For additional details and chat times visit Microsoft's event page.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013 |
Office 365 Daily Live Demos and Chats
For additional details and chat times visit Microsoft's event page.
Office 365 Virtual Launch Events
If you are exploring cloud offerings, you do not want to miss this event. You'll hear from Kurt DelBene, president of the Microsoft Office Division, and John Case, Microsoft corporate vice president, about Microsoft's vision for productivity, enterprise social and the cloud.
We'll demo new features in enterprise social and show how we've transformed the full Office experience you know into an always up-to-date service. Finally, you'll hear real world stories from our customers about their move to the cloud. We'll also answer questions via live chat as we go.
We hope you'll join us there. Register now!
Wednesday, February 20, 2013 |
Microsoft Cloud Storage Infographic
I tend to concentrate on Office 365 at QuiteCloudy, but there's a lot more to "cloud" than Office 365. One of the many other exciting products in the space is Microsoft Azure. Maybe I'll talk in more depth about Azure in future blog articles.
I was provided a great infographic about Azure from one of our Microsoft reps today and thought I would pass it on. See the original article at Nasuni.com... enjoy!
I was provided a great infographic about Azure from one of our Microsoft reps today and thought I would pass it on. See the original article at Nasuni.com... enjoy!
Tuesday, February 19, 2013 |
Microsoft Partner Program and Office 365 Certifications
*See updated my Office 365 Learning and Education Roundup *
* Updated: See my update post on this topic here. *
What I found out was... the new exams and certifications would roll up Office 365 in to the core exams for the various Office 365 component products.
For more on 70-321 and 70-323, see my post last July on Office 365 Certification, Study Guide, and the Small Business Competency.
Now, Office 365 qualifications have been rolled in to the component exams for Exchange, SharePoint and Lync. Microsoft considers "cloud" just one integrated facet of these products' software+services strategy. The problem here is that in the cloud computing IT world of the future, the broader Exchange, SharePoint and Lync on-premises certifications include much that is not relevant to the cloud. And "cloud" IT Pros are being forced to learn on-premises technologies they will never use in order to certify they are experts in, well, "cloud".
You could say that including cloud in the Exchange exam makes for a more comprehensive certification and more well-rounded IT Pros. My opinion, however, is that there should be Office 365-specific exams that call out the portions of Exchange that are relevant. Shouldn't Microsoft have a "cloud-specific" certification?
So, what is the purpose of certification anyway? Companies use certifications to understand the qualifications of candidates for employment. If I have an Office 365 deployment (SMB, midmarket, or enterprise) with little on-premises infrastructure... maybe a simple hybrid Exchange configuration to support legacy applications and devices... I don't need to know about Database Availability Groups (DAGs) and how to support multi-site transport scenarios. I need to know PowerShell, basic Exchange administration and about how to manage Office 365 through the web portal. The 74-324 test Administering Office 365 for Small Businesses covers those topics but doesn't count toward any certification... so how does an employer know you are "certified on Office 365"?
Some companies want to know if a candidate is qualified to perform Office 365 migrations. That requires the skills in 74-324 but also more Exchange, SharePoint, Lync and Active Directory experience. Right now, the only way to demonstrate that expertise is to take several certifications covering a much broader than necessary technical field. You may need 25% of the SharePoint tests, 60% of Exchange, and 15% of Lync to perform migrations. Testing on the rest is a waste of time.
In addition, Microsoft now requires competencies for the Silver and Gold
partner programs. To get your Office 365 Deployment Partner
designation your company needs the Silver Messaging competency plus the Exchange 2013 70-341 and 70-342 (Advanced Solutions of Microsoft Exchange Server 2013)
tests. Office 365 migration experts won't ever need much of what's in those
tests. Why require it? It's a burden on Partners and a waste of time.I won't go further in to competencies and cloud programs in depth in this article. Suffice it to say that I don't believe the requirements make a lot of sense. Why would a partner that concentrates on Office 365 migrations certify employees in technologies required only for large enterprise on-premises infrastructure deployments? I think the exam and learning people need to get together with the partner group and revisit what is required for Office 365 and design appropriate tests and curriculum to support just Office 365.
This means that Office 365 exams should be cross-product and function related. There should be an Office 365 Administration course that covers cloud-relevant content for Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync. There should be another exam on Office 365 Migration that covers Exchange hybrid, Active Directory (DirSync), identity (ADFS), mailbox migrations and SharePoint content migration. Those tests would be truly useful to organizations and IT Pros that wanted to prove specific expertise in Office 365.
What are your thoughts on Office 365 certs versus integrated cloud in the separate product exams? Give your opinions in the comments below.
Friday, February 1, 2013 |
Cloud Visions - Who Needs a Network Anyway?
In a future blog post, perhaps I will dive in to how each of these items works in the cloud. For now, though I want to offer you a vision of how life could be working from the cloud... imagine with me...
Moving to the cloud could be as easy as clicking a button.
Right now when you purchase a new computer at work you join it to your Active
Directory domain, load software on it, configure your desktop settings, connect
to some file shares on the server and then work in local productivity or client
/ server applications.
In the future, you could join your computer to the
cloud! Imagine you are a new employee that was just given a new laptop
with Windows 9 (this is the future, right?) on it at a new job. You start
your computer and then select an option on the Windows start screen to "Join
Cloud." You type in your personal (non business) username and password.
