Hi, everybody. How are you doing? My name is Tom Hall and I'm hosting this brand new series from the Rock to the Cloud. In this series of videos, we're going to be talking to some amazing people from around the Microsoft ecosystem, talking about everything to do with Windows Server. Every episode, I'm going to meet a special guest and they can help me explain a few things about some of our technology that quite frankly, I probably don't understand and I'm pretty sure some of you don't too, but I know you're interested and I know you're excited. If you have any questions during the episode or if there's anything you want to know, please drop the comments in below. Okay, so today we're going to be talking about something pretty big, something pretty exciting and that's Azure Arc. Now, there's been a lot of buzz around this, so we really need somebody clever and smart who knows what they're doing to come and talk about this. So for the next 30 minutes, I'm going to be catching up with Thomas Moira, although I probably said that wrong. Thomas, how do you say your name? What do we say again? Hi, Tom. Great to be here. Well, you call it Moira, but you almost had it there, so we were very close. Moira. Thomas Moira. That's okay. That's my dyslexic ability of reading names there. So Thomas Moira and Thomas, you're actually a bit of a legend apparently in the industry inside Germany. So we've reached out across the continent to find and personally knows the most about this sort of subject that we can get our hands on for our audience today. So we're very excited to have you. So if you wouldn't mind telling us a little bit more about it because I've obviously picked you up a little bit, saying that you're probably the best person in Europe to talk about this, but in your own opinion, is your own intro of yourself? So first of all, you set the bar very, very high. During your interview, I get very blushed. I'm probably red on camera right now, but yeah. So my name is Thomas Maurer. I work as a cloud advocate in our Azure engineering teams and I'm part of a global team. And what we do on a very high level is actually we create and deliver content such as, for example, this video, as well as like, for example, docs, learn articles, blogs, we speak at conferences and all that good stuff. And again, it can be many, many different things. We also write little tools that might help you working with technology. But the other big part, which probably a lot of people don't see is we get a lot of feedback. So we try to get feedback from our customers to understand what is working, what is not working, how can we make our products more like better and make you, our customers, more successful with that. And so this is a very big part of our job too and actually like helping customers to, again, to be more successful with the stuff we do. And as you can see, that's probably why I'm here. I obviously did a lot of work on Windows Server or with the Windows Server. And now especially like over the last couple of years with Azure and especially hybrid and multi-cloud technology such as Azure Arc and Azure Stack. Yeah, yeah.  So let's jump into the topic today, Thomas. Let's talk about Azure Arc, yeah? Let's go. Okay, so before we talk about Azure Arc, what is it all about? What problem are Microsoft trying to solve? What is the challenge for the customers that Microsoft are trying to solve with this product? Because again, there's loads of products out there that Microsoft have got. How is this any different to any other products? And, you know, there's a lot of buzz around it, but what are Microsoft trying to solve for? Yeah, so I mean, if you're watching this video, this is probably not something really new to you, right? But what we see is that customer environments get increasingly complex, right? So that is a lot of like things added, like which add complexity for the IT departments but also for developers, especially like with movements to the cloud and also with new technology and bringing all that together. And that is what we try to address, right? And there are multiple reasons. We try to have a look at what are actually the reasons for it. And there are multiples of those, but three I want to highlight are like the first one is really that IT needs to manage hundreds, if not thousands of different applications, right? And these can be very modern applications written on like past services in Azure, server-less technologies, containerized stuff. But then we also have this huge amount of traditional applications running on servers, some of them virtual and some of them even physical, right? And guess what? Those servers, they're not just going away and so we need to actually find a way to actually help IT departments and developers and IT administrators to actually manage all of these systems. The other part is what we also see is when we speak about management, we also have very diverse infrastructure when we look at customers. Some customers run their own data centers. They have stuff at some service providers. They run, they have edge locations like branch offices, retail stores and so on. And last but not least, we see customers obviously also adopting in some sort of multi-cloud environments as well. This sometimes is the strategy where they actually want to have multiple cloud providers and sometimes it's just like the history of it, right? Probably some department already started with a cloud provider, but then there was a general decision that Azure would be the best cloud provider for the company, which by the way is often very, very true, but so they need to like somehow still manage all of that. And again, you can imagine that adding a cloud provider adds some additional complexity. So adding multiple cloud providers obviously like doesn't make things easier. So we try to help actually manage all this stuff and make it easier. Yeah, and I suppose that you touched on a few things there and I think one of the things that, you know, we're having more of these discussions in the UK with more of our partners about hybrids, about multi-cloud. Like, you know, these are sort of massive buzz terms that are going around the industry, but like why are they important? Because obviously it sounds to me like it's actually just more complication. So, yeah, no, and this is a fair point, right? And I think when you probably speak to Microsoft salespeople very often, you probably just think, oh, well, it's all about the cloud. It's all about cloud. It's all about cloud, right? But that's not necessarily the case. I mean, obviously the cloud has a lot of advantages and can help you with a lot of things, but we know that our customers need to run also stuff on-prem. They want to run stuff on-prem. They want to run stuff in a hybrid environment. And I always quote Jason Sanders here who did the keynote directly after Satya at Ignite 2019 when we still had in-person conferences. And for those who don't know, Jason Sanders is actually the engineering lead of all the Azure services directly under Scott Guffrey. And he did what he said, basically, that was for me the most important part that someone so high obsessed is like, hybrid is going to be an end state for most of our customers and not just the in-between state until everything is moved to the cloud. So that means we actually need to help our customers in these hybrid environments, right? We want to actually deliver technologies which helps them to make their on-premises environment even better, right? And actually help them with that. And we don't just want to convince them, well, just move everything over. No, no, we also want to see there is a need. This can be data sovereignty reasons. This can be networking challenges. This can be just like trust things. So Azure is a great place to learn stuff, but there are reasons why you probably can't run it there. So we want to help you. So I just want to get this right in my head. So hybrid is actually whatever you want, whichever way you want it, a bit of on-prem, a bit of cloud, a bit of private cloud, mixed up in the way you need it. And that is then, you know, you could have multiple clouds. So you could have a other lesser-everable brand of cloud, AWS or something, rubbish like that. And then you could also then have Azure. You could have all of those things all working at the same time. That's then multi-cloud. And so then how is Azure helping with that? Yeah, so you can imagine now, now you end up in a situation where you run stuff in your own data center.  You run stuff at some edge locations. And for all these different places, where we often what we see is you have different management tools. You have one management tool to manage your stuff on-prem. You have one management tool to manage your stuff in Azure. Then also the other cloud provider provides some management stuff. And it's very tricky, right? And there's a lot of effort to actually use all of that. And it's, again, a lot of complexity. And so we're trying to say, well, our management tools and that a lot of customers tell us this, like our management tool in Azure are actually so good to manage resources at scale even. Why not just enable customers to actually be able to use the Azure portal and the Azure resource manager and the Azure management tools to manage resources which are running outside of Azure? And that is exactly what Azure Arc can do. Right. That sounds pretty amazing. Can you show us that, Thomas? Absolutely. Let's have a look and switch to the demo here. Cool. It's almost like we have that plan, Thomas. I don't know. Yeah, it looks very like a big coincidence here. And so here I am in the Azure portal, right? And what I can do here is, for example, I can go into the All Resources page. And what you can see here actually is all the Azure resources. Now, for those who are not that familiar with Azure or really haven't really played with Azure, everything in Azure is basically an object. Like we learned that very soon that in Azure what you need to do is you need to have the right tools to manage this. And you can see here, I have different names here, and then you can see here the types.  Basically, really everything is an object. And every object can then be grouped in a resource group. And it's part of an Azure subscription and it's basically joined to a location, right? And so you can then also go out and organize your things here. You can actually go out and say, well, okay, I want to list all my resources in a specific location or I want to list all my virtual machines and so on. Now, again, customer tools, this is great, but we want to actually, why can we not use this for resources which are outside of Azure? And that is what I want to quickly show you here. So here I can filter the types of resources I want to see. And what I'm going to show here is I'm going to select my Arc-enabled servers. So I already joined a couple of servers to Azure, like these servers, these Arc-enabled servers, these are systems, these can be Windows servers, these can be Linux servers which are running outside of Azure, right? So I'm going to select these. And next to it, I want to see, for example, my Azure virtual machines. So if I apply this filter, it will now show me all of my servers running in Azure and outside of Azure in a single view, right? So this is, you can see here, if I zoom in here, the blue ones are actually the Azure virtual machines and then you have the Azure Arc servers. You can see here my domain controller, my file servers, my Hyper-V server. These are all now connected to Azure and they show up as an object here. And you can also see that they are joined to an Azure resource group. They're part of a subscription. They basically look like an Azure resource and that's not because they just look like it. They now are becoming an Azure resource. They're still running on-premises in my own data center, in my case, underneath my desk here. But they're now represented in Azure, right? And I can do some cool things here now. I can add, for example, like other filters. So what I can do here is something we have packing. That's so simple, Thomas. Yep. Very simple things to do. I can, for example, here, then go and use something like we call tags. Tags is a great way of like tagging your resources and then organize them. So what I did is basically have a cost center