This blog post is for anyone needing a jumpstart into the world of Kusto. Perhaps you’ve heard about Kusto and are just curious. Maybe you’re just starting to use Azure Monitor for your application monitoring. You might even be getting skilled up in anticipation of the new Squared Up for Azure release that will have KQL at its heart. Whatever your reason, set aside the next 10 minutes and we'll get you up to speed with KQL. Ready? KQL stands for Kusto Query Language.

We are delighted to announce the availability of Squared Up version 4.3, continuing our approach of bringing you frequent updates to the product. Version 4.2 was released just two months ago, and 4.1 two months before that. Each new release brings bug fixes, quality improvements and in this case some cool new features too. For a demo of these new features take a look at the webinar 'Squared Up – v4.3 Release'.

At Squared Up we frequently get asked about Citrix monitoring and dashboards, especially by customers who aren’t paying for the premium ‘Citrix Platinum’ license and so don’t have access to SCOM management pack from Citrix. That’s why we were very excited to hear that there is a new SCOM management pack for monitoring Citrix.

I am delighted to announce a big new initiative that we have been working on here at Squared Up. Our engineers have been working their socks off to build a new product, Squared Up for Azure, and it’s shaping up very nicely. It’s not ready for you to play with quite yet, but we plan to have an early release available for enthusiastic testers in late September (sign up below!).

On my first day as Content Writer at Squared Up, I walked into the orange and blue-themed office and immediately took a liking to my surroundings. It was bright, it smelled fresh – and I distinctly remember noticing that all the meeting rooms were Star Wars-themed. Warmly welcomed by the friendliest of colleagues, I was shown to my desk, where waiting for me was a Star Wars LEGO set alongside company merch as a welcome gift.

On May 22nd, more than 8,500 people gathered online for Microsoft’s long-anticipated Windows Server Summit (WSS) – the annual virtual event that covers the latest and greatest in all things Windows Server. It is where industry experts announce and demo exciting new technologies every year – and we are happy to share that this year, Squared Up’s Windows Admin Center (WAC) extension has earned a spot on the list, plus the Microsoft stamp of approval.

We’re delighted to introduce to you Leon Laude, system consultant and knowledge-sharing enthusiast. For our latest special guest blog, Leon has written a thorough step-by-step guide on how to upgrade to SCOM 2019. Having worked on Microsoft products – such as Windows Server, System Center, Hyper-V, Azure, Active Directory – for over 7 years now, Leon has amassed a stack of tips and tricks, and delights in sharing them with fellow SCOM users on thesystemcenterblog.com.

We told you feature releases would come thick and fast! And although it might seem that 4.1 was only announced last week, it's already time to introduce you to its bigger, better brother...

Squared Up 4.1 just landed. And what better way to start this announcement than the promise of more feature releases?! It’s been seven months since Squared Up 4.0, but the hard work put in by the development team since then has set us up for a bright, feature-rich future. All those juicy performance improvements and platform changes mean, moving forward, you can expect a new feature release from us every two to three months.

Today is a very special day for Squared Up and, we hope, for the broader SCOM community. We are incredibly excited to announce the launch of Cookdown, a new brand dedicated to optimising SCOM with platform extensions and integrations.