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This decade will see the rise of carbon-neutral supply chains which will impact businesses everywhere - even those far removed from serving tech firms in Silicon Valley. As more Fortune 500 companies join this trend carbon-neutral requirements will be pushed deep down the supply chain to the point that companies many layers deep in the supply chain will need to be carbon-neutral (or forgo significant business opportunities.) Source: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsofts-plan-to-go-carbon-negative-raises-bar-for-tech-rivals?shared=a0ca6f346c3fb947 We’ll see the rise of auditing & certification for carbon-neutral suppliers. It won’t be much different than ISO quality standards for manufacturers with one HUGE exception: ISO standards only impacted the manufacturing and operations part of a business - the ISO registered plant only cared about ISO for raw material/part suppliers. ...

2020 is going to be the year that Kubernetes (which really means containers) becomes fully ingrained in the enterprise. DevOps becomes the default model for building and deploying enterprise applications (full code, low code, and no code). Enterprise customers will increasingly want both custom apps and COTS products to fit to a Kubernetes and DevOps test/deployment/implementation model. Cybersecurity continues to grow and is a critical part of every conversation, it will be required that security is baked into every layer. ...

What is the Power platform all about? I get this question a lot. The reality is that the Power platform is more than one thing and it can be “about” a lot of different things. PowerApps is a pixel-perfect mobile-first UX app creation for the enterprise. Common Data Service is a ready-to-go no-limits data service for building an application backend. PowerApps is the ability to rapidly build forms and views over that data service with minimal effort. Dynamics 365 is a series of commercial applications ready to run your business processes. Power BI is about analyzing and visualizing data from anywhere. Flow is integrating data from multiple services and automating business processes across those services. ...

Protest filing by Oracle regarding the JEDI RFP issued by the Department of Defense. Software giant Oracle is challenging the Pentagon’s decision to choose just one company for a not-yet-awarded $10 billion cloud computing contract, according to a bid protest document reviewed by The Washington Post, firing off a salvo in what is shaping up to be a heated competition among tech giants for one of the biggest government software contracts in years. ...

I used to have a monthly Gogo Wifi subscription. Then I got rid of it. Flying is better for me now, it’s more beneficial because it helps me to focus. Not long ago I realized that Delta offered free wifi for messaging (iMessage, WhatsApp, etc.) Awesome. Now I can stay in contact but not get sucked into Apps and Internet world. I wish American offered this, but they don’t - so choose Delta if it’s an option. ...

Microsoft Inspire 2018 wrapped up on Thursday (7/19) with a Bruno Mars concert. But, before the music there were a bunch of very useful sessions on Microsoft Business Applications (i.e., Dynamics 365, PowerApps, Flow, PowerBI, etc.) Yes, I know the marketing/branding still a bit unclear but hopefully that will be cleared up by James Phillips next week at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit in Seattle. You can find all the session videos from Microsoft Inspire 2018 on the web site. I’ve curated a handful of sessions that would be top of list in prioritizing. I still recommend going through the site and finding other sessions that may be of interest. ...

This will be a quick post, but thought someone out there might find it useful if they are working in Microsoft Flow and need to get a local date and time and/or format a date and time. This evening I was building a Flow. In this case it is a Flow that sends an email and I wanted to include the current date in the subject of the email (i.e., “Here are your work items for 01/21/2018”.) The expression design in Flow still seems odd to me - being that I primarily write C# code and a good bit of JavaScript. ...

As a Dynamics 365 (CRM) developer you have probably come to rely on the Dynamics CRM SDK over the years. With the release of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement 9.0 (a.k.a. July 2017 Update) the old downloadable SDK has been replaced by an online document set and NuGet packages. This allows the SDK to become more of a living document where everyone is always referencing the most up-to-date information from Microsoft. Overall, I believe this is a big positive for developers which will make for a better development experience. ...

“Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.” ― Vincent van Gogh Too many people spend their time seeking normality and the false security it provides. In reality, normality is a front - it makes you think you are safe, while providing no safety net at all. For when you need a safety net, normality will leave you there unprepared and inexperienced to change direction, take the other fork in the road, challenge the status quo, or make change happen. ...

If you don’t “do” New Year’s resolutions or they work for you or really for any other reason this doesn’t apply to you, please ignore it. This year skip your New Year’s resolution and make a January 31-Day Resolution, you are much more likely to keep that resolution and positively impact your life. And make it a real resolution — something both measurable and achievable. Cannot Measure vs Can Measure You cannot measure success against “losing weight”, “eating healthier”, “drinking less”, “liking your job”, “being a better friend”, etc. You can measure “lose 5 pounds”, “don’t eat processed foods”, “no more than 3 drinks a week”, “apply to three jobs a week”, “call someone you haven’t talked to in 3 months each week” etc. If you cannot measure your goal you cannot know if you are achieving your goal — i.e., it will be just a crap shoot hoping for the outcome you desire. ...