tag and then I want to see all my servers, let's say from cost center 1002, and I can apply this and now it shows me all my servers which belong to a specific cost center. And you can see here is a mix of servers running in Azure and servers running outside of Azure, right? So very easy stuff to do. You can now use the Azure control plane to get that visibility and organize your resources. Doesn't matter wherever they are running. So what you're saying is, is that Azure Arc helps our customers manage everything that is either Microsoft-owned or, in fact, non-Microsoft-owned or managed by Azure and put it all into like one place, one kind of bucket. Exactly. But you're calling it Azure Resource Manager. Exactly, exactly. This is now, I can now add here my systems, right? I just showed you now servers. So most of them I showed you here, these are actually Windows servers, right? I added. But again, we also support Linux servers. They can be virtual or physical. They can run in your own data center. They can run in your branch office. They can run at another cloud provider. We also support, by the way, Kubernetes clusters, data services and much, much more, which we can add. Now you might think, Thomas, this is great. Now we get the visibility, but I actually need to do something with it, right? And so what I quickly want to show you is a thing called Azure policy. And this is especially for people who are interested into like making like configuration management, making sure that the systems are configured securely and compliant with the company policy. Now, again, if you're not familiar with Azure policy, Azure policy basically allows us to manage our Azure environment. Now the cloud obviously promise speed and agility. So everyone could go out and just deploy new virtual machines in a couple of seconds. But if you are responsible to manage that environment, you kind of like need to have some policies in place which says, okay, not every developer or IT professional can just go out and deploy a large Azure VM with hundreds of cores, terabytes of memory, and they drain your credit cards in like couple of seconds, right? You actually wanna have some policies in place and that is what Azure policy can do. Now, another part of Azure policy is that we can actually go out and check if the operating systems of Azure virtual machines are configured in a compliant state and in a secure state. And with Azure Arc now, we can do this now for resources which are outside of Azure. So let me quickly show you this. What I would do usually, I would go to assignments and I would create a new assignment. Now, again, I gonna jump through that really, really quickly because most of the stuff is probably not that interesting at the beginning. But what you can do here is you can see here, I do a scope for all my resources in my Azure subscription and then I'm gonna select the definition. And we provide you with a ton of built-in definitions here. So you can see here, we have different definitions. This can also be like things like UK official and UK NHS, right? So like this goes then out and does an environment check based on this. And we have much, much more of these industry certifications here if I scroll down. But we also have some which do just technical things like enable the Azure monitoring for VMs and stuff like that. So in my case, what I wanna do is a very simple one as well but a very important one, like audit my machines with insecure password settings. So I wanna actually see if I have any machine servers in my environment, not just in Azure, but also like on-prem to see if they have insecure password settings. Now think about this as like group policies on steroids, right? This is actually gonna help me. These servers don't need to be domain joined they don't need to be in the same domain. I just get the only thing they need to have is the Azure Arc agent installed and they're gonna show you how later how that works. But so I select that and now on the next page which is new now, you can see here if you worked with this before you can see here now I can actually go in and say well also include my Arc connected servers. So again, meaning servers which are not part of Azure or not running in Azure. So I can go through and actually run through this but this will then take a while until this goes out and checks all my servers. And so like in a good cooking show I already put my air fish. Let me guess one you made earlier Thomas. Exactly, exactly. So I prepared something earlier and you can actually go to you can actually go to the compliance view and what you can see here is first of all, I do a very bad job when it comes to compliance. That's number one and the second thing here is you can see here I have a couple of policies here which I'm not compliant to which are assigned to my environment by either by me or by the people who are managing my stuff and you can also have a couple of them which are compliant but on the top here you can see here the server policy to audit machines within secure password settings. So this is the policy I just showed you and you see I'm not compliant not with a single machine even and if I scroll down you can see here all the policies and you can actually figure out what it checks some of them do like maximum password age which needs to be restricted and stuff like that or where should the passwords be stored and you can see here all the stuff here but more interestingly I obviously now for my environment want to know which resources are not compliant. So if I click on non-compliant resources you can now see that I have my Azure virtual machines as well as my on-prem service here next to each other. So you can see here dark names but if I scroll over here you can see here that I have Microsoft compute virtual machines these are the Azure VMs and then we have Microsoft hybrid compute machines which are basically servers running in your own data center outside of Azure. And so I can actually see now okay look all these servers are not really compliant so I could reach out to the owner of that server the administrator of that server or if I'm that I would obviously go out and go out and fix that right. So that was basically the first first demo I wanted to show you here. Wow so that is that is pretty damn cool. And I didn't realize it was so powerful that you can do so many things across so many you know different different planes right parallel all at the same time all at the same place and like these like that's that's blown me away raise most of you. And so how do we add a server into Azure Arc? I mean that you know I mean like we've got the platform I've got my virtual machines running I've got you know five locations each one's got a server how do I go about doing that? Yep absolutely so as you said like I showed you in the first demo now it was really about okay I already have a couple of servers added right and the way I'm doing this I can show you that in our next demo here. So if you want to try this out and basically I highly encourage you to try this out there's ways you can create I will also talk about that if you haven't really played with Azure you can create a free Azure subscription and then Azure Arc the base settings that I will talk about this they're even free right so you don't even pay for any of that as soon as you don't like at one point I will show you more management technologies and for them you will then actually pay but to join this like all the things I showed you with like the sorting I like sort and actually use text this is free so what you would do you would go to the search here and you would basically just search for Azure Arc and if you then go to the Azure Arc page here I call it the or we call it the Azure Arc Center so this is the piece where you actually manage everything which comes in outside from Azure right so this is actually Azure Arc actually bridges the resources which are running outside of Azure I hope you see what I did there but so what you have here is again different management technologies and I spoke about this again you can manage different things here we have servers Kubernetes clusters SQL servers even Azure Stack HCI we have all the things there as well but you ask me how to add a server so what I go is I click on servers and you can see here here are all the machines I already added now this is not your home basically this is my home here my location but to add a new one I would just simply go to click on add and it's actually very simple so what is happening is we download an agent we install that agent and then we register that agent to our Azure environment and that's it now to make this easier we have two wizards here which can help you actually adding these servers one is really sorry wait sorry well I'm gonna stop you there right so Microsoft has not just got one wizard working for them they've got two wizards like they've got two Gandalfs working at Microsoft not just one why do we need two wizards why do we need two wizards at Microsoft? it's very simple so the first one the first wizard is very good in adding single servers right so what happens is actually that you generate the script which downloads the agent installs the agent and then registers that server now the difference here is when you register that server you need to log in with your Azure credentials right that makes sense however you can imagine that this is not really a good way of doing it if you add multiple servers right and so with this we can use a service principle and that's basically just a an ID basically you can use which has the only like the only access it has is actually to add or the only permission it has is to actually add servers to Azure now I just want to quickly show you what that means right so we're going to see what Gandalf can do right perfect exactly so first if you start at wizard we will see actually like okay the prerequisites again very simple by the way that's actually perfect for actually telling you what you actually need to have so you need to have outgoing internet well not internet traffic but traffic to some of the Azure APIs and you can find a list of these APIs right here on port 443 so all the communication is going outside and it's encrypted and then you need to obviously have local admin rights to install that agent that is basically it what you need the next thing you can actually go and you can then select the Azure subscription you want to join it to you would have your resource group for example where you would organize your arch enabled servers or your applications in and then you would select the closest Azure region so for many of you it's probably right now UK South so this is only the region where the agent connects to right where the APIs are hosted I could also select here now whatever I want I could select that US one as well but for me West Europe is the closest one to my systems I can also select if it's a Windows server or Linux and if it's behind the proxy I could also configure that the next one is we could use the tags those are the tags I basically showed you also with the cost center we already give you a couple of them to help you organize but you can also define your custom tags and you can also obviously do that later on and then at the end you get basically that script which you then can copy and download and then run on your machine and again this will just basically download the installer the Windows world this is an MSI file then install that and then the last one is running that command now let me quickly switch to my machine here so this server in terms of time I already installed that system that server like the agent on it but what happens is on that server called app zero one I now have a process running this is actually the process from the Azure arc or agent or the Azure connected machine agent right and that does the whole communication now from that machine that makes it show up now I get also a management tool here called the Azure connected machine agent and if I hit that you can see here of different options here available on that machine again can do a couple of different things but most importantly what I can do is I can actually show some information now here and this takes a second and then you can see here some Azure related information I can see what resource name now that server