Value of Adding a domain to Office 365 (way more than you might think)

Adding a domain name to your Office 365 is a key part to making your People Centric Enterprise work.  Its pretty simple to do, but it will give your firm a unified email domain while still working with Office in the Cloud.  No more having to either maintain a an on-site Exchange Server or have to give people a gmail or hotmail address for your business.


Its technically easy to do, as the video shows, but its worth thinking about how this all fits in the new People Centric Enterprise.

Your domain name is more than just a company name, it should be a brand, a personality and identity that reflects something about what you want to tell the world.  By being able to assign all your users names with your domain, the same domain as your web page, you create a Cloud based identity.  Users can see that your web page, your Office 365 and your email and Lync are all part of a single surface that they can contact from any device anywhere.

Having a single domain that for the web site and the internal messaging and collaboration builds a sense of unified working, where the people are not being made to fit in to boxes.  Rather your domain becomes a large tent where your workers, your partners and your customers can find ways to communicate, learn and share around your business.

Office 365 brings it all together, finally

SharePoint Online as part of Office 365 is the Enterprise product I have been waiting for since 1999.  Finally all the benefits of web, single location, access anywhere, shared community standards and online storage along with security and resiliency are in one place.

Make no mistake about it, this is going to be the Microsoft's biggest impact on the economy since Office and Windows 95.  With Office 365 it now possible for any firm, no matter how small, to start, on day one, with Enterprise level content management, VOIP, IM, and collaboration. (I wrote this in 2014 and clearly stand by it now)

The cost of starting a new business has just gotten a great deal smaller, and the ease that existing businesses can reconfigure themselves, collaborate with outside organisations, and to bring in contractors and prosumers is now a fraction of what it was.

A use case for SharePoint 2013 App Model

There probably is a heavy temptation for managed services providers who host large data centers that are sold as Clouds, to continue to develop Full Trust Web Parts even when going to SharePoint 2013.  Web Parts are what coders are used to, they may have a large library of existing Web Parts as WSP files that run in full trust.  This is possible, and it means working pretty much as you always did.

But if you are like most managed service providers I know you have some kind of internal structure between your infrastructure providers who build and maintain the farms and the application and solutions providers who face the customers and develop SharePoint from a raw out of the box in to something more specific and rich for their needs.

This DevOps work has been traditionally very difficult to manage in SharePoint.  When you would develop a solution to run in SharePoint 2010 you would hand it off to a deployment management team who would have to review the code for security risks, and impact on the servers. Since the code would run in the Farm it had an Enterprise level impact. This would involve extensive documentation and review, and complex levels of support for your solutions.  In the end you would probably be dependent on a different department of the company to deploy your work but still own the risks if they made a mistake.

By adopting a SharePoint 2013 App Model you can move away from this.  Two teams, even if they work in the same company can concentrate on what they are best at.  Infrastructure can concentrate on meeting SLAs, providing backup and DR and applying patches.  

Solution providers can create partial trust solution that use .NET SCOM or REST and JSON to create rich interfaces that are hosted in other domains, perhaps even other server farms with different domain controllers.  You now no longer have the tight link between the people installing SharePoint farm and the developers of solution, in fact you can separate your teams so that one applications team can create solutions, potentially in PHP or Ruby or anything really, that work off more than one SharePoint 2013 farm.

And if your clients decide to not renew the hosting contract with SharePoint to go with Office365 or another vendor, you don't necessarily lose your applications business.  You can still provide your application solutions simply by changing the RESTful web link.  You can de-risk big SharePoint deployments by breaking hosting from solutions, allowing your customer the option to keep one if they are unhappy with the other.  

So it makes solid business sense even for established big players to embrace JQuery and RESTful and build App that run in separate domains using OAuth and OData to communicate with SharePoint, creating UI in HTML 5 and CSS 3 because after all we all hated SharePoint OTB UI (admit it).

The potential is perhaps even greater for smaller firms.   Now a smaller firm with a team of talented web developers who know about JQuery, mobile, tablets, RESTful, OData and rapid design can muscle in on a space that previously only the provider could have.  And I speak from hard earned experience when I say that the big guys will be more than happy to have third party code isolated in its own IIS server rather than installed on perm SharePoint farm.  

It also my experience that the culture that makes a first rate development and business solutions firm (agility, innovation, creativity and social understanding) is often different than what makes a first rate hosting firm (stability, precision, technical expertise, compliance and control).  With the App Model the the create web designers don't make anything you host on the SharePoint Domains and the systems admins are not going to dictate solutions to the creatives.  You can have a more comfortable distance between application developers culture and hosting culture, and we all know sometimes IT people don't play nice together.

