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