has I can see in which resource group it's joined which Azure subscription which Azure tenant which VM ID this server has and if all the services services are running now again this is this is pretty cool here to manage that now what happens after install that you can see here that server shows up here and if I go to that server you can see here now this is how it looks like when it's connected and this is now how it looks like in the Azure portal brilliant and so once you've got a server on board it to Azure what can you do with it like great I've got it there yep as you can yeah I mean I I completely get it there is obviously much we must more than Thomas just showed us right like showing that up doing some policy stuff this is all great but I obviously need I as a Windows server administrator I probably need to do more than just have a look at servers right all day so as you can see it looks like an Azure resource you can see here to different tags you can also see here some additional information I can also see that this server is joined to a local domain again it doesn't need to be but it can you can see here on the left side I can do some role based access control for example so I could now in the Azure only give permission to people who actually need to manage that server and not like to everyone and then I get a couple of awesome things here the first thing I want to show you a security center so I enabled security center so I get Azure Defender for Windows server and that means I also get information about how the system is not configured securely so I have a couple of recommendations here and we also give them basically a priority how fast you should take care of it so for example in this scenario we see that I did not have all my system updates installed and I should probably do that to make sure everything is okay Thomas seriously right you're your own compliant and you're not up to date but this is I'm a horrible I mean I'm really a horrible admin but again Azure Arc and the Azure Kotoba is obviously here to help me to get that visibility and to see like hey Thomas you do actually a bad chop so let's better go out and fix this right so what do we actually have to fix this what we also have is a thing and I need to see if we have that available here is called Azure monitor so I can not only like get these security recommendations I also get a monitoring view here so the first thing I want to show you here is the map view this basically lists my server here in the middle and it shows me to which endpoints or other service this service connecting so I get this awesome IP addresses on that specific for example local ports here as well I can see here that it connects to some like internal service as well and then obviously I get the simple performance monitoring well it's not that simple but like the things you need right you need to know if there's enough disk space how is your CPU utilization your memory utilization you get all that information directly here and you can even configure alerts here and again think about this for a moment over all your service doesn't matter where they're running right and you can control it from Azure like in a single control plane you also have legally simple some believe me simple yep the only installing the agent clicking on enable and that's it basically is there's no like magic and you'll need to install anything I don't like in terms of like I need to set up a monitoring tool or anything it's just there and we obviously update like add more features to Azure monitor and do all the other Azure service pretty regularly yeah another part is obviously sometimes you need to deal with locks so what we have here is for example with lock analytics we can actually send all the system locks of a server to Azure to a lock analytics workspace and then I can for example run here a query and now I can run the performance query here and you can see here down here I get all this performance or go too deep into this but we also can have the security locks and all that like basically all the event locks whatever I want to enable I can I can actually put this in and get all that information directly shown here now speaking of that I can also obviously want to see what else is going on so I can enable change tracking for my server so what I have here is I can see all the changes happening to my server so you can see here if if some services changed if there were some changes made to the system I can see that I can also get a software inventory of that system so I see all for example in this case like there's not much software on that server but all the updates installed and I could go and search for something if I I want to look if something is installed like a specific type of software I could browse to do you need a do you need a new license Thomas we can we can help you out with that maybe we can study a new license I would be happy to have some sort of software I could install but but you could actually see that like what what is going on on that system right and then and you saw here on the left side I can also go and have a policy view here where I now see all the policies again just assigned to this server I don't see all the policies I just see the ones which are assigned to me now and I can see here well I'm not compliant with to and again the same thing as a show before but the other big thing that means obviously to do is update management right this is like something which regularly comes up and you can see here I'm also as I said before security center already told me you are doing a bad job you have updates that you need to install now if you click on update management you can see here all the missing updates I can see some of them are just defender definitions which I don't care so much but there's for example the arc agent even all the other windows updates as well and now what I can do to fix this is actually schedule an update deployment I would give that the name let's call that server doesn't really matter it's just for me to recognize it already detected that this is a Windows server I can configure the maintenance window I can say well reboot if required that sounds like a good option but I can also say always reboot if I want to or never and then I go out into scheduling part which would mean the next five to ten minutes it would basically update that server and obviously after that rebooted if needed however since we are in the middle of a demo here it's probably not a good idea so let's schedule this for later so I can schedule this and what you can also see here I can make that even a recurring task so actually I can say well I want this server to be updated every Tuesday night for example like whatever I want to or every every I can do that and then I can do some other stuff here I can basically say which update classifications should be installed which updates should be included excluded I can even run some post and prescripts here and at the end I review it and create that task and that would then basically go out and patch that server to the configured time now you probably say well Thomas I have 100 servers I don't want to do that per server right so yes so machines and that directly takes you to our Azure automation count account with the update management solution and here you basically get all the update all the systems here running in Azure running outside of Azure and you can see here if they're compliant and not compliant and here I could then also go and update the systems and the difference here is I could have the exact same options I can also schedule it make it recurring past but I can now select so I can set inside like okay let's do let's do group one of all the servers like the main controller one file server one and all that on Tuesday night and then I can create a second group of servers on like the main controller two and stuff like that on first day nights and so I make sure that like if something goes wrong I still have all the other servers available and again I can set same so this so simple because it's just basically like setting up a group policy you know on so it's just simple of it and so me dying there and this then concentrate so much there that I forgot to breathe that's so exciting your demo was Thomas the you said the Azure up is not just about supporting service but there's other services that it can do and it's not just servers it's not just cloud service not just the it's not just on-prem but you mentioned that it can do other things what yeah absolutely so again you can what we we distinguish a little bit between like Azure Arc-enabled infrastructure so that means like joining existing infrastructure again this can be service Linux servers Windows servers physical virtual doesn't matter where they're running we have Kubernetes clusters and again this doesn't mean that it's only a Microsoft flavor to be discussed you just said that like it was just like you just flashed through that just give us down and you know some people might not know what you're about absolutely so Kubernetes clusters basically the orchestrated to like organize your containerized apps right and we see a lot of customers running this inside Azure but also outside of Azure in their own data centers and at other places as well and these need to be managed in a similar way as like for example service to right so we have tools like the monitoring part I showed you for servers we can also enable that specifically obviously you get some additional information about the containers and all Kubernetes specific things we can enable for example the security center parts you actually see if you're configured securely we can enable policies like I showed you with service to make sure that your communities cluster is configured in a compliant state and then something we can also do there and that's very important is app deployment and kind of like at scale right this is more for DevOps and developer people but if you for example need to update your containerized applications on a Kubernetes cluster or deploy them even you can now do that and configure that directly within the Azure portal from a technology like we call a GitOps so what you do is you check in your application code into a Git repository and you tell the Kubernetes clusters to regularly check that Git repository for changes and as soon as soon as soon as there's there's changes to the code like if you deploy an update to it yeah grabs that application and deploys it on the Kubernetes cluster now you would say well if I have one Kubernetes clusters why don't I do that directly or something but obviously if you have one at least you get this this CID CID CID pipeline which you can work on so everything is actually checked in and you have a nice history of what's happened and secondly think about it if you have hundreds of Kubernetes clusters running in different locations you can now go out and update these applications running on these Kubernetes clusters within within within seconds right and then so that that is pretty awesome as well then it's all about it's all about scale isn't it Thomas that's what you're saying it's all about scale it can be it's it's about scale absolutely as oh it scales very very very well with also with servers but I see already a lot of like small companies taking care taking advantage of this right if you have only a couple of servers for example running in your branch office or something like that that already can as rock can already help you giving that experience it's it's really a good mix it absolutely is about scale but you can also use it in very small environments like I talk to very small customers which do only a couple of like a handful of servers if you will but they're so happy that they now don't need a VPN to manage this they don't need to do like any fancy stuff they just log into the Azure portal and I can actually go out and deploy updates and other stuff directly from them yeah so right I've got it now right it's about scale if you want it or simplicity if you need it got it there we are I want to create like some buzz some buzz terms there so scale if you want it simplicity if you need it I love it as you are I'm sold and so where can people find out more information Thomas where like I mean obviously they haven't all got access to you so if they've got access