out and then it was done.
And I feel that right now the technology is going extremely fast
but the explanation of how you should use it is lacking.
And we know it is we were like tax-abry, we are an IT.
So we are like like learning fast.
And even we cannot keep up sometimes.
So imagine like a normal user in a business
that person's like primary focus isn't IT.
Like they are struggling right now.
So I feel that like what is a very large kind of set of an
opportunity that needs to happen that customers company
need to jump into and community is explaining the A2B,
A2B, C, or let's say chapter one, two and three,
kind of what's in between and how can I modernize towards AI
and how can I create a solution and this is where partners kick in
to overlay it at all and kind of create a migration
that doesn't feel like a migration.
So you can kind of lift and shift between chapter one, two and three.
And maybe from chapter three back to two if it needs to
and then back from two to three.
I think that's a, yeah, future software products
where we are big opportunities in terms of helping customers there.
So will you clean the traditional admin role will change
to a multi agent manager?
I definitely think that admins will get more like digital admins
added to their like let's say roles in responsibility.
So imagine you have an agent that does like security,
policy management for you, but you still in control of what that agent
is doing. I think that's the important part.
Like that you have agents for specific tasks and not like one agent
that I don't know let's say got mode or local administrative
permission to begin destroy everything and also like from a harmful
kind of like hacker kind of intruder perspective.
You don't want to have that happening.
So I think that security and governance layer of how to make sure
that an agent that can do some of that more privilege kind of work
is consolidated to only doing that part that you approve it to.
I think that's the next set of what needs to happen in IT management
with our back permissions that are going beyond on what we have been
seeing in the past where like a, a gentig user.
So the entra, agente user, I user, agente ID kind of approach.
You probably have heard of that too is that you now in the new
agent 365 license a bit as well.
And the agent licensing offering of entra you have now something called an
agente user or digital worker concept where you can have somebody
logging on on behalf of you as the user, but it actually isn't you.
So it's kind of a subset like like a subuser of you as a, as a user.
And then can have similar permissions as you have.
And then you can delegate your task to that user to that agent,
agente user.
And I think that's the next wave of what we will see.
But yeah, the software products and such need to kind of adapt to that.
So for example, the whole concept of logging on into windows as an
agente user is kind of something that is out there now,
but it hasn't really been used by many customers yet.
So it's like, like that part of, hey, all these computer systems,
all these ISFees, all these applications, all these things that have been
built in the last 10, 50 years, all have like support contracts of,
hey, I support this operating system.
I support four cores, 12 gigs of RAM as deep like that stuff,
as all being built around one primary user per one operating system.
And now we are moving out of that model to multiple user or let's say
different agente users to an operating system or different systems that do the same.
But the person itself is an agente kind of user, like a computer using agent
model that comes in and does the work for you.
So I think just going back to your question, I feel the exciting card is that
there's a lot of change and it's faster and it's innovative and I think that's cool.
But the part I think is important there is that faster doesn't always mean better.
And faster could also mean it's more expensive.
So where do the ROI?
Can I take out, like for example you for half a day to work on something else
that you normally do and then do the RRI calculation there and then that
justifies the investment.
I think that part sometimes is harder depending on which workload.
But I think from a management layer, from an in tune, when is 265 security.
I think the exciting part there is that the repetitive tasks, the things you do,
that you know where to click on, but you just are the only person that can do it
because you have these permissions to completely automate that with just a single click
or an automated system, I think is the first set of experiences you will see that AI
will start doing on behalf of users and then eventually move to a more organic
way of doing it. But yet the rights and our back and and and and and MCP enable
configuration flows are currently in development and then our customers will
will define the pace of how fast we can move in that direction.
Yeah, I think a little bit about yeah, keep the mind of loving, but we had a lot of
things we have started with Clippy on Windows. He tried to help us. He's at least that I'm a little bit.
I have one year. Yeah. He was such a cool guy. Then we have Cortana.
It's not really helped. And now also, I don't know, on my case, he is also Windows.
And even those co-pilons also got done this longer here. So can AI travel through Windows
device autonomously or is this something we we have to still wait for?
