My first book on Office 365 – Exchange Online Implementation & Migration

Over the past few months myself and fellow MVP David Greve have authored a book for Packt Publishing – “Microsoft Office 365: Exchange Online Implementation and Migration”.
The book has just gone into production and is expected around May, however you can pre-order it now.
We cover everything from integrating Small Business Server 2011 Essentials through to hybrid environments with ADFS and Exchange Server 2010 SP2.

One of the key benefits of Office 365 was the continual improvement and new features – which as my co-author can attest to made writing a bit more challenging as we had to update or completely re-write certain chapters due to the release of the SBS 2011 Essentials connector as well as SP2 for Exchange Server 2010. You can’t say the book isn’t current!

Read more about the book and pre-order it here: http://www.packtpub.com/microsoft-office-365-exchange-online-implementation-and-migration/book

Testing your Office 365 DNS configuration


Every day I’m configuring…

As part of our daily lives at Paradyne we regularly add new domains to Office 365 and configure customer tenants.
Sometimes we get customers coming to us asking to rescue them after having attempted to set up Office 365 themselves. Recently some customers have been referred to us because the partner they chose to help them as set up Office 365 incorrectly.
The things we’ve seen have included customers that have been told their migration is completed – yet no DNS records have been set up other than the TXT record required for verification. Scary stuff.

So we decided that if we can save these customers from poor migrations by partners the least we could do was create web interface to check DNS configurations for both Exchange Online and Lync Online.
Announcing the www.TestMyOffice365.com site – it’s free to use and will help make sure your domain has been configured correctly to work with Office 365.

Developed by my excellent team at Paradyne and powered by my other company Xstran.

Enjoy!

Integrating Windows 8 and Office 365 – my top 4

Windows 8 is an amazing operating system. Combining elements of tablet and desktop interfaces Microsoft has created a powerful (albeit slightly confusing) operating system.
Before dismissing this piece as another of the many Windows 8 reviews / trumpet blowing / trash talking pieces – let me clarify: this post is about what Microsoft can do to ensure that Windows 8 is the best platform on which to use Office 365.
Sure Microsoft wants to ensure that its customers can use Office 365 services on any device, but the preference is for them to use a Windows device.

So what do I think we need to see in Windows 8?
- a full screen Metro-based Lync app
- Office file type readers (eg. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, etc.)
- Native offline access for SharePoint
- SharePoint social integration into the People Hub

Read more at BoxFreeIT: http://www.boxfreeit.com.au/Productivity/four-things-windows-8-should-bring-to-office-365.html

The changing nature of the managed IT service industry

The times they are a changing…

I have worked in traditional IT firms most of my life and the changes I have seen take place over the last decade or so are substantial. In the past, managed service IT companies played a tremendous role in IT management and support. Troubleshooting was actually a very marketable skill back in the good old days. But today, all that is changing and the biggest driver for this change is cloud computing.

SMBs and enterprise organisations alike are moving their IT workloads to the cloud, and the implications are manifold. Whether it is mailboxes, document management, video conferencing, accounting, HR, or any other IT-reliant business process, the age of “Everything as a Service” has come and the biggest challenge now lays with the traditional IT managed service business model.

Cloud computing is reshaping the IT business model as we know it, and for most IT companies still stuck in the past, the future may look very bleak. But if the Cloud Era is shifting paradigms, then there must be new frontiers and opportunities being created as well, or at least this must be the case if we consider the displacement theory. I believe the major new frontiers being presented that Managed IT Service Providers may explore include:

Business Productivity Consulting
Cloud computing comes with the inherent ambiguity that characterises all new things. As organisations both small and large look towards cloud services and web applications, the opportunity arises where IT support service companies can create additional value. This may be in the form of business productivity consulting. The new cloud era threatens to declare IT support companies redundant but this avenue creates a great opportunity for reinvention and a return to relevancy. When we consider the agility of small IT support firms, getting up on the learning curve is easier than for midsized and larger companies, and this opens the door for high-skill business productivity consulting as either an addition to traditional support or as a completely new line of business.
To put it down to product terms – the task of supplying an organisation with access to SharePoint or migrating their files to the cloud is much simpler thanks to Office 365. Working its an organisation to capture their business processes to build workflows, understanding their data so as to establish effective taxonomies, and overall working to improve the way they work – this is business productivity consulting.

Capacity Building
Adoption of new technologies within companies usually comes with its own set of challenges, and no one knows this better than IT support personnel. Cloud technologies are not any different and this puts IT support companies in a pivotal position to capitalise on capacity building issues. Perhaps as cloud technologies threaten to disenfranchise traditional support companies from mainstream IT, there comes the challenge to these companies to rise up and upgrade the competencies they already have, making them applicable to cloud technologies.
Whereas in the past support companies built capacity for locally installed software applications, the core competencies required to build capacity for cloud deployments remains the same.
In these two instances, what we see is a replacement of competencies and services but not the entire displacement of managed IT service providers.
In the best case scenario, the very advent of cloud computing is a boon for these sorts of service providers because their trust bank and legacy customers offer a truly strategic opportunity to rise again as the go-to source of technology know-how in this new cloud era.
This new challenge also affords support IT companies the opportunity to scale-up their skill sets, and give the much-needed link between the past and the future which is realistically what their customers are paying them for.

So what lies ahead for the IT industry? There have been reports predicting job losses, others predicting job creation.
One way or another tradition IT support is a dying art form – it’s time to ascend to the next generation of business requirements.

