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Hello and welcome to the let's talk.
Azure podcast with your host Sam Foote and Anne Armstrong.
If you're new here, we're a pair of Azure and Microsoft three, six, five focused IT security professionals.
It's episode ten of season five. Sam and I had a recent discussion around the Microsoft Customer Connection program, a community of technical professionals from customers to partners and MVPs that interact with the Microsoft product teams around new features. Here are a few things we covered. What is the customer connection program? What are the benefits of being in the CCP? What is my and Sam's experience of being in the various CCP programs and how'd you get involved?
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It's a really great episode, so let's dive in.
Hey Alan, how are you?
Hey Sam. I'm not doing too bad, thank you. How are you?
Yeah, good, thank you. How's your jet lag? Are you back to UK time now?
I think I'm pretty good. I think maybe I'm a little bit tired in the evenings, but that might just be hard working. Maybe I could down to that.
I'm not saying nothing. I'm not saying nothing. How was your time over with Microsoft?
Yeah, it was very good. The travel there and back was really good. Maybe a little bit chaotic on the way back because of the M 25 part of that being closed, but generally not too bad. And yeah, the experience over there was great. Meeting up with other MVPs and the Microsoft Teams.
Definitely worth going then?
Yes, definitely. There's a lot of content that was really good to see and discuss. Unfortunately, I can't talk about any of it, but yes, it was good for that. It was also good to meet some of the users. Users. Some of their MVPs, like some of the ones in our sister company that we work for as well as some of the other Microsoft security MVPs. There's quite a few of us over there. Not to obviously forget the interaction with Microsoft and give them feedback, as well as meeting some of the people at Microsoft that I interact with quite a lot as part of being MVP or as part of the customer connection program.
Do you think it was a positive that it was sort of, well, quotes clashed with Microsoft secure because you were sort of there on the ground when all of that news landed. So I suppose you were almost in the right place to absorb that and talk through anything with other sort of.
Because it was on one of the mornings, I think it was in the afternoon for the UK, wasn't it? But yeah, it was good to. I think there was a watch not, I don't think there was, there was a watch event where the security MVPs jumped into a room and watched it all together. And then we discussed what was being announced. Bear in mind, some of it we probably knew from our access as an MVP, but I didn't know about the announcement of Copi for security being going GA at the 1 April. So there was some new stuff out of it. Yeah. It also gave some context around some of the products and how they can help secure access to generative AI and things like that. Yeah.
Nice. Yeah, I can imagine it must just be an. Yeah. Microsoft week. That's for lots to. Lots to take in and digest and plan for.
Yeah. And there was lots of sessions. Some of them clashed. So I targeted the ones that I wanted to do in person, I guess, and I can watch the other ones sort of back later. So yeah, it's technically three days. I did miss the pre day, unfortunately, because I didn't realize it was on because I was traveling. But there's three days of just compacted events or sessions and amas and things like that with the product groups. So it was good.
Nice. Yeah, sounds really fun. What are we talking about this week?
So we're going to talk about the CCP, the Microsoft customer connection program. I think we've mentioned it a couple of times on a few episodes, and now I think it's probably time to talk about it. It's not a product or anything like that. It's not something you kind of use. I guess it's a community in some form. It's worth talking about because there's definitely a lot of value there. Okay.
Yeah. So should we just sort of start from the top? What is the CCP? What's it there to do?
Yes. So the customer connection program or programs kind of started, I think, four or five years ago. I think it was, I think I was told once I was over at Redmond, and I think I've been in it for three of those five years, which is insane thinking about it, but yes. So the customer connection program is a community, an environment that is formed of technical professionals with the same interest area. So we talk about sort of security as an example where you're able to discuss between each other any issues you might have. Not really like from a support perspective, but there may be some gotchas and things like that you might want to just ask the community for. But also it's also access to the product groups within the sort of areas or the program that you're in and be able to give feedback to them directly around the good, the bad, the nice to haves kind of thing. And it's also the mechanism, or at least one of the mechanisms to get onto some of the private previews for some of the new features coming out for the products. So some of the areas, some of the customer connection programs that I know about, because I'm sure there's probably a few others out there, is that you've got the security connection program. So that's dealing with the Microsoft Defender XDR suite, Microsoft Sentinel defender for iot, defender for TI, defender for EASM and Azure Network security. That's the one that I'm kind of mainly in. You've also got the Microsoft entra advisors, so kind of the customer connection program for the identity side of things you've got the management customer connection program. So that's looking at Windows intune and the family of intune products like SCCM, et cetera. And then finally the only one I know about is the data security and privacy customer connection program. So that's looking at all the purview and Preva sort of solutions out there. So that's kind of the four there that I know. Yeah, as I said, that's kind of what it is. And it's ran by a team within Microsoft kind of, I mean shout out a couple of names like Christina, Kelly, Pablo and a few others. So yeah, shout out to those guys and girls for setting it all up and looking after us in there.
