Akins IT is Microsoft Customer Immersion Experience Certified!

Chris Nicholas • November 30, 2017

I spent a week in LA, away from the regular hustle and bustle at Akins IT to get Microsoft Customer Immersion Experience [CIE] certified. I'm happy I did. My major take away wasn't around any particular feature, but rather the style and delivery methods that can be used to showcase the ideas behind the new modern workplace in Microsoft 365.

It's one thing to talk about stuff like Teams, Skype, OneDrive, transitioning between apps, co-authoring, etc. and another thing entirely to actually take someone through it in live fashion.

What this means is that Microsoft can now provide Akins IT with kits of Surface Books, Surface Pros and additional devices so that we can give our customers and prospects a hands-on live look at what Microsoft 365 can do in a well-configured environment. This isn't my peers and I walking you through a PowerPoint deck. You get a Windows machine, a persona for the day and access to a rich, live environment where you can be trigger happy and nothing will break.

The CIE is a great tool for those who:

Want to see Microsoft 365 in action, fully adopted
Build excitement in their own company about Windows 10, Office and modern collaboration
Allow key decision makers access to the platform for Executive sponsorship
Host a platform vs platform discussion where Microsoft is one of the candidate solutions [why wouldn't t it be???]
Are looking to maximize their own use of the platform, are already customers and need to push adoption
Want to get their hands on the new Microsoft devices

For our friends in education, both K12 and Higher Ed - there is a specially catered version of this hands-on experience which showcases some the key classroom concepts. We are hosting an EDU session in January. Details soon on this.

If you are looking at Microsoft licensing, renewing an EA, looking for a Microsoft partner or just plain curious - we can help. Another big perk with this certification is that Microsoft is letting us book their local and regional offices to host these sessions.

Feel free to contact us to setup a private CIE for your company, or stay tuned to learn about the sessions we will host at the Microsoft campuses in Irvine and LA and at Akins IT HQ, also in Irvine. In the meantime - I am including a link to the hands-on Security labs we are already running. See below.

Big thanks to Chris Mandarano, our trainer for the week who never deviated from his commitment to imparting the important skillset required to deliver these sessions. Thank you Chris!

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AWS stumbled this morning. Here’s why multi‑cloud keeps you moving.

By Shawn Akins • October 20, 2025

October 20, 2025 — Early today, Amazon Web Services experienced a major incident centered in its US‑EAST‑1 (N. Virginia) region. AWS reports the event began around 12:11 a.m. PT and tied back to DNS resolution affecting DynamoDB , with mitigation within a couple of hours and recovery continuing thereafter. As the outage rippled, popular services like Snapchat, Venmo, Ring, Roblox, Fortnite , and even some Amazon properties saw disruptions before recovering. If your apps or data are anchored to a single cloud, a morning like this can turn into a help‑desk fire drill. A multi‑cloud or cloud‑smart approach helps you ride through these moments with minimal end‑user impact. What happened (and why it matters) Single‑region fragility: US‑EAST‑1 is massive—and when it sneezes, the internet catches a cold. Incidents here have a history of wide blast radius. Shared dependencies: DNS issues to core services (like DynamoDB endpoints) can cascade across workloads that never directly “touch” that service. Multi‑cloud: practical resilience, not buzzwords For mid‑sized orgs, schools, and local government, multi‑cloud doesn’t have to mean “every app in every cloud.” It means thoughtful redundancy where it counts : Multi‑region or multi‑provider failover for critical apps Run active/standby across AWS and Azure (or another provider), or at least across two AWS regions with automated failover. Start with citizen‑facing portals, SIS/LMS access, emergency comms, and payment gateways. Portable platforms Use Kubernetes and containers, keep state externalized, and standardize infra with Terraform/Ansible so you can redeploy fast when a region (or a provider) wobbles. (Today’s DNS hiccup is exactly the kind of scenario this protects against.) Resilient data layers Replicate data asynchronously across clouds/regions; choose databases with cross‑region failover and test RPO/RTO quarterly. If you rely on a managed database tied to one region, design an escape hatch. Traffic and identity that float Use global traffic managers/DNS to shift users automatically; keep identity (MFA/SSO) highly available and not hard‑wired to a single provider’s control plane. Run the playbook Document health checks, automated cutover, and comms templates. Then practice —tabletops and live failovers. Many services today recovered within hours, but only teams with rehearsed playbooks avoided user‑visible downtime. The bottom line Cloud concentration risk is real. Outages will happen—what matters is whether your constituents, students, and staff feel it. A pragmatic multi‑cloud stance limits the blast radius and keeps your mission‑critical services online when one provider has a bad day. Need a resilience check? Akins IT can help you prioritize which systems should be multi‑cloud, design the right level of redundancy, and validate your failover plan—without overspending. Let’s start with a quick, 30‑minute review of your most critical services and RPO/RTO targets. (No slideware, just actionable next steps.)