No, I think AI is completely able to analyze data and find the patterns of when normally
a human would take hours or maybe days to find. So the technology is there. I think the challenge
there is is that is the data currently connected to a system that can automate and
resolve it. And I think that's the difference and that needs to kind of get created and
build out and you already see it like support desks and there's already like an
configuration and agent and mcp SDK and Windows that can go into some of the more
kind of logging and telemetry as well. I think the next wave is here to connect it to
like APIs and correlate from that data and then take action from that data as well.
So I do I do think that troubleshooting is probably one of the best use cases for
AI to jump in and help because yeah it's like analyzing data and then based on that
result what comes out of that it can take an action to resolve it. And normally first
it needs to happen a couple times you learn from that and then you manually create a script
and then have support teams doing that. I think where it's going to is that you're
client where you log into or your desktop your Winnus PC has like an integrated
experience that you can type in and say normally what you normally will say to a
support team. I kind of like use my app it gives me this warning put in a screen
shot of the warning and then AI will resolve it on the back end completely for you.
And the part that currently is not there in Windows is that like m3 65 coal pie doesn't
have that automatically kind of autonomous resolution part India yet. And that's
I think a little bit of a shadow AI shadow IT kind of use cases while because as
a IT professional you don't want to have your users doing troubleshooting without
you giving the consent for them to do so or at least not without you knowing what's
going on or what they probably should then needs to be logging and somewhat of
visibility there and I think that's the part that a little large companies are
figuring out right now and that's where digital employee experience or DAX in
short becomes very important because DAX is kind of kind of the overall employee
experience so imagine AI is doing everything for you then the employee experience is
still important so how do you measure that how do you connect the dots of all
these systems together and still visualize it to see are my users still satisfied
with the experience they have even though everything runs but AI or technology is
great I think the opinion of the user still remains to be important and that's
where you are a digital employee experience that DAX kind of is a new concept
comes in and I feel that that's for like the future another angle of how systems
and traditional concepts are changing in a more experienced focus manner versus
a more hey look at my fancy technology or solution that I use that did this to
more like from the outcome perspective look at the user experience I think that's
that's very important I think when we look a little bit into the
the admin groups and so on we have arguments talk about entra they talk about
peer mute they talk about yeah also AI they talk about defender but there's
it's yeah some tools is a little bit missing I think that into it's still living
well you have to imagine that in tune is is out there for like roughly ten
years now it's sorry it's still the light and then it evolved to the new
in tune portal kind of experience that still today is the portal experience
I just took recall windows in tune as well I know I don't know if you if you're
familiar but windows in tune was the original day the original name in the first
couple I kind of year and since then like since covid in tune grow massively
like hundreds of millions of endpoints are managed by in tune they're still a
big estate on SCCM like large enterprises that still use that and the more a
product grows the more yeah like certain features bigger features are being
done but also how how things are being prioritized are changing as well so
what you see a lot of security copilot and and in tune agents being built
right now recently there were were like some improvements on the speed of
applying policies and apps like with the sidecar management extension
improvements called product fast lane so there's definitely attention for
features that have kind of asked for the for the core set of capabilities of
in tune but I'm hearing it sometimes more at does more attention for AI and less on the
engine actually if you ask for a feature that it's not being shipped and I think
yeah that's well acknowledged and yeah I think the part of partner solutions is
then important that partner solutions help jump again and creating solutions that
can help customers filling into blanks what in tune doesn't do and that's
where like an earlier does a lot of things on all see management backup sequencing
and in tune things like that have or should have been an in tune as well and
that's the beauty of this ecosystem ecosystem as well right like Microsoft
tends to kind of normally do 70% of the core and leave the other 20 to 30%
open for partners to jump in and help customers and build on top of the native
technology stack to you so I think yeah that's something to always be aware of on how
you decide which direction you go but luckily there are more solutions in this
ecosystem as well. Yeah we have I think too powerful tools to write what I don't know
we have PowerShell and Graph API and yeah we have this I think or another
another possible last time it's infrastructure as code that you think in
in tune will also become more a idron in the future. Yeah I do I do think so.