Yeah, it does feel like the team at Microsoft, I think I've only been part of it for, this will be my second full year, I think. And I think the maturity they've got of their process is just like a well awarded machine in my opinion, because there is a lot that flows through. I mean we're mainly part of the security connection program. Right. But there's so much that flows through there, so many new additions, so many new product features, discussions, surveys, feedback sessions. Right?
Yeah. And there's so many products, especially within the Microsoft security one. There's so many products out there with product groups and like you said, features being released even just for like Defender Cloud, there's normally four or five new features being released at the same time, let alone all the other ones out there. There's definitely a lot sort of going on there and a lot of feedback being requested from the teams there.
Yeah, exactly. It's constant, isn't it? I think the collaboration that happens in that community as well is really positive thing to see their posts that they put up get so much engagement. There's so many professionals on LinkedIn as well that really represent the program and are really sort of proud to be part of.
And there's within there. So it's all based on Microsoft Teams. There's a Microsoft Teams channel, teams team for it with various channels in it. And there is a lot of discussion channels. So you can talk about threat, know analytic rules, defender for cloud, defender for identity, et cetera. And what's recently happened is some of the MVPs that are in that space have been able to now become the sort of discussion leads in those areas. So they can start trying to get discussions going in those areas or help answer some of the questions alongside Microsoft. So it's bringing the rest of the community sort of together, I guess.
Nice. So yeah, can you talk about some of the benefits of being sort of part of one of the CCPs or all of them?
Yeah, so I kind of talked about some of them and that's having access to the private previews so you can see the products in your test environments or if you want to, some of your production environments. I guess it depends on what type of preview, what's happening within the preview. So you get access to that so you're able to understand what's coming, being able to prepare potentially for its release. And that could be it's a new feature that you really want for your organization and you can get ready for it or build the documentation you might need internally for it. Ready. Maybe if you're an MVP, then you can see that stuff coming ahead and you can get prepared to talk about it once it turns up in the public domain. Other parts are of course, like you said, the community. Being able to talk to other IT professionals in your same profession, in your same sort of interests. So being able to ask a question and see what other it pros are doing around that issue, maybe you find that everyone else is on the same issue, which then sort of leads to the next thing that there's a benefit is that feedback loop back to, you know, Microsoft are monitoring these conversations. When you ask questions, Microsoft can come back from the product group to say this is the reasoning why something might not be the way it is. But also as part of some of the calls, they ask for feedback about a feature, about the feature that's maybe in private preview or something that might be coming in, they're thinking about creating. So you get to sort of give that feedback at every sort of step of that deployment process as well. And then of course the most important part is the recognition of your contributions to the community, to the calls to the feedback, is getting that swag as we all want and crave. So you get digital badges as well as the CCP team. Also depending on the level you are within the community, you then get some physical stickers, badges based on those badges that you've received. And yeah, there are some other benefits as well for helping give feedback and being. Contributing probably the main things, which is absolutely plenty in itself. Being able to communicate with Microsoft product teams about what's good and what's bad, what needs tweaking is great.
Does everything flow through the private, know all new product releases and sort of updates?
And so I think most of it does. I know there are some features that don't. I've known of some features that haven't, that have just gone sort of gone straight to public preview. And that might just be because it's either a minor change or it's something that has been tested and just needs to. It's safe enough. It's been tested enough to go out that far straight out to a public preview. Yeah, majority of things do go through private preview and sometimes in this community there might be a very limited preview. So even before the wider sort of private preview from the CCP, sometimes there are the occasional sort of sessions around that as well.
Nice.
So yeah.
Can you talk a bit about your experience of being part of the CCP?