should they need. So there are a couple of places where you can go so obviously the Microsoft Docs are a great place to actually learn about these technologies where we have all the documentation for Azure Arc for all this stuff we also have a Microsoft learn module so Microsoft learn for those who don't know it's a free learning platform with like videos with tax with with little questions for you to actually see if you understand it but also little sandboxes so if you don't have an Azure subscription and you don't want to sign up and you don't like for example you don't have a credit card available you don't want to sign up with your credit car you don't have to because there we give you a sandbox for a couple of hours a day where you can play with your Azure environment and again it's not just for Azure Arc it's also for other Azure technology it's also for even Microsoft 365 technology so for all these spaces as well and it also covers for example the Azure Arc enabled data services part and that one allows you to actually run Azure SQL outside in your in your data center and then last but not least I also want to highlight the Azure Arc Jump Start project so this is a very good place to go is Azure Arc Jump Start dot I O and if you want to try it out they build a lot of automation to build all these environments to onboard resources to like really check it out and actually without you or me investing a lot of time setting things up you can really quickly take advantage of all the automation they built to like if you want to do a presentation in your company if you want to do a POC in your company that is really really helpful sweet so I can't remember all of that but I did write most of it down but what we would do is we'll make sure that information is in the description of of this where we post so we've got that amazing resource because a there's a ton of free stuff and b you know people are going to need their own Thomas if they're going to if they're going to go and settle this stuff so Thomas amazing and so this is this is I really hate saying the fun bit but it's more the unknown bit so we've we've decided in our infinite wisdom that that we're going to have a a server meme review now a couple of colleagues of mine then the producers will get together and I've not seen this right so I actually don't know what's going to happen and apparently because I'm not a server architect or you know someone like yourself apparently I might get this but I think I think apparently you're going to find this very funny so we'd love to know your thoughts on on these memes we'd love to get a rating and you know a comment from the audience as well but let's do a reaction to to a couple of memes so meme one let's see what happens I don't this is literally brand new we don't know if this is going to work so meme one what what at least this when you're working in a server of maintenance and you have to unplug and replug I mean some of us have even a situation I mean I get it like it's funny not not that extreme but yes so I I seen very I don't know if you can say but very bad things in my life and yes this these things sound look similar to this and well yeah yeah it's insane okay right okay so obviously if you if you've got means feel free to post them in the comment section but Thomas we can look and we can look at the second meme I think we just the I think we just get through this now what we really do with a server is them now Thomas that surely can't be you with all your uncompliance yeah I I think that could be me and looking at my compliance state absolutely yeah now this yeah sometimes I remember this times when I was working as a like system administrator right and we had so many different systems like different like hardware systems different rate controllers and stuff like that and things would obviously break all the time and then you need it to actually not like think okay how really hope that like sometimes you just like I reboot this and hopefully it comes back up right it's like that and I know I was waiting I actually remember like it was not a server it was not like it was like a web platform and I remember like something didn't work anymore and I remember like the CTO of the company and a couple of engineers and we were all sitting around like one computer and we said okay let's just reboot it but however the server was like in another country right it would have been hours away and we would make some remote hands gone so like everyone was waiting for it and someone pressed the button to reboot the system and we were like all okay hopefully it comes back up hopefully it comes back up please please please but and luckily like spoiler lord it did so everything went fine but cool okay and you've seen funny memes or you want to rate those memes and let us know appreciate that didn't know what was going to happen there but I think it worked out alright we were obviously praying to the meme gods and so before we before we wrap up Thomas let's just recap the points that we covered so you know what were the top two things with you you would say we covered in this episode so I think the most important takeaway here is really especially and and you never really worked with Azure before I think your takeaway can be that Azure technology is not just to run stuff in Azure but it can also be there to make your on-premises environment even better right it really wants we want to help you there we don't say well look it's just to move everything to Azure I mean of course there are some advantages if you do move things to Azure in some cases but we completely understand that you can move everything that you don't want to move everything Azure technologies like Azure Arc and all our management technologies can make things better for you that is number one and so the second one I would say is really about the different management technologies you have here you saw I went did a lot of demo here so actually doing update management directly from the Cloud making sure that everything is compliant getting all this information in one single place doing monitoring I think that admin or even a decision maker or whoever is in charge of that you probably want to have a look at this and try it out again some of the features are even free some of the features then custom some sort of money but I think it's really good place to actually have a look and see if Azure Arc can fill your need and make your life hopefully easier anything that we can make our life easier Thomas and I think that's the thing that I took from it it's it's that scale the scale if you want it and simplicity when you need it so that's my that's my marketing spiel version of what you said but yeah that it's it's phenomenal and Thomas thank you so much for your time today it's been really special and you know what I actually always love talking to people who who genuinely are experts because it makes such a difference to age to me and my understanding but also hopefully the audience and you know them understanding what technology is actually available for them because I think I think there's a big misconception that these things are a secret they're not a secret we just don't tell enough people about it and actually that's the thing that I've learned from you know as you're up today actually it just it's accessible and it allows people like you said to maximize that on-prem solution with that cloud and that ultimately is hybrid and that's what everyone's talking about so that you've in half an hour made that really really simple and shown us absolutely you know the simple and practice they say Thomas thank you so much the the classic bow I feel like I'll be doing that at the end of every episode so everybody thank you so much for watching this episode from the rock to the cloud keep your eye out for what's coming next we're going to have more exciting episodes coming soon and remember if you've got any thoughts or comments or you know you just simply want to get in touch make sure you drop a comment into the comments section and yeah hopefully you've learned as much as I have because certainly Thomas has blown my mind thanks a lot cheers everybody


So you don't really understand the fracture menu, not a problem. If you ever want to unfracture something, hit reset up here. To select the entire object, click all. If you only want to select pieces of it, select those pieces and if you hold shift you can select multiple pieces. Invert reverses your selection and picks the opposite. None deselects everything. And if you have selected a fracture of a fracture, the parent button will auto select the parent piece of those smaller pieces. If you've selected a parent piece already, the children button will select all the smaller pieces it's made of. The sibling button will select all the pieces that are in the same status as the one you clicked. The level selects all the pieces that are in the same fracture level. If you pick this piece, you can see it has auto selected all the pieces in fracture level 2. The parents are in fracture level 1, so they were not selected. If I do this again, but with a level 1 piece like this, you can now see that only the level 1 pieces are selected. If you want to select only the pieces that are directly physically touching what you've selected, click contact. Leaf just means you only select what's on the final layer. And a cluster selects everything except the leaf bones. And honestly, I never really use interactive, but it's an easy way to select one piece at a time without the big fracture preview. Now if we go down here, we will have a few different ways to fracture. Uniform is the default Voronoi pattern, which is applied evenly to the entire object. But if you want the fractures to look uneven, you should use the cluster mode instead, which will give you pockets of high density fractures randomly. Radial is when you want the fracture to go from the center outward. This is great if you want something to look like it was broken from being hit or shot by a bullet. Planner is when you want to slice something in half. You can rotate the angle at which you sliced with the gizmo. Slice will dice your object as if you were cutting fruit or onions. And bricks will cut everything you need as if it was a brick wall. Now mesh fracture is basically a boolean operation. Pick an object that you want to use to cut into your fracture, selected here. And now you can see you have a single fracture in the shape of the object that we used. Now if you want to micromanage every single atom of how your stuff fractures, you can use the custom settings, but I personally never use it because the defaults usually look good enough for me. Now each type of fracture has a few different settings that you can choose from to change the way the pattern breaks. That's all these numbers do. I know there's a lot of them, but all these numbers do is adjust the way the fracture pattern is applied when you press fracture. You don't even need to mess with them most of the time and they're pretty self-explanatory. But the settings that I find myself adjusting the most are random seed, which is how you change the break pattern if you are not happy with the one that it gave you. Draw diagram turns the break preview off and under noise you can adjust the size and settings of the break preview controller. And min, max numbers control how many single cluster break patterns you want to have at this level. But don't set it too high or else your computer will probably freak out. Prune will delete whatever selected parts you have. Hide just makes whatever you've selected invisible. You can unhide it with this button and Geo merge combines all the selected pieces you have into a single big one. The cluster area is basically an easy way to regroup pieces. Flatten puts every piece in one level, level up, reparent your selected pieces into the next parent above and merge moves all of your selected pieces into a single group. And that's really most of what I use. You're done really. You can play with the embed and the utilities if you're looking for something very specific to control. But the big takeaway from this video is the different fracture patterns. If you got that much, you're 80% of the way there. Anyway, I hope that helps that as always. If you have a fantastic day and I'll see you around.