Of course because in tune is so large and has many many many microservices on the
back that are automated and globally distributed those all need to be evolved
to like systems that can talk and automate with like a new front end so imagine
that within Microsoft when a product is being built like m365 works on substrate
and in tune works on graph and in tune is built on other backend services then for
example other services that are on m365 so so I think one needs to happen is
that more of these systems need to kind of consolidate and then an i.e. professional
that currently use in tune as a console could perfectly find in the future maybe
use m365 copilot or an embedded copilot in an operating system or a mobile app
and then do the the management directly from there and I think right now there's
kind of a disconnect between those and I think that needs to be solved and right
now security copilot is the copilot for tune but based on experiences and talking
with customers is that they are not using security copilot the same as m365 copilot
so you have like two copilot there are more copias but let imagine for inch of two copilot
it's one for entry 65 and one for security copilot and they are not kind of blended
together so I feel that's that's where I think the opportunity lays is that
those copias need to blend together and you need to move more to one copilot
experience for like i.e. professionals and all its workers doesn't matter
but based on your role or your agentic kind of workload is evolved the way how it interacts with you
and yeah as you know like you can even use the UI of AI I feel becomes
there is a lot of relevant like it would be as minimalistic as it can be
and outcome what you want to achieve is the most important thing and that could be
by talking with AI or typing with AI but the UI is less relevant
unless you need to show something or present something but then you can create it directly out of it
so I think yeah the systems and how it unifies need to change
but I'm not sure how fast that will happen but recently the leader behind
in tune got got purfew as well as a team so purfew in tune are now two orgs
in one so that might change of course purfew is not the whole security copilot stack
so that's much broader but it's the starting point of maybe more and more
unification that might happen in the future as part of in tune
did you think that the graph i.P.I has a future or will it all become mcp
along that mcp in the future?
I think mcp could hook into graph so you build an mcp that kind of connects
to the backend of in tune over graph and that could work out as well
so I do think there is more future for graph than there is for graphical user interfaces
but the time that evolution is going to be the mandatory way of doing
is really dependent on how fast the habits of users i.T. professionals are going to change
meaning that going back to what I just said earlier
I think there needs to be more focus on how you can do your best job
with i in a different way to explain that and train people on that
and how to do it or how to build it like themselves
like that part is missing right now and I think time will tell how fast
that will evolve in a natural way but if you explain like solution x
as the better solution than solution like y or a where you currently are invested in
there needs to be a story in between how to get from a to b
right and the fund of solution 1 to solution 2 and I feel that's important
to tell that story like explain to customers how they get to ai
and how to evolve their processes as well as their users
on how to interact with systems to ai and it feels sometimes that
we're jumping a couple chapters as I said before and I think that going back to your graph question
graph mcp is becoming more and more important but the reality here is
as well that some customers are still using old school gooey
and they are not even looking at graph they don't they know what it is
but they are not using it and that's a gap that needs to get solved
and community articles podcast will help there but I think ultimately
Microsoft and partners need to jump in there because it's a massive opportunity
to embrace ai and companies and explain to the companies how to use ai
the best in the most efficient way possible
what will you think will end-pipe management look in the future?
I honestly think and it depends a little bit on how much legacy you have in your environment
but imagine you're on entra you're pretty much modern
you're like zero trust enabled you have all the capabilities that currently are
some of these buzzwords you just set right you're like your tax-heavy
you're always on the latest and greatest like you're in the Microsoft ecosystem
I think in like two three years from now we will start to see more agents
popping up that can do the management for you
still with allege and IT expertise needed into an IT department
but less in the sense of like sometimes when you work together in a team
there are people that you instruct to do things or you create manuals
and then they go do these manuals for you
so you kind of instruct them and they are more like the executors
kind of of the things that you orchestrate as an let's say IT manager
or like a director
I think the agents that are coming in the next two to three years for
modern management and in tune and other capable I sent it around the things
there are easily automatable like imagine you create a manual
and you feed it to an agent and that agent goes go do the actions based on that manual for you
and automatically calls over teams but end users and explain that manual
and walks through the steps and then knows based on the model how to interact with it
and then directly to use a base in the knowledge they have and I feel that that's already possible right now
so for example if you call Delta Airlines
Delta of course more US based but if you call Delta Airlines to help desk
you get an AI talking with you and it feels very natural and can anticipate
and go left and right in conversations
versus if you didn't say yes or no you've fallen that blank great area of spot of like computer says no
repeat your thing again right? AI is going to change and is changing that in terms of smart
way of interacting just on a augmented neural network kind of manner
and I think that's the exciting part where troubleshooting, interacting and automating
and autonomous management really benefit from and in the next coming years
I think you'll start seeing the first set of experiences coming to life
and let it as partner, first and then Microsoft later or as kind of a combined kind of offering
time will tell but I think that's the next big wave of endpoint management
autonomous management more automated service, self-service now kind of capabilities
that have been in the past available when customer asks or employee asks for this
and then there's a whole flow happening on the back and then people get kind of approval messages
of hey are you are you giving consent for this? Are you giving consent for that?
