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

by Brett

Microsoft has created a new tech center for Office 365 that aggregates training, resources, and other details. This is a serioulsy needed resource that includes links to virtual labs, papers, and other details on topics related to Office 365 deployment including single sign on.

by Brett

The next version of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit—version 6.0— is now available for free download.

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 6.0 includes assessment capabilities to evaluate workloads for both public and private cloud platforms. With MAP 6.0, you now have the ability to identify workloads and estimate the infrastructure size and resources needed for both Windows Azure and Hyper-V Fast Track. Also new to MAP 6.0 is an Office 365 client assessment, enhanced VMware inventory, and Oracle Schema discovery and reporting. Expanded assessment and discovery capabilities from MAP help you simplify planning for your next migration project. Plan what's next with MAP.

by Brett

 Microsoft has published a webinar series for specifically for ISVs interested in a cloud practice. The series includes:

Journey to the Cloud ISV Webinar Series: The Cloud Services Opportunity

Journey to the Cloud ISV Webinar Series: The Financial Implications of Cloud Services

Journey to the Cloud ISV Webinar Series: Driving Demand for Your Cloud Offering

Journey to the Cloud ISV Webinar Series: The Impact of the Cloud on Your Sales Strategy

Journey to the Cloud ISV Webinar Series: Deploying Your Cloud Offering to Customers

by Brett

Hats off to the BPOS Partner Team and particularly to Damon Sununtnasuk for winning a gold ITSMA Gold Award for Marketing Excellence. Enabling the Cloud for the Microsoft Partner Channel: Quickstart for Online Services

http://www.itsma.com/news/10-mea-winners/

The site is www.quickstartonlineservices.com and Damon has worked long and hard to insure that the latest info is available to Partners who want to ramp up a BPOS practice.

There is also a cool features on this site that most people don’t know about – the “special” wiki. While it looks like a normal wiki, it is anything but. As information about services is constantly being updated, it is hard for Microsoft to figure out how to keep content updated as quickly. So what they did create some authenticated web services that links the quickstartonline wiki to the INTERNAL ONLY wiki hosted on an intranet site and run by the technical product management team. As a result, all that needs to happen for Partners to get the latest updates is for a product manager at Microsoft to update their content, check the Partner box and it gets pushed to quickstartonlineservices.com for all partners to see. So information flows directly from the PMs to Partners without a lot of layers in between.

The dates on the wiki all show 5/10 so I don’t know if this has been currently functioning, even so, it’s a great idea and I hope it grows into something even more agile.