Throughout my life I've increasingly found that reading scripture in public isn't just about feeding our own spirits and minds, but about rehearsing the mighty acts of God for God's glory. So let's think together about Judges 21, 25. And first we're going to need some tea. In those days there was no king in Israel. All the people did what was right in their own eyes. That's the last line of the Book of Judges. The book which some see as one of the darkest points in the whole Bible. And indeed it's a puzzling book in the Bible for many people. Many people when they were in Sunday school skipped over it entirely, except possibly for one or two of the key stories like Samson and so on. But so much of the Book of Judges is a puzzle to us because it doesn't look as though this book is a good example of how God's people should behave. And often people are taught to look at the Bible to see examples of behaviour, faith, et cetera, et cetera. But by the time you get to the end of Judges you're crossing your eyes and your hair standing on end and you're saying, I'm glad I wasn't living in those times because it's a terrible time when, as it says, everyone was just doing what they wanted.  And actually one of the things that this last line of Judges is reminding us is that the Bible isn't simply a collection of good examples of how to behave or even simply of examples of how not to behave. It's a way of talking about the larger purposes of God that God had brought his people out of Egypt to be the people who would be the advanced guard of his ultimate new creation. But though he had shown them so many extraordinary deeds in the wilderness and indeed in the Exodus itself, when they then came into the land they got muddled, they forgot, they didn't remember what God had done bringing them out of Egypt and they started to copy the local habits of the people of the land and particularly they started to worship the idols that were all around them and they started to behave in the way that idolatry normally leads people to behave and the results of that are written right across the Book of Judges particularly in the last three or four chapters which are what some people have called texts of terror.  And the author or editor of the Book of Judges knows perfectly well that this is the way life is in that book and so this is how the book ends that this was not the way God intended it to be. God had another plan. He was going to reorganize his people. There was no king in Israel then and the book is hinting but there will be one day and then we will know how to live. Now of course as we know from 1st and 2nd Samuel to look no further the institution of the monarchy was itself not an unqualified success to say the least but with the choice of King David and we can imagine the editor of Judges looking at David and Solomon in particular with the choice of King David there was a man after God's own heart and in principle though David went horribly wrong himself in principle Israel was called to worship Yahweh the God who had brought them out of Egypt and to serve him and to come together in worship in Jerusalem in the place which David was organizing and which Solomon his son would build. So this line in Judges reminds us not simply to read one verse or one passage but to look at the larger whole to look at the whole sweep of the biblical story and then as we look out beyond the sequence from Judges on into 1st and 2nd Samuel so we look at the larger biblical story itself and we see even throughout the Old Testament and even in that post-exilic period with puzzled prophets like Haggai and Malachi saying we've come back from Babylon but things are still not right we should be able to hear a word like the word that the editor has put at the end of Judges in those days the Messiah had not yet come things were still going wrong, things were still muddled we should then look at that larger biblical story and we should say thank you Lord that despite the failure and sin and indeed those texts of terror which are generated from within that context you have in Jesus brought about your Messiah who is not only the true king of Israel but the Lord of the whole world and even beyond that we can look out and say well at the moment we in the church have much to repent of we get muddled, we produce our own texts of terror our own ways of going horribly wrong and we long for the day when Jesus will return when finally the earth and heaven will be one and God will be with us and we are living like the editor of Judges we are living in hope and we look at the present time with all its follies and failures and we say thank you Lord that one day, one day all will be complete one day when Jesus comes back to heal the world to raise his people from the dead then all will be complete and we will look back and we will say yes that's how it was then but thank God for his larger purposes of which we now tremblingly find ourselves apart so may God give you faith and hope to look to his ultimate purposes for you and for his world and trust him even if all seems dark at the present how is this passage speaking to you? let us know in the comments like and subscribe or check out our other videos


Welcome to the Indian Writer's Forum Conversation with the Eminent Writer Nainthara Sehgal and Vita Hariharan. If I were to describe Nainthara Sehgal's lifetime work of several books of fiction, non-fiction, her journalistic writing as well as her interventions in public space, the word that would be the most accurate is political. In fact, she has said that I cannot write if I do not write politically. She has said that politics is not some event out there, but her emotional mainspring, even if she is writing fiction. Nainthara Sehgal has just published a new novel called When the Moon Shines by Day. It's been published by Speaking Tiger and like much of her work, this is a sharp, almost brutal political take on the India that is being transformed before our eyes. Thank you Nainthara for joining us. I thought we would begin with recalling the idea of India that you were witness to, your own family, your uncle Nehru, Gandhi. You actually describe it as the glittering aspiration called India. So, would you start with that so that we have a context for talking about today? Yes, I think what I meant by that was the struggle for freedom under Mahatma Gandhi, in which my parents were involved and in fact my father died of his fourth imprisonment under British rule. And this was an amazing period in Indian history because I think it was the first time, certainly the first time in India and definitely the first time in history, where class and mass fought together under the same banner. It had never happened before in any country. Gandhi brought together people in a way that cut across religion, region, class, gender, all the divisions. And so he created what then became the foundation of independent India. And this was such an extraordinary achievement to bring together this rich diversity, but which had been very diverse, into a unity which became the strong political unity that overthrew the British Empire. You describe the solidarity then as a rugged idealism. You've used extracts from your mother's prison diary. Since we are hoping to also talk about what sort of solidarity we need today, shall we revisit how that solidarity, how that sense of inclusiveness happened? Well, it happened in the way that I have described where there was the star of freedom and all these people were invited to join in that march to freedom. And it was a long march, 25 years or 26 years in which people of all classes joined. And it was really the first classless venture that ever took place in any society. I have to emphasize that because it was an achievement which was unique. It had never happened before. And it took place because through Gandhi, people like us who had perhaps never had any communication with the rural areas or the masses, then were involved in organizing things together. I know my mother and fathers went most of their time in rural areas. And of course my uncle Jawaharlal Nehru travelled the length and breadth of India speaking to village audiences. Gandhiji himself did that. And it was the first time that brought town and village together. English speaking people with people speaking the regional languages. And the slogans were across the board. There was Hindu, Muslim, Ek Ho. There was Bharat Mata Ki Jai. And Nehru often asked his village audiences, Ki iske kya maane hain? What does this mean? And then they would talk about what is Bharat Mata? And what do we mean when we say Bharat Mata Ki Jai? And there was also the slogan in Khalaab Zindabad. So across the board there were these slogans which were all radical of their kind, emotional of their kind. And people of all classes worked together, marching, young and old also together. And that India that was the idea, what they saw when they said Bharat Mata was secular, not uncontested. But what held people together was that it would be inclusive, it would be secular. You know, if you could tell us something about, not of course Nehru's vision, but the vision that held all the freedom fighters together across the board. Well, as I have said, it was this call to freedom that was the unifying factor. And Gandhiji had shown that this could be done non-violently and therefore thousands of women could join into it. Now if it had been a violent fight, perhaps that would not have been the case. But because it was a non-violent fight, Gandhiji invited the women of India to join it. And I think in 1932 perhaps about 30,000 women were in jail at that time, part of the struggle. And I don't mean Hindu women, I mean women of all classes and kinds. One of his leading followers was a Christian, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. And many of his comrades in the struggle were Muslim. Molana Sahab Azad and Tayyab Ji and you know, some were Parsi. So the secularity came in the mix, in the fact that people came from all religions and all backgrounds to march with Gandhiji. And well, to go off the track a little if I may say that and contrast it with the way elections are fought today in the last election, our