I feel that's more and more going to happen but then without the technology involves of building that
yourself it's just a prompt away and then you can say hey configure this policy setting for this group
make sure that the exact setting is being a SAP a kind of pressure test
once or twice first before I'm rolling to the bigger kind of team
and then your T department is being used as well for checking things out
and then eventually it will will get completely automated
but I feel that knowledge of the systems are still important for the next two, three to five years
the question however is how many of these very experienced IT department
kind of IT administrators are needed do you need 10 do you need five do you need three
time will tell but I do feel that as an IT professional being very tax savvy
and knowing how to build things is very important these days to build the agents, build the automation
that all gets you to that next step of autonomous management
I think Microsoft has a fair software part and also Microsoft now has a little bit longer
about the Microsoft sphere so we had a hardware part that you think also we have this become a bigger part
that we get secured the ship, what is the chips that is also growing
and in the future and it will be I don't know I think more simpler to get all
yeah, this is two handle this from the hardware side
I think I think what is important to recognize is that AI runs on GPUs
and GPUs are pretty expensive especially now with the RAM being very scarce to get
it's going like through the roof pretty much and it's harder to get GPUs because all the big
cloud vendors need to GPUs in order to build and skill the system
so what you see there is then the price of AI is going up as well because of that
I'll suddenly like looking back to hey my employee costs X per hour
my tokens cost X per how many tokens per workload per parameter that the model supports
kind of what's the ROI of AI and how do I use AI to replace something versus how is a human still cheaper
so I think the solution there at least one of the solutions there is at AI
so you have all these devices out there that are copied at plus PC they have an MPU in there
and they can run like so many tops of like a S&M model kind of interaction
I feel that in the future in the next let's say year or so more and more devices
like let's say copied at plus PCs from two years ago they will move to copied at plus plus devices
meaning that the MPU becomes so powerful that can run an LLM that you now need a cloud or copied it for to run
and then you spin up there are the cloud servers GPUs and that costs more money because they control the price of that
so what if you buy a device for like a thousand or fifteen hundred bucks or euros
and then it has an MPU in there that can run LLM and then you can just fire it off locally
and I think that's the way to kind of kind of control the cost a little bit as well
and then like slowly the systems like there are new chips being built right now, built for AI
there are like companies like that are currently like like building new chips for AI
and that will take time but once they are out the price of chips will go down
and then the price of software will go down as well
so there might be an interim step there where at AI becomes more and more important
so for example there are examples of where you can build an ecosystem of multiple
MPUs or GPUs that run locally to offload things that you do in the cloud
so for example you have you interact with co-pilot you ask something
and then you do that from a machine that has a local GPU that can offload that from that client to your local device
and then it still feels it runs in the cloud but it actually is rendered on the local device
I feel that something like that is happening right now but the software doesn't kind of embrace that yet
and I feel that that might be a next step where AI becomes a little bit more affordable
if you are a developer and you need to use the model all the time
versus you just use it a couple times a day for creating a dark as a knowledge user
and now we're waiting all for the real working quantum CPUs
Quantum is one but I feel that quantum is two to three years out still
I do feel that might be an interim step that will happen first
that will be allowing you to either run models on a CPU or in a GPU
that is more like a GPU that is in a laptop or like a desktop PC