Really it is worth taking the time to really think through the changes to the ecosystem that Cloud hosting of SharePoint and App solutions will bring.  SharePoint has had a series of evolutionary changes since 2003 and its made some of us lazy (looks down in shame).  New SharePoint releases were a matter of learning a few new features and services.  But the App Model is a much more revolutionary change and it will change the business model.

Be ready or you will lose. 

The Microsoft Cloud: Benefits and a look inside

Above is a Microsoft slide showing the benefits of the cloud. Below are two pictures that show you what the Microsoft Cloud computing facility in Chicago looks like on the inside. Pretty cool.





Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Microsoft Google and the Cloud War

Turning the world on its head. Normally people use Google Web Apps on a Windows OS. The above VM shows using Windows Web App in a Google Chrome OS. It illustrates the way both firms could evolve in their ongoing war with each other, and how the dance between these two enemies is defining both companies.

As I have blogged about a great how I see the entire future of Collaboration and the Cloud as being defined as a war between Google and Microsoft. Recently I blogged about how gaps between Microsft's R&D and release of a Web enabled OS have been determined by the successes and failures (mostly failures) of Google to challenge windows. See Share the Point: Google OS Chrome and Microsoft..

At the start of 2010 I blogged about how this "Cloud War" between Google and Microsoft would structure the war for the Slate/Tabled/Pad space which I saw coming Share the Point: The war for the Slate Space. Given the evens of 2010 and the rise of the iPad this blog post turned out to be rather prothetic and I have become more and more convinced that the entire IT landscape, both Enterprise and consumer, is being defined ultimately by the battle between these companies.

To say it simply Microsoft will innovate in to the Cloud only as far as Google forces it to and no further.

For a long time Microsoft had the sweetest deal in IT industry. They owned the OS space, they owned the productivity space. They were assured a steady flow of revenue from just Windows and Office and Windows and Office could drive other products like Exchange and SQL Server.

But two things developed. One was the Web 2.0 revolution starting with Google using social information in search. Social Networks was not part of Microsoft model of Office and Windows. People sat in Offices and looked through Windows. Google was making wealth by making the work of people inside of these Offices in to a product with their PageRank system.

Microsoft sat by helplessly as Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter created the Social Network and made the MSN obsolete. Microsoft made the biggest failure of its history allowing MSN to be overshadowed to such a degree by companies that did not exist 15 years ago.

Microsoft was stuck playing catch up with mixed success. SharePoint is the one true triumph of this space. Microsoft decided that if it could not innovate Web 2.0 at least it could score big by bringing established Web 2.0 into the Enterprise, inside the world of Offices and Windows.

But in the past 2 years something much more ground breaking has happened. Mobile. Mobile has stated a process where by IT will no longer live in Offices and Windows. Mobile has given users doors to walk out in to the real world. Web 3.0 is here and promising to make many more billionaires than Web 2.0. It also posses a serious threat to Microsoft.

The present Microsoft R&D strategy to develop innovation but market only that which fits is current tactial advantage could, in the current climate, be washed away very quickly. So far Microsoft has been lucky in Google's failure to really present a productivity tool that takes away the market for Windows and Office. This could end very shortly and suddenly.

Microsoft already finds itself in the unusual position of having to insert itself in a OS market as the distant "also ran". Windows 7 Mobile has to catch up to much more established Mac, Android, and RIM "smartphone" OS platforms. Microsoft has already taken Mac on and won, but at that time there was no third option waiting in the wings. Microsoft is in real danger of not having a niche in the mobile world.

If that happens and IT stops being out Offices and Windows but Doors and Parks, than SharePoint might be a pretty limited option.

Microsoft would certainly survive though, and actually for the ecosystem of Microsoft developers and consultants that might be the best thing. Microsoft would be forced to roll out R&D to the market almost as fast as it makes it. Today the Microsoft Labs is a mass toy store which might never be open. We have seen Kinetic, Office Live Apps and Photosynth but there is a great deal more thy are holding on to which would keep Microsoft relevant in a mobile world more dominated by Google.

But I think the biggest battle in the Cloud War is about to stat, and its a battle that will be waged only in Richmond. The battle to make Microsoft see that the future of IT is not dominated by the structures of Windows and Offices.

Fabasoft Folio Cloud

Fabasoft Folio Cloud offers a cloud based niche direct competition to SharePoint Office 365.