present prime minister had life-size images of himself on big screens. And I was thinking back to my childhood where as a child I saw Gandhiji, a skinny old man sitting on the ground. His voice didn't carry very far, microphones didn't always work. But that man shook an empire. So you know, there was something very unique about India's struggle for freedom. Its secularity, its across the board, class and mass meeting, the fact that it combined all the languages of India. I mean there are patriotic songs in all Indian languages. Gandhiji's favourite him, Vaishnava Janatova's Gujarati and through that he projected his image of what freedom meant. You know, where he says that the Vaishnava is the man who can feel another's pain, that was the message of Gandhiji. And of course his prayer meetings were a combination of Muslim, Christian and Hindu prayers. And even the Hindu prayer had his mantra, which was Ishwar Allah Terinaam. So it was, there was the secularity for you, you know, right across the board. If we sadly move from that point of glory and aspiration to where we are today. You know, when I began your novel I thought it was going to be a kind of dystopia set in the future or near future. But then I realised that it's very much in the present where you, about the only new label there is is you've got something called the directorate of cultural transformation. Would you tell us something about what happens to this glittering aspiration, not just in your novel but in today's India? Yes, from a huge inclusive idea of India, we are now being shrunk into a monoculture, which is called Hindu.  My religion matters to me. And so what is projected today as Hinduism is a travesty of Hinduism. Hindutva is a distortion of Hinduism. But that is what we are being shrunk into from this huge enriched sort of inclusive idea of India. And that's what's taking place today. And in the name of Hindutva these are the changes that are taking place. Well, I mean we know what changes are taking place. Debate has been crushed, descent has been outlawed. And we know what is happening to dissenters. There have been gunshot murders by passing vigilantes of writers and journalists. There have been mob lynchings of humble people, a poor blacksmith, a dairy farmer who are doing their jobs. And they have been lynched by mobs on public thoroughfares within sight of the police. And Hindutva is keeping quiet about it.  When the killers of all these people have not been punished and the killers are roaming free to kill more people while the victims or the victims families are being declared the guilty party. So this is the change that is taking place before our eyes. And this transformation is not in the future. It's happening now. All of us are looking at it.


Why is phonology so important for someone who wants to become a teacher of English? And what are the special aspects about English phonology German students have to understand before they start teaching English? These questions constitute the focus of this unit. In the virtual session we will start with a famous quotation that relates phonetics to phonology before we then look at the two central levels of phonology. Segmental phonology that is what you say and suprasegmental phonology that is how you say something. Use the question sheet as default guide if you do not know where to go. The worksheet is a dynamic multiple choice task about basic concepts in phonology. It should be quite easy after the virtual session. And the practical confronts you with sound units from English and German and wants you to find out the relevance of the sounds in these languages. Difficult but with the virtual session content in your mind manageable.


In this presentation, we will discuss types of audit tests, keeping the overall audit objective in mind, the overall audit objective to give an opinion on. Support accounting instruction by clicking the link below, giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website, broken out by category, further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical, reasonable fashion, making it much more easy to find what you need then can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again, click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. The financial statements to see whether or not those financial statements are free of material misstatement. As we go through the types of audit tests, we're going to break down that process to specific things that we are testing. We may be testing internal controls, we may be testing other types of assertions, and we want to make sure that as we think about these tests, we are thinking about what is the thing that we are testing? Are we testing the internal controls? Are we testing specific assertions? Are we testing specific assertions related to specific type of accounts? We'll get into this in more detail as we start to go through each component of the audit, but we want at this point to get an overview of the types of tests within the audit. So types of audit tests, we have a risk assessment procedures used to attain an understanding of the entity and its environment, including an understanding of internal controls. So when we're testing for risk assessment, risk assessment procedures, we're trying to get an understanding of the entity, we're trying to get an understanding of the internal controls. The test of controls then is going to evaluate the effectiveness of the design of the operation of internal controls. Really big process when we talk about large type of companies, the internal controls something that we have to rely on, and therefore we will be testing the controls directly. One reason we do so is because testing the controls allows us to rely on the controls, if the controls are strong, and that allows us to do less substantive testing, which should save us time. If we had to do substantive testing, testing the actual accounts, then and have a high level of testing there, it would take a lot more time than us to be able to determine that the level of controls are high enough that we can do less substantive testing. So that's going to be one of the goals that we have. Then the substantive procedures will be detect material misstatement in transaction class, account balance, and disclosure component of the financial statements.  If you were to think of an audit and you were just going to jump in and say, let's audit this thing. Let's take a look and make sure these financial statements are materially correct. You'd probably say, give me those financial statements and let's just start going right through the accounts cash, accounts receivable, whatnot. Well, that's basically the substantive type procedures. You may do that in a small type of audit and that might be somewhat of an effective way to go. But the larger the audit gets, the more we have to depend on the internal controls, because taking that approach would involve of just going straight to the substantive testing, testing the actual account balances is going to take too much time. So just note that there's always going to be that emphasis, especially here as we're emphasizing the audit of the larger type of businesses, publicly traded companies. And then once you peel that back down to smaller types of companies, you would expect the internal controls to be weaker and the substantive tests then to be something that you possibly have to do more of test of controls include inquiry. So that's going to be the appropriate management supervisor and staff personnel who are we're obviously going to be asking questions about. That's going to be one of the types of tests of control. As we think of the test of control, you might want to think about, well, how reliable are these types of things and start to think as we think of our detective type work, how high on the list of evidence are these types of things that we're looking at. Obviously, inquiry is something that we have to do because that's going to give us an understanding. But who are we inquiring on the management, the supervisor and the staff? And of course, that's also the people that we are judging in some way or giving some type of opinion on as to whether the financial statements are put together well. So note that we have to depend on these things because we have to get an idea of the internal controls. But in the list of evidence, the inquiry as compared to like third party type of information, something outside the company, not prepared by management, would be higher on the scale. So just note that we need to have inquiry. But of course, we can't have inquiry in and of itself as usually the only type of evidence for many types of things, especially for the complete audit process. Then we have inspection, inspection of documentation, reports and electronic files. So we can actually go in and inspect. We have observation of the application of specific controls. So when we think about controls, of course, we can inspect the documentation to see if those controls are being done. We can go in and observe and note controls are going to be kind of like a bureaucracy. They're going to be a system of things that have to be done, usually things that people might complain about, right? They're going to have more types of tests, more types of separation of duty, more type of documentation that has to be stamped as it goes through and approval processes happening. We can actually go through the process and see whether or not and observe whether or not these things are happening because note that controls are things that you could eliminate a lot of times in a particular type of transaction and it may actually speed up the transaction. Not having a separation of duties, in other words, could make it faster to complete the process. However, the risk would be higher that there's going to be some type of fraud or some type of problem, potential problem could happen there. Therefore, we have the internal controls as the businesses get larger. It's quite possible that the controls are set in place. Good controls are set in place. They're all mapped out. You have a good plan of controls, but they're not implemented. They've gotten weak. People are not going to the controls because they're short cutting the controls because they don't see the purpose of the controls. We would catch that. We could see that if we go through the observation and that we could clearly happen. We could basically say, hey, these are the controls. You're supposed to have this checked off by this person. There's supposed to be some supervisory check and you're not doing that. Why? The explanation could be, well, because that takes more time. We have to do it because it's going to lower the risk of problems happening. We can go through and observe that. We can have a re-performance, which is the application of the control by the auditor. We can actually re-perform some of the controls and see if they are indeed done in accordance with our re-performance. Just to double check, take a sample and re-perform and double check. A walkthrough is where we're actually going to be tracing a transaction from its orientation to its inclusion in the financial statements through a combination of audit procedures like inquiry, observation, and inspection. Then we're usually going through a few different processes following something through a few different processes and using whatever we need to use in order to follow that process from the orientation to where it falls or where it finally ends up on in the financial statements. Here's just some examples of test of controls, examples. This is the internal control. This is the test of controls.  