Friday, May 18, 2012
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Microsoft Online Services

 

by Brett

This post is primarily for those atteding my session on Keeping up with Office 365 at  the Cloud Intellegence Conferene in Seattle

The slide deck for is here.

Service Descriptions

 http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=13602

 Deployment Guide and Deployment Readiness Tool

 http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/183/p/1541/5095.aspx

 Service Updates Wiki

 http://community.office365.com/en-us/w/office_365_service_updates/default.aspx

 Office 365 Technical Blogs

 http://community.office365.com/en-us/b/office_365_technical_blog/default.aspx

 Office 365 SSO Content Map

 http://community.office365.com/en-us/w/sso/default.aspx

 Exchange Online Performance Guide

 http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/183/t/45466.aspx

 Quickstart Online for Partners

 https://quickstartonlineservices.com

 Forum Assistant

 http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27547

 Exchange PST Catpure

 http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=28767

 Office 365 Desktop Readiness

 http://www.microsoft.com/online/office365-desktop-readiness-tool-form.aspx

 Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer

 https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/

 Who Can Federate with Lync Online Tool

 http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Who-Can-Federate-Tool-a9e00d23

 Exchange Federation Discovery Tool

 http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Exchange-Federation-fdf8a324

 MessageOps Office 365 Tools

 http://www.messageops.com/software

 Twitter:  @Office365

 Youtube

 http://www.youtube.com/microsoftoffice365

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by Brett

Microsoft has released an important new paper on performance for Exchange Online migration. The paper has consolidated useful information related to planning for and managing timelines for migrations based on the migration scenario. There are some real world examples as well as key issues to consider provided in detail that I have not found elsewhere. While not a comprehensive treatment, as the issue of bandwidth is not addressed directly, it has solid advice has useful details on performance issues related to moving mail to Exchange Online.

See
http://community.office365.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-components-postattachments/00-00-15-53-58/O365_5F00_Exchange-Online-Migration-Performance-Guide.docx

by Brett

Microsoft has announced lower prices on Office 365 starting 03/16/2012.

The new pricing is below. Existing contracts are not effected until renewal or unless you add new seats. There is a post where Agile IT says you can ask for review of you pricing if you closed in the last 30 days.



First, the price for the P1 (Small Business and Professionals) plan ($6) and the price for Office Professional Pro Plus ($12) did not go down. However, the E plan prices have all been lowered. Since you can now buy an E plan for less then before, the value proposition for the P1 plan is diminished. You can lean about the difference in the P1 and E plan offerings from my article on this topic here

Let's take a closer look.

by Brett

Microsoft has blogged about SharePoint Online updates that are being updated. Users worldwide have received notifications about updates coming that would cause sites to be breifly into read only mode, but there was no word about what exactly was being added that made these actions necessary.

Here's the list from  http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?pID=1004

  • SharePoint Online was initially scoped to scale to customers with fewer than 20,000 Active Directory entries (specifically user objects). This service update allows customers with up to 500,000 user objects to provision SharePoint Online
  • Enterprise customers can now restore full site collections, in addition to sites, documents, lists, and list items.

Note: read between the lines here: This is classic Microspeak. They are pointing out, by omission, that the P1 plan will not have this feature.

  • external users can now use their business email address to authenticate when invited into an Office 365 customer's site collection

Note: The email address must be associated with a Live ID. However, it does not have to be hotmail or live account. This is a very nice update

  • PDF files will now open directly into Adobe Reader without requiring that it be downloaded first. The PDF remains connected and stored in your SharePoint Online document library as you view and edit the file. You can even check it out like other Office documents.

Once again, Microsoft shows they are moving to add value to the services and close feature gaps. There are more updates to come!

Soultion Alignment and Tecnical Briefing Decks Released to Partners

by Brett

When Microsoft works with a large company, they go through a structured engagement. The engagement model and the materials they use are not generally available outside of Microsoft. Recently, Microsoft released two key parts of this process, the Solution Alignment Workshop and the Technical Briefing. The release is limited to Office 365 Partners.

The Technical Briefing occurs very early in the engagment. This is not a deep dive, but rather, is intended to identify issues that could be problems if they surfaced later. 

There are 8 Technical Briefing decks that cover
1. Agenda
2. Cloud Principles (one of the most important decks, actually)
3. Identity and Dirsynch
4. Exchange Online
5. Lync Online
6. SharePoint Online
7. Office Professional Plus
8. Deployment and Closing

Later in the process, another workshop is presented called the Solution Alignment Workshop (SAW). This two day workshop uses a single 109 slide deck and is a more detailed presentation intended to identify and perhaps resolve specific issues related to Office 365 for the company. Are all the SMTP gateways identified? Is the customer clear on security policy? Do they know that DAV is unavailable? Are they OK that Outlook Web App cannot be customized?

These decks, used extensively by Microsoft, have not been available outside of Microsoft until very recently.  Partners that sell Office 365 can now download the decks at Quickstartonlineservices.com.

The decks include some detailed "maps" about the onboarding process for larger companies, complete presentations on Office 365 security, and many other useful details. Partners will want to scrub some of the details to present your own services as more face forward than Microsoft's, but IMO, these are very important resources that all partners should at reference and potentially use. At the very least, it's a great education about the services.
 

https://www.quickstartonlineservices.com/Partners/LibraryDocuments/O365%20Technical%20Briefings%20and%20Solution%20Alignment%20Workshop.zip

Brett Hill

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