Yes, as I said, I've been in it for I think three years now, which feels insane to think about. But yeah, my experience has been always positive. It's be able to go onto the team's channels and ask questions or even respond to people's questions on a view, either an opinion or assisting people with links to documentation. Things like that is great. I love being part of the product previews. Maybe some of the listeners have sort of. When I talk around some of the stuff I'm always seem to be on the bleeding edge of technology, especially around Microsoft. So being literally at the edge as it's coming out is where I live and breathe. So I really do enjoy joining those and giving the feedback. You know, I have. I have seen my feedback being heard and then seeing it actually being maybe a feature change or a modification to a feature. I've seen that being done and actually being released, which shows that processes for me it's just great. And yeah, just being able to communicate with the product groups, I mean be able to talk to them as directly is great without having to go through various other sort of ways. I don't know which other ways you can give feedback. It might be through your account manager and things like that, but this is actually talking directly to the product groups and getting those positive or constructive feedback back to them. Like I said, I've been there in it for three and a half years and well, three years, I should say not three and a half, but I don't see myself leaving it at all. It's there to stay with me. It's just another part of my day to day in some form. Now what's your sort of experience been, Sammy, with the sort of year coming up to this being your second year?
Polyges, he's just had an issue with my microphone. I think that it's great to see new changes and features being released. I think there's a distinct advantage, like you say, when you understand what the changes are that are coming, that's really helpful. Sometimes I think it can be a bit overwhelming because there is quite a lot going on and I think you need to. Well, for me anyway, I need to sort of focus in on what I truly care about and are passionate about, if that makes sense.
Right?
Because I'm like, oh, look at this new feature of product Z that I'm not even really that focused on or that interested in, if that makes sense, right? I don't know if this makes sense, but I like it when people in the community are talking about a feature and they're giving feedback and you might have the same thoughts and it's sort of validating your own experience and opinion, if that makes sense. Yeah, because I think sometimes, because if you're working with these products that are released, if you're not part of a private community, you're just getting fed these updates and until you start to use them for the first time, maybe in your business or with a customer, you don't really understand how they work or the thought process that you should have behind different parts of it. If you've got a frustration with a piece of cloud software, you don't know whether it's your lack of experience or whether that's a legitimate user experience issue or there's a bug or something like that. So it's great to see when you're using these tools and maybe you do go onto like a feedback session or you talk with other people in the community, you will get other people's opinions and feedback flowing in. Sometimes you won't agree with that. You might have your own opinions, but other times it's good to validate your thinking. And maybe also where there are gaps and new opportunities. What are the edges? How far can a certain feature really take you? You know, because sometimes we see new features which improve the way that we've done things in the past, but then you review them and you go, actually, that's not quite ready for me yet because edge conditions one, two and three aren't met for me yet, so it gives you an ability to benchmark it ahead of time. I'd say except for the podcast, I don't particularly produce much other content, but I could see that be very valuable for somebody that wanted to make content that lands when things go public. Preview, you'd have all of that previous time to prep all of that before the sort of embargo is lifted and you can start talking about it publicly. So do you want to build relationships with people at Microsoft? Do you want to see the new stuff that's coming out? Do you want to be able to give feedback back into it? Do you want to be able to get some swag out of the other side of it? Except for the time effort that you've got to put in? I don't really see a downside if these are technologies that you use on a day to day basis.
Yeah, and you don't have to be. Obviously, the more you're involved in the community, the more previews and feedback you give back, the more that community sort of benefits from. But you don't have to be doing three, four, five previews at a time. Like you said, I can see your point around. It can be overwhelming around the amount of discussions calls the product previews in there. But as you said, you've kind of got to focus yourself into what areas you work in and what areas are you interested in. Maybe for a couple of months, maybe you are only doing a product and looking at what's coming. It might be that there's a product, like you said, an update, a feature being released that you're very interested in. Take example, like the cloud PKI. I was part of that private preview and it was in one of these communities that we could see it and test it out. That is now public. So I can talk about it. But yeah, being able to do that and then think about how that can benefit customers, how it fits within organizations. And then like you said, once it's released, you can then go, hey, did you know about this? It does all this cool things and this is why you should consider it. You're right. But at the same time you don't have to be sort of dedicated to it per se. You can just pick up what you need to. As far as I'm aware, it's not. Anyway, if you're not active for a long time, then you get sort of kicked outside of things. I think you have to be active within. I think they do reviews every, might be every three, six or twelve months. Just check that you are still active. Or if you still want to be part of it, you have to update your profile.
I think it's every year.
Yeah.
Just had mine come through.
Yeah, exactly. So just saying, hey, do you still want to be here? If you don't update, then we're going to take you out just to sort of do a yearly tidy up. But it's not saying. Right. You have to do five previews every quarter and things like that.