Explaining the higher cost of Office 365 in Australia

Regularly at partner forums and events run in Australia by Microsoft or Telstra a common issue is raised – the fact that Office 365 costs substantially more in Australia than in Singapore (where we share a data centre with the locals) or the US (where our dollar has a higher value than their own).
Telstra is often blamed for the price difference with what is commonly known in Australia as the “Telstra Tax” (basically paying a higher rate for something via Telstra because you can’t buy it elsewhere).
While I did a minor in banking & finance at university I am not an expert on macroeconomics and defining pricing on products that affect a nation.

The comments usually coming from partners that don’t transact many Office 365 licenses is that the pricing is ridiculous and that Telstra has no right to charge such ridiculous margins.
As you can imagine because Telstra is the largest and oldest telco in the Australia, so therefore people love to hate it.
Personally I neither love or hate the company. It’s a company made up of human beings that are not directly responsible for the issues I may have with the price of Office 365.
There are good and bad points to dealing with them, as you would expect there would be in dealing with any international company that provides a diverse range of products which cater to organisations of all shapes and sizes (including regular individuals).
I’m simply a realist. I built my business (Paradyne) around Office 365, and by extension Telstra (due to them being the exclusive syndication partner in Australia).

Like many Microsoft partners I agree that the price of Office 365 is substantially high when compared to that of the rest of the world. I have to explain this to about 10% of prospective customers that I speak to.
The difference between myself and many of the other partners “selling” Office 365 is that I can explain why the price is higher using logic and reason… and facts.
How did I get these facts? I asked. They made logical sense to me.

Some people may think that my latest article in BoxFreeIT is kissing Telstra’s a$$.
Others might allude to the fact that I was paid by Telstra to write it.

So then why did I write it? In the hope that some people might actually read it and understand, perhaps spend less time talking foul about a company that’s not necessarily to blame.
Money isn’t everything. You want Office 365? Pay the listed price for it and get on with your job.

Read the article at BoxFreeIT here: http://www.boxfreeit.com.au/Blog/why-australians-pay-double-for-office-365.html

UPDATE: There have been many comments on my BoxFreeIT article about a range of topics, unfortunately it seems that many of the readers are combining frustrations over the lack of price drop for Office 365 with the higher price they pay anyway through Telstra. Sticking to the point that Office 365 costs more in Australia regardless of Telstra it was quite timely that The Daily Telegraph published an article discussing the fact that Australians pay more for most pieces of software regardless of vendor. You can read more here: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-nsw/does-not-compute-how-aussies-are-being-ripped-off-over-it/story-e6freuzi-1226335639506

Password Change Management Over Transition Weekend

Reblogged from Ryanph:

Click to visit the original post

As BPOS Administrators work to get their online company, services and end-users ready for Transition, it is important to understand how Password Changes are managed over this Transition Weekend.

BPOS uses the Password Change Notification Service (PCNS) to pickup password changes and synchronize them into Office 365. This is done so the BPOS user will have credentials within Office 365 after Transition completes.

Read more… 169 more words

Was Office 365 the right name?


It’s not my place to argue with the marketing professionals who decided to name Office 365. It does make sense as to why they did it.
The problem is that it causes confusion in the marketplace for those who don’t understand what’s in a product name – they just care about the product.

In my latest piece at BoxFreeIT I talk about why Office 365 is not actually Office in the cloud.

Personally I think it should have been named something like “BackOffice 365″. Effectively that’s what it is – Exchange Server, SharePoint Server (with Office Web Apps), Lync Server in the cloud.

Office 365 gives you on-premise licenses too!

As bigger customers look to refresh their current IT infrastructure, many are seeing Office 365 as a cost-effective way of doing so – but not just because they can move their users to the cloud.
Some organisations currently on Exchange Server 2003 or 2007 may want to move to Exchange Server 2010 but not completely to the cloud.
Others (such as one of our customers) may want to use the Business Intelligence features of SharePoint Server 2010 and allow all staff access to the output – but not publish the source information to the Internet.

A hidden gem of Office 365 is that it gives customers of the Enterprise subscriptions access to the equivalent Client Access License for on-premise use too.
While Microsoft’s tag-line for cloud is that they are “all in” this great approach to licensing & cloud means that customers don’t have to be all in if they don’t want to be. It’s another key benefit of Office 365 over Google Apps: flexibility (or: have your cake and eat it too).

You can read more in my latest post at BoxFreeIT.

Arrogance doesn’t help your Exchange Server uptime


Yes that’s right, I’m calling out those who think their sh*t doesn’t stink. Those who think their Exchange Server environment is the best in the world. Those who think they can do a better job than Microsoft – the company that actually wrote the product.

As men we have ego’s that need protection. We think we are better drivers, our car is faster than the person in the next lane, that we know more about a topic than someone else, and that we can do a better job than someone else.
Depending on the level of professionalism you bring to your job this can be broken down into two types of IT managers/administrators:
- You think your Exchange Server is infallible because you built it and it’s never had an issue (that you can recall)
- You realise that technology is technology and that there’s always someone who knows more or can do it better than you

I find it frustrating to speak to a grown person who acts like an petulant child that feels threatened because you’re going to take their toy away. The problem is that it’s not a toy – it’s a corporate messaging and communication system.
On the other hand I find it great to speak to an IT manager/admin who realises that running a mailbox server is a commodity these days and can be done better by someone else – so want to be liberated of it.

There may be many legitimate reasons why an IT manager/admin can’t or won’t move their Exchange Server environment to Office 365 or even out of the building – and these I can appreciate and work with.
However those who think they can do a better job than the company that wrote the software really get under my skin.

If you think that by outsourcing the operation of the Exchange Server you might find it difficult to justify your employment – then clearly you aren’t adding enough value to the organisation.
To those people I say get your head out of your ass. An Exchange Server is not a toy that only you can play with.

You can read more of my latest piece/rant at BoxFreeIT: http://www.boxfreeit.com.au/Blog/you-think-you-can-run-a-server-better-than-microsoft.html