They set up these internal controls. We want to know what those internal controls are, so we're going to ask about them and then they're going to tell us about them and they're going to try to tell us that they have good, strong internal controls because that's what we want to hear as the auditor, of course. Then we're going to go in and we're going to test the internal controls to see if not only they know what good, strong internal controls are, that they've mapped out the good, strong internal controls but that they're actually implementing the good, strong internal controls. We're going to have to test the internal controls, not the account balances now. We're testing whether or not they're going through the processes, the controls, the checks and balances in their system, which we believe will heighten the ability for them to have financial statements that are not materially misstated. We have the separation of duties between the shipping function and the order entry and billing. This is a common type of internal control separation of duties. Well, how can we check to see if there's a separation of duties between the shipping function and the order entry? Well, we could observe and evaluate whether the shipping personnel has access to the order entry and billing. Notice the shipping person shouldn't have access to the order entry and the billing. That's the separation of the two. Now, if they do, it would be easier because the shipping person could do the two jobs at the same time possibly and possibly save time. The point is that you want two different people to be involved in those different things so that if they wanted to have theft or some type of problem happened, they would have to collude. Therefore, that's how we can test basically whether or not that separation is taking place. It's quite possible, again, that it doesn't take place and the control isn't followed. It could happen and not even that there's a fraud happening or that there's theft happening. They might just say, hey, this control was taking too much time and we took it out. Then, of course, we're going to say, well, the internal control needs to be in place so that we've reduced the likelihood of fraud. That's going to go towards whether or not the management is actually enforcing the internal controls that are in place that they have set up in order to do these things. Credit department personnel, initial sales order indicating credit approval. Are they initially to indicate that there is credit approval? We can inspect the sales orders for presence of initials of credit department personnel. Obviously, there's going to be an approval process. They're going to stamp it off with the initials of some kind saying that there was a credit approval. We can go through the sample of the sales order and see if the initials are indeed there. Again, we looked at the internal control process. They say that they checked this to see that they had a process for the approval check and we go through and test the documentation to see not only that they're documenting that as an internal control, but they're actually at least stamping off some of these documentations given an indication that they're following through with that internal control. Billing department personnel account for the numerical sequence of the sales invoices. The sales invoices in a numerical sequence, we can inquire of the bill in personnel about missing sales invoice numbers. If we inquire the billing department and they say, I don't know what do you mean about invoice numbers at all or what, then that would be an indication that they're not really checking for the missing sales invoice numbers. They should have an idea of what type of invoice numbers have been misstated and maybe have a list of them possibly. Tell us about the missing sales numbers. Agree sales invoice to shipping document and customer order for product types, price, and quantity. This is a common type of process and control we're going to have. We're going to agree the sales invoice. We have the sales invoice to the shipping document. That's when the shipping actually goes out and the customer order. We have three documents that should be basically tied together and we're going to basically want to agree those three documents. How can we check that? We can recompute in this case the information on a sample of sales invoices. These are just some tests that we can take a look at. We'll take a look at more types of tests in the future. These are tests, remember, of the internal controls and example of them. Then we have the substantive procedures. Now, the substantive procedures are typically what are going to happen later on in the audit because, of course, that happens after we test the controls and we'll go through this in the planning process when we discuss this more, but we're going to test the controls to see if they're high or low. Then we're going to determine how many substantive tests we need and go through the substantive tests as efficient a way as possible. These are usually the longer tests, but also the ones that are most familiar, the ones that we would think about. Again, if you were just doing to jump into the audit, you'd probably think I'd be starting to think about substantive type testing if you were going to try to test the accounts of the financial statements. Tests of details, tests of errors or fraud in individual transactions, account balances, and disclosures. We're just going to go right in there. We're going to give me those account balances, give me those disclosures, give me that general ledger, and we're going to go in and start trying to test these transactions. Again, publicly traded company, a lot of transactions, a lot of things to test. We would like to limit the amount of testing as much as possible. How do we do that? We hopefully can increase the, how to say, the controls are high and therefore less substantive testing. Analytical procedures, also substantive testing. Evaluate of financial information through analysis of plausible relationships among financial and non-financial data. Now the analytical procedures, I would often think of the analytical procedures as the things that you can do more in the office. You can basically compare the financial statements last year to this year. You can see if they went up. You can compare it to different type of industries. You can see if there's substantial changes in those type of numbers. A lot of times when you think of analytical procedures, you're thinking these are the auditors in their own office with the financial statement basically comparing the numbers, looking for changes in the ratios and whatnot. As a shortcut, I would kind of think of analytical procedures as the things that the auditor could do in basically their own office as opposed to other types of tests where they would have to go out to the customers or to the client and actually start digging up invoices and whatnot and looking at physical documentation, possibly start counting things and counting inventory and that type of stuff. Analytical procedures, evaluation of financial statements, information through analysis of plausible relationship among financial and non-financial data. Then we have dual-purpose tests. It often makes sense to design audit procedures to conduct both a test of controls and substantive tests of transactions simultaneously on the same document. Whatever we can do this, we're obviously very excited. This is a very exciting thing. If we can have a dual-purpose test, in other words, if we could test the controls and do the substantive tests with the same procedure, we're going to try to design the audit to do that as much as possible because that will save us time. You'll recall that we're going to test the controls typically first, test whether the controls are high or low, and then design and think about how many substitutes, tests we need to do, those tests usually taking more time and therefore we want to reduce how many of them there are. So as we think of the tests of controls, however, good planners, as we are of the audits, we're always going to be thinking forward and say, hey, as we're doing these tests of controls, can we also document and do some of the substantive tests at the same time, considering we're digging into these particular areas of work as we think about the tests of control. Anytime we can do that, we do do that because that, of course, will save time once we complete the test of controls, go to the substantive tests. As we go to the substantive tests, we're going to say, hey, we've already tested some of these a little bit because we did that during the test of controls and we documented that out. That's going to save us some time, save us some money and make us happy.