Single sign-on technologies would connect your personal username with your work
username after typing in your business credentials as well. Your system
admin would have already selected what personal non-business preferences would
be allowed to transfer and those would be synchronized to your laptop from the
cloud. The business applications and settings assigned to you would
populate icons on your task bar or menu as well as they synchronize to your
computer from the Windows Intune cloud service.
Once your computer has been provisioned for the cloud and all of the services set up (seamlessly and without your assistance) you would open the SharePoint icon to begin your work for the day. You would view the previous day or week of activity of people on your team, review the most recent all-hands address from the CEO, fill out online HR documents to sign up for your benefits, digitally sign your electronic deposit salary form and choose the best health insurance and IRA plans.
You begin by placing a PowerPoint for your call this afternoon in your SkyDrive
for later use then start working on a report for your manager. From your
team's SharePoint Team Site you go to the reports library, add a new document
set and templates for two Microsoft Word documents are created after you choose
a name for them. You click on the first document and choose to open it in
your computer's locally-installed copy of Microsoft Word 2015 (remember... this
is the future). You customize your Word settings to set the default
document font and change around your ribbon settings. You finish editing
the document and it is then automatically saved back to SharePoint. You
begin working on the second document in a similar manner, but you get a call
from a customer.
A screen pops on your screen, showing you a picture of
the person calling, pulled from their Facebook or Linkedin account. You
take the call on your headset using the Lync Online voice-to-phone service,
close your Word document, unfinished, and then transfer the call to your mobile
phone as you walk out the door to lunch. You transfer the call to your
car's audio system and complete it hands free. Late because of the
unexpected call, you hurry to lunch. As you finish eating and return to
your car, you attend a webinar hosted in Lync from your phone but displaying
wirelessly on your car's touchscreen display. A notification displays on
the car's display that the webinar is about to begin. You click "Connect
to Conference", announce yourself and are admitted. You see the
slides being presented, video of the presenter talking and then participate in
the conference yourself using the camera in your car while sharing the
PowerPoint presentation that you stored in your SkyDrive this morning simply by
choosing it from the app on your phone.
Instead of returning to the
office you decide to work from home in the afternoon. Unfortunately, you
left your laptop at work though and you don't have Word 2015 installed at home.
After logging in to your home computer you connect to SharePoint, visit your
team's site, find the document you didn't finish, click to open it and choose to
edit it in Word. Since you don't have Word installed you are prompted to
wait while Word streams to your home computer. After 20 or 30 seconds,
Word opens and your document appears, ready for editing, along with your
customized ribbon settings and default font! You finish your document and
close Word at which point SharePoint automatically notifies your boss that the
report is ready to approve and send on to a customer.
Tired after a full
day of very productive work you grab a beer and watch a remastered 3d
holographic version of I Love Lucy in your home theater with your robot, Hal.
So... how much of this is real and how much is fantasy? Aside from
that last bit with the beer, robot and 3d I Love Lucy, the technology for all of
this exists today. Some of it needs a bit more polishing and the parts
where you "Join Cloud" and take a video call in your car are my idea... and
possible... but haven't been built yet. All in all, though, you can work
pretty much "in the cloud" right now... using Microsoft technologies you're
already familiar with. And you can pay for all of this as you use it,
buying only what you need and when you need it on a monthly subscription.The Cloud is Here. Love it.
Here's a list of several technologies I mention above and some others as well. For each I show the old way and the cloud way. Please feel free to add your own comments about how the cloud will change how we work.
| Feature / Product | The Old Way | In the Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Administration | ||
| Antispam | Messaging Gateway Protection | Hosted E-mail Security Services Acting as Secondary Delivery Points (Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange) |
| Antivirus | Server and Client Applications | Endpoint Protection with Malware and Spyware Protection, |
| Back up and Disaster Recovery | Tapes, Optical Media, Hard Drives, Backup Apps | Hybrid and Tiered Storage with Cloud Archives |
| Device Management | Group Policy & System Center Configuration Manager | Windows Intune |
| Identify Management | Active Directory | Azure Active Directory |
| Collaboration | ||
| Document Collaboration | E-mail and Server File Shares | SharePoint Online and Lync Online |
| Electronic Communication | Exchange E-mail Server | Office 365 Exchange Online |
| File Sharing | Windows Server NTFS File Shares | SharePoint Online & SkyDrive Pro |
| Instant Messging and Presence | ICQ, MSN / AOL / Yahoo Messengers, Google Talk | Lync Online with Public Federation |
| Meetings and Conferencing | Physical Conference Rooms & WebEx | Lync Online Video and Audio Conferences with an Integrated Conference Bridge |
| Mobile Communication | Work Pager or Cell Phone | Bring Your Own Device, mobile VoIP client (like Lync w/Jajah) |
| Placing Phone Calls | Phone Systems, Copper Cables, Wired Handsets | VoIP Phone Systems and Computers with Headsets and VoIP Clients (like Lync w/Jajah) |
| Productivity | ||
| Document Management | File Cabinets, File Sharing, Scanner Applications | SharePoint Online |
| Office Applications (word processing, spreadsheets, accounting or ERP) | Local or client/server Installation via EXE or MSI Files | Streaming Office On Demand, Click To Run, Web Clients, RDP to Hosted Apps |
| Printing & Faxing | Paper & Snail Mail or Printed Faxes | PDF, Scanning and Electronic Delivery |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)