Yeah. When I say it can be overwhelming, the amount that's there, I don't think you'd want less, if that makes sense. No, but I think, like you say, it's just something that you have to put some sort of guards in place about how much time you want to spend on the community. And I suppose that's different for everybody.
But yeah, I need to work on that.
The fact that you can just pick it up, interact with the bits that you want to interact with and then put it down. If you go on holiday or you want to take a break, then you've got the ability to do that.
Yes, absolutely. And yeah, I do need to work on my making sure I stay focused with it all because I do like to see, I do see all the new things and want to play with all the new things.
Yeah, exactly. So, Alan. Yeah. I suppose the big question is how do you get involved? Who can join? How do you join? Yes.
Okay. So to be able to join it, you have to do a special handshake with somebody. I mean. No, I'm joking. So you have to have, it probably seemed as obvious, but you have to have an NDA, a non disclosure agreement in with. And I think this is either with yourself as an individual or with the organization that you work for. So if you don't have one in place, then the CCP team will look to get one of those drafted up and sent over to be signed. And that is in a sense, so you can't talk publicly about any of the content within that customer connection program. What's happening. Anything that Microsoft deem is under NDA. Quite a lot of the calls and the sessions are under NDA at the time until they go public, preview or announced. So that can take a little time. But to be fair, I think a lot of customers may already have an NDA in place with Microsoft because they're already discussing them with their licensing or with issues they might have. Or what I've seen is a lot of NDAs already in place. It's probably only from an individual perspective that you may not have one. If you're a smaller organization or a one or two person company, that might be the place where you may have to get the NDA signed individually there. But generally, I think medium to large enterprises generally have an NDA with Microsoft anyway. But the customer catching program will ask, well, go and get that checked. If not, again, they can't find it or it's somewhere else within the organization, Microsoft organization, then they're send over an NDA, in effect, for it to be signed by the business or individually. And then to even get to that point of them checking, you just have to sign up to one of the Microsoft forms, which is at join CCP. Nice. And, yeah, and that form allows you to sign up up to those four that I talked about. So the data Security and privacy customer connection program, the management CCP, the Microsoft enteradvisors and the security Connection program. And then you just start filling that out where you locate what's your relationship with Microsoft and then you can go from there. And as I said, probably at the start or will be in the intro, is that it's not just Microsoft partners or ISVs, independent software vendors or Microsoft employees as well, or MVPs. It is customers as know all of us as a community there. So there's a lot of different perspectives there.
Yeah, that's great. Thanks for that overview, Alan. That was really good. Anything else that you want to add?
No. Hopefully I've done it justice. So hopefully I've done okay if Katie or Christina are listening, so we'll see. But yes. No, I don't think there's much too much more to say. Obviously, I can't really talk about the content general, the actual content inside because it's all under NDA. But yeah, it's definitely worth getting into it. And like you said, myself and you are in we can we help with the community as well. So come join us. Come say hi.
Yeah, that's great. Thanks very much, Alan.
Okay. So Sam, what's the next episode?
That's a very good question, Alan. That is a very good question. I don't currently have a next episode. I'm going to have to think on the spot. I didn't put it in the notes for this episode. Give me a second.
Was you going to do one about.
Key vault had we not done? Yes, I think we talked about that previously, didn't we?
Yeah.
I'm going to go for key vault then. As long as we don't have one on a key vault already. I don't think we do, actually. Yeah. So I'm going to do an episode on Key Vault. If you've never heard of key vault before, it's a way to store your keys, secrets, certificates in Azure. So it's a hosted service inside of Azure. I would say it's more developer focused than anything. The way that you would interact with it, get access to those keys and secrets. It's also integrated with a huge amount of other solutions inside of a shore. I'm not sure if I'll go through all of those. Maybe I will, I don't know, try and find as many integrations as I can. But yeah, I'll do an episode on Keyvault. Some of the benefits, and to me it's kind of one of those no brainer types of services in Azure. So yeah, I'll take us through that next time.
That's cool. Yeah, we use it quite a lot. Don't be good. Okay. So did you enjoy this episode? If so, please do consider leaving us some review on Apple or Spotify. This really helps us to reach out to more people like you. If you have any specific feedback or suggestions, we have a link in our show notes to get in touch with us.
Yeah, thanks very much, everybody, for listening if you've made it this far and we'll catch you on the next one.
Yeah, thanks all. Bye.