On the show this morning, federal government pegs FX rate at 700 Naira per dollar overhead costs spike, 26 trillion Naira, 20-24 budget. Making room for disability and disability issues in governance will be the second hot topic on the show this morning. And also we will be looking at the headlines that made it to the front pages of some of our national dailies on off the press. Very good morning to you and thanks for joining us on the breakfast. My name is Nyam Gul Agadje. It's another very, very interesting Wednesday morning, Wednesday frenzy as we call it. We do hope that today was brighter and better while you woke up and tried to get to your office. Yesterday was really, really terrible for a lot of people who could not get to their offices or their places of work because of the early morning rain. So many places were flooded on the island. It was really like a sea in so many places, some places you would go and you have the water knee deep and you just be moving as if you're moving through an ocean or a stream or something. But you needed to get to work and you'll have to remove your shoes if you don't have a car yet. And if your car is too low you'll be afraid that your engine might be affected. But we thank God for small messes we survived yesterday. Today's brighter and hopefully more beautiful than yesterday. Every day is always more beautiful. Some of the things that are trending on social media and elsewhere, first of all we'll begin with what the Labour Party is saying. The Labour Party is slamming the federal government on the promise of 57.6 billion Naira cars for lawmakers. The Labour Party has condemned the proposed procurement of cars which cost 160 million each for the members of the House of Representatives saying the government of the all-progressive Congress APC is not sensitive to the plight of Nigerians. The Labour Party said the administration of President Bola Timibu is displaying extravagance at a time when the Nigerian people are grappling with hardship resulting from its economic policies which have shot up food inflation. In a statement signed by its National Chairman Julio Sabure their opposition party criticized the government for struggling to increase the minimum wage of Nigerians what could fund opulent spending of its officials. It has been reported that 360 members of the House of Assembly are to be gifted with vehicles worth about 160 million each. The Labour Party expressed in a statement its shock, sadness and disappointment at what they call the level of insensitivity being displayed by the executive and the legislative arms of the President Bola Timibu led all-progressive Congress administration. Now let us put this into perspective. 57.6 billion Naira by 360 House of Representatives is 160 million Naira per member. Let us say civil servant earns 200,000 as minimum wage per month. Divide 160 million by 200,000 and you will get 800 months of earning 200,000 Naira. Further divide that by 12 months and you will get 66.66 years. That means what one reps member is using is almost 66 years of salary of a civil servant or 16 and a half years of salaries of eight people who earn 100K to buy one car. So the sweat of someone who is working for 66 years is going to be used to buy just one car for a House of Reps member. So whenever you're calculating and saying these people deserve as much as they get just know the corresponding effect of what they are doing. So times that by 360. So which means if one person's salary of 200,000 Naira will take him to over 66 years that means times 360. So it will take 360 people 66 years each to earn the salary that one person or to earn the money that one person is using to buy a car. Just think about that. Okay, the next thing we're going to look at is also a very, very interesting thing. Tinobu, that's the president, begins one trillion Naira conditional cash transfer program. The president on Tuesday comments the distribution of 25,000 Naira per month to 15 million households. The conditional cash transfer is one of 15 items in the memorandum of understanding between the federal government and the organized labor on October 2, 2023. The federal Congress had previously scheduled Tuesday, October 3 as the first day of its indefinite nationwide strike to protest what it called the government's refusal to meaningfully engage and reach agreements with it on the consequences of the hike in petrol pump price which it described as having unleashed massive suffering on Nigerian workers and masses. Now following the MOU signed on October 2, Labor suspended its plan for 30 days, promising to revisit that plan if the federal government fails to implement the immediate parts of the agreement within 30 days. Now speaking on Tuesday, which is also the international day for the eradication of poverty, Tinobu, who was represented by the Secretary to the government of the Federation, George Akume, said his administration is partnering with the World Bank Group and other development partners to implement conditional cash transfers, business grants and other forms of support for the most vulnerable households via the National Social Safety Net Expansion Program. He promised that his administration would lead from the front in seeking to ensure that all Nigerians have opportunities to send for dignified work and sustained social protection. However, he also said that administration was working to develop and deploy several more solutions and interventions to help Nigerians of all works of life. This includes an investment of 100 billion Naira to purchase 3,000 units of 20-sitter compressed natural gas powered buses for cheaper transportation and investment of 200 billion Naira to cultivate 500,000 hectares of farmland to improve food security. The release of 2,000 metric tons of grains from the strategic grain reserves to households across 36 states and the federal capital territory and a distribution of 225,000 metric tons of fertilizer and seedlings to farmers committed to the nation's food security. Others are the release of 75 billion to support 100,000 SMEs and start-ups, renewed hope shelter program for the poor, refugees and internally displaced persons in the country. They are being targeted at 1 million households and renewed hope business grants and loans for vulnerable market women, farmers and traders to expand their businesses targeted at 2 million beneficiaries, among others. The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr. Betay, who said 15 million households would be receiving 75,000 Naira over three months, equating to 61 million Nigerians benefiting from the scheme in October, November and December. And they do further said that beyond the cash transfer, the federal government would provide low cost shelter for the poor and internally displaced persons as a form of providing that cover for them. All these because of the removal of fuel subsidy, which from July of January to June cost the federal government about 3.0 trillion Naira, or is it 8 billion Naira. Now the interventions are costing the government more than the fuel subsidy that they were paying for Nigerians and is it just a thing of pride or is it just something that is, that cannot be done to reverse something that maybe has been a very, very bad policy. I'm saying it's a very bad policy because we've seen, we're talking about conditional cash transfer. I have never seen, I know there are people who benefited, but I've never seen even from the previous government this conditional cash transfer, someone who actually got it. We've heard stories about the palliatives that are being shared because of these fuel subsidy removal to alleviate the sufferings of the people. We've had cases, I think a few days ago, where an entire community was given a 10 kilogram bag of rice, 10 kilograms, that is like two paint robbers, as we call it when you go into the market, to buy two paint robbers for an entire community to share. And you ask yourself, where is the rest of this rice that has been sent to the people who is actually benefiting? At the end of the day, the same politicians that are said to be taking money from fuel subsidy are the same ones that are going to share the rice, share the onions, share whatever it is just like they do in campaigns.  They are being bought because of that. How can you give a community 10 kilograms of rice? It's not just an insult, it's not wickedness. It has witchcraft as far as I'm concerned. So people are worried that even if the government has good intentions, how much supervision will the people who are taking care of these be supervised in such a way that everything that the government wants will get to the people that really need it? Conditional cash transfer, we will not see it. The people who need it may not see it. The fertilizers, we know what happens to it. Fertilizers are being sold by these people who are supposed to distribute to the farmers. We know this for sure. We know pumping machines have been sent by governments at one point or the other. You will have to go and pay like 30,000 or 40,000 to buy a pumping machine that is like 50,000 in the market. So just a difference of 5,000 or 10,000 Naira and people are buying it because of that small difference. We see all these things. So what are the mechanisms put in place to make sure that these things reach the actual people that it should reach? We have seen that the palliatives is a monumental failure as far as a lot of people are concerned. But if you have seen someone who really is benefitting from these palliatives, who really is in need of these palliatives and benefiting, please let us know because a lot of us have not seen. So the government should have everything and if these things that they are talking must happen, then they should be concentrating on supervision more than even the dueling out of this money that may end up in pockets that do not need this money. Now a one-time presidential aspirant, or candidate for a party, Mogalu, has recommended 50% salary allowance cut for political office holders. I'm talking about Kingsley Mogalu. He recommended 50% cut in salaries and allowances of political office holders and members of the National Assembly owing to the economic hardship in the country. The Economist, who is a former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, said despite the hardship facing Nigeria in the wake of the petroleum subsidy removal, the country's governance culture encourages extravagance among political leaders and appointees. He spoke of the need to address the culture of governance adding that the tone has to be set from the presidency down. He also talked about the need to include National Assembly due to the amount of resources that goes there. While citing some Scandinavian countries where their leaders take mass transit and even ride bicycles to work, Mogalu argued that Nigeria's governance culture puts self-service above people's service. He also wondered why everybody in the country wants a siren and a long convoy berating the political leaders for not replicating what they see in developed countries in Nigeria. He faltered the country's quest for more loans, saying the monies are not used for the right things. According to him, while speaking on the issue of borrowing, he believes the political class in Nigeria has prevented the economic progress of the country because of their own self-seeking and rent-seeking behavior. The president has said that his administration is going to lead from the front, by example, and I doubt if the example is to dole out 57.6 billion Naira to the reps' members just to buy cars. What kind of cars? 160 million Naira per rep member. We're not even talking about what goes to the Senate. We're not talking about what goes for the AIDS to these people and all that. And maybe a lot of people would have forgiven the government and all the politicians if these cars that they are trying to buy or they are buying were bought from Nigeria. Imagine buying those cars from a Nigerian manufacturer. That means the entire 57.6 billion Naira will remain in this country, and that means more people will be employed. The production will be more in these companies that produce cars in the country, and then maybe the cars in a short while will be cheaper because that company has more money to produce more and meet the demands of the people. But no, it may not be done that way. In fact, we are almost sure it will not be done that way, so the money will be taken to a foreign country that will gain from us. When can we learn? Well, we will keep saying what we need to say until something happens, push. So we are praying until something will happen. Right now we will take a break, and when we return we will look at the papers and see what the headlines are for this morning and beyond. Stay with us.