like you can have a gaming PC and that like GPU in there could be perfectly fine to run models on
so imagine you have a laptop and you have an iGPU in there that does the display rendering
like many laptops iGPUs now
what if you can run some part of a model on an iGPU
and then it offloads part of it from the cloud to avoid that you spend or your tokens go through a roof
I think that are parts of efficiency layers that I feel that are happening
the question however is the model as good on that chip
and as it is on that back end coming from the cloud
and I think that's the technical challenge part that is important to get results
to like when you use this device with this hardware can it offload
because hardware and drivers and all these things are different right
so yeah
but I see the new three cherabyte system elements running on the Nvidia GPUs
it's possible but yeah
yep we have the new RTX I think they are called RTX
the new Surface laptops and the npcpu
and they have a CPU/mpa GPU in there that can run which is that like highly amount of token
and the parameter lm70 models or higher even completely on a local device
and I think that's a big change
and you've seen probably Jensen on the Nvidia keynote
like I think it was four weeks ago of GTX
or no yeah I think it's called GTX that's the Nvidia conference every year in the spring
is that that systems everything is going to change while using this chip
meaning that the operating system becomes more
let's say the whole UI of Windows disappears
and the whole way of how Windows interacts with your files and software remains
so then there still needs to be a core layer of Windows involved
but then on top of that like the front end can change
so meaning that could all of a sudden be that your operating system feels like a more like fluent mobile operating system
that you have on your phone but then on your desktop
and I feel that that's an area that we haven't seen much happening
but Google for example created the aluminium operating system
OS that runs on Android
it feels like a Gromo OS but then completely embedded into Gemini
and I think that's again customers define how fast we move in that direction
but I feel it's an example of a pad they are creating for customers to go after
when AI is the primary UI of what you use on a daily basis
so it's an exciting space to be in especially in endpoint management and user computing
I feel that the way how we manage as well as the end user focused systems, experiences, clients are going to change
and the people that have been doing workplace management in companies
they are still important to facilitate that transition
so be ready for that wave to come
it's coming
yeah I hope that's a little bit yeah, in videos
in videos I get a little bit more competitors, reconpettiters
and it's a Google of a Stenzua and yeah I'm there also something in Intel also but yeah
let's have a look in the future
so it's the price go I hope it's get down especially for me as gamer
yeah so let's jump in the rapid fire rounds
I say a short question and you give a short answer
Windows 365 or Virtual Desktop
Windows 365
Intune or configuration manager
Intune
Copilot or agents
Windows 11 or Windows 365
well that's our one because it uses both so I'll win 365 as I believe the OS will change in the future
PowerShell or Graph API
I'm more a Graph person
Teams or Outlook?
what is the first Outlook or Teams or Teams?
Teams definitely Teams
Pitabol or Vicandre?
I will go for Freakon.l's special
what is the biggest thing I am if you will bust?
again what's the biggest AI?
I'm if you will bust
the the met you mean like what?
well I think the biggest net around AI right now is that
AI can create like full blown production code and for large enterprises from scratch
there's still human interaction and developer and expertise needed in order to ship quality and code to production
so I think the met that is out there is that yeah you can you can prompt something today and tomorrow you can ship it to 10 million users
it can can be better and have a better quality and that's just not true
it's still in full still deep bugging quality checks and things like that
it's getting better
it's like a hundred eighty degree change from a year ago so let's say in a year maybe we can retry and maybe it's actually possible to do it completely
and to do a new podcast
what's the one habit that makes you successful?
probably discipline
don't give up be disciplined of like sometimes when you have something in your brain or you have an idea or you doing something
it's it's so easy to get distracted by the daily habits and the daily routine and then all of a sudden a couple weeks later
you're like I was busy so I didn't spend time on that
I think my my habit or the things that I think I kind of engraved in my way of working is that everything I say I do
do what you say and say what you do kind of phrase as well I don't know if that's in German as well
like what you say you kind of you you kind of yeah kind of sign up yourself too
and I think I I've been doing that like and I could be a trait or a risk as well right because yeah if you if you do that a lot of times
and you don't finish in a fast pace and you you you you stack up to a month of work and work and work and then you you end up working a lot
so that's where I think AI really helps me these days so I have a lot of things that I have in my brain that I now give a spot
and then the other risk is that the people are the the the the systems and the company and the people around you are not there yet as how fast you can go
so then you have a lot of things that you work on but then the people to catch up on or or create something from that
go in a slower pace and that's where I hope agents will start helping me more and more to execute some of that work as well in the future
yeah and when you get all the resources and money you need what future will you develop
I think honestly the things that I I would be most proud of if if we can pull this off in a good way in the next year or so is a revamp of let's say
end point management but then completely embraced and infused with AI but then still in the most secure way possible and adaptive way possible where you want to be meaning that I don't you want to go a VD
you want to go win this 365 you want to go engine you want to go as CCM you want to go
other solution like doesn't matter like there's a machine a system a machine created that can connect the dots altogether I think that's if we can pull that off in a seamless way
like I sometimes use the analogy of becoming the Switzerland of multi cloud and AI and and the people in Europe know what that means
like being kind of universal on the decisions especially right now in the you know on the world and the difference in terms of how people make their investments on cloud
whether the cloud providers in Europe or in in the US there's like more focused around data sovereignty imagine there's a solution that can connect the dots that you can make the decision
based on where you want to be at a time but if that changes in six months that can also change back without the complexity involved I think that's
that's where where I will be investing my money and my team and my resources if I will build something awesome thank you yeah so then my closing question is if
let's not remember only one thing from today what show the fee
so the question is if there is one thing from today you will want to share again what would that be is that what you said yeah what is the one thing they they should know
okay that is get your hands dirty with AI I think the most important thing around AI is start to do and in the standard by doing
like the brain and this is just some type or like let's say based on research and based on synthetic or synthetic scientific I'm going to say research has been proven out that the brain works better
if you actually do the things versus only doing the theory the reading the yeah the stuff like I don't know if you're
if you if you let's say read a manual without actually doing it you forget it like after a week maybe you don't even know what step to look but if you
performed a manual you probably still know 50 60 70% of the manual a couple months later because you performed the steps you kind of created that
that memory in your brain that wiring of the things you did to the theory so my advice for everyone would be to get your hand dirty with AI try it out see if it works for you and if not try something different
and that's the way to get there and the systems have become easier and easier to use so you had a way to ramp up like for example cloth and
and traffic has been amazing how fast and easy as being evolved to you install it you can create skill sets and agents that are kind of directly attached to you what you can do as
well as as a company you have an enterprise subscription and then you can pre train the model for everyone in your business meaning that if you miracle will say a
little bit of the kind of data is key no deck for me based on I don't know when is 365 and an endpoint management that automatically pulls like data from what the company has trained to
model on as well as the data sources that it's connected to as well as the template and the branding you should use as part of creation of the deck like imagine that normally you have to go to the
marketing team pull the latest deck review it all these things to just be a prop and then it's there like just examples of how fast things evolve like I know in three months from now things
could be even more streamlined so so you try it out don't be that last person in line that in choose to pick up AI because yeah of course you don't
want to be the last want to be efficient but you also want to be yeah prepared for what's next and the moment that regardless of what you do what are
you're an IT whether you're doing something else but use a eyes part of that day job that will be a moment in time that there will be
a change happening whether it's new systems being used new opportunities you get a different role things like that if you prepare yourself always for the future you will be always
one step ahead for the others are in front of the others that don't do that or take another or pro cautious last proactive approach there so I think career wise it's
a great way to invest in the ideas days as well.
Yeah so Christian thank you so much for joining me on the m65 and podcast yeah I'm sorry for the technical issues I had today it's
well if you are frustrating you know the story behind Azure mental test of a Windows 365 but even more exciting was your vision for what's next yeah we explored how
AI is set for really find it management why autonomous systems will chance form an out operation and how Microsoft build the next generation of
Intellect Gen work play step boundaries yeah so thank you for for for staying here and if you join this episode be sure to subscribe to
podcast and you find all links from Christians blocks sessions books and recommendation sources in the show notes so thank you for
this and thank you for staying here with me Christian thanks man girl I am alright bye bye
(dog barks)