You can test Fabasoft Folio Cloud for free by registering for an account. Give it a try at https://folio.fabasoft.com The site has the advantage of being free up to 1 GB of free storage so you can give it a try to see if it works for you. I will be playing with this and see how it compares to Google Docs. I have been a Google Docs users for about 4 years now ad have a love/hate relationship with the product. So it will be interesting to see how Fabasoft.

Warning, Fabasoft has a lurker site called Fabsoft. Make sure you type in FABASOFT and not FABSOFT. Even the url folio.fabsoft.com will take you to another companies site.

And it works with my iPad, which is a major plus. Though I do already use the SharePlusLite iPad app for connection to SharePoint sites.

Ballmer pitches cloud to fellow CEOs

With a high-power crowd in the audience, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer went hard-core with his sales pitch on the role cloud computing will have for businesses in the coming years.

Speaking to about 125 chief executives and other leaders, Ballmer said that truly big shifts in technology actually don't happen all that often.

"The really big ones you have to totally jump on," Ballmer said during a speech at the company's annual CEO Summit, which runs through Thursday at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash. "We are, right now, all of us in the midst of a big one.

"Among those Ballmer was speaking to were CEOs like Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, as well as other leaders ranging from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to Jordan's Queen Rania Al Abdullah, who was given an award from the Tech Museum.

Source

Some lessons learned from a WSS 3.0 Cloud

Recently I worked on a migration on a WSS cloud provider. A lot of firms are offering hosted SharePoint clouds services. For many organisations this makes a lot more sense than having to build a SharePoint extranet on their own estate. You rent the service and can use a WSS site to share files securely with clients or customers.

The service we used was pretty good. We got a single WSS team site which we could edit as we pleased. But there were a number of hard lessons learned:

Don't assume anything

Ask you Cloud provider ever question you can imagine. Many of these services provide you a control panel that gives you very limited or bespoke functions. Be sure you have a SharePoint expert go over every step of creating a site to be sure you understand how the hosting company may have altered SharePoint.

Ask about mail notification

Our business requirements had mail notifications as a nice to have. Turned out the hosting company we had didn't even provide this as a possibility. Be sure that you ask if a SMTP server will be provided for mail notification and transactions.

Review the process for adding users to the AD

We had used the service for years as a WSS 2.0 implementation and requested a new WSS 3.0 site to replace the WSS 2.0 site. We had not thought to ask how a new site would authenticate, and it turned out the only way we could add users to the new site was via a control panel, which only allowed one entry at a time. With about 1,000 users this was a time consuming process involving filling out a series of forms for each user.

Understand what space limitations mean

Our provider promised a certain number of Gbs of storage. Lucky when we asked they assured us that it mean total documents not total database storage. If you buy 100 GB of total Database storage you may end up getting only 25 GB of database storage.

Check every site setting function

Likely there will be limits to the templates you can install, or the themes you can add. You should check with your hosting firm on everything you can add and edit, including master pages, layouts, templates, and even sub sites.

Confirm patch application procedures

It is worth knowing how patches are applied to the Cloud site. Patches should be pre-tested by the hosting firm before applied, but don't assume this will be the case.

Office moves to the Cloud

Microsoft is playing to the strength of its global reach. "Microsoft Office Web Apps" will be available to more than 500 million people using free Windows Live services such as Hotmail, online storage Skydrive and Live Messenger.

BBC News - Microsoft's two-pronged strategy for Office 2010

This move by Microsoft could radically change everything. I am a long time users of both Microsoft Office Live and Google Docs and neither is really anything to write home about. But organizations and users are desperate to cut costs.

For example, after forking out the money for a New Windows 7 machines and a new iPhone I was not about to also pay for Office for my own personal use. I use a combination of Open Office and Google Docs. I recently finished a MA with all my work done in a combination of Open Office and Google Docs. It worked much better than when I had a server in the house running WSS. But is was still not really Enterprise ready.

The Cloud is certainly the way of the future. But presently the Cloud has been pushing people away from the document towards the email, tweet, blog post, friend link, photo and movie.

Docs remain either locked on the client, distributed in an uncontrolled fashion in emails, or siloed in SharePoint work spaces or file shares.

Microsoft has it right that if the Document is going to survive it needs to be transformed in to a more fluid web object. It needs to keep the clear boundaries that make a document unique from a blog or wiki. Taking Office in to the Cloud and making it free will reduce communication costs while giving the users of Facebook what they have come to expect: free software.

I think this is a brilliant move by Microsoft in principle, lets see how it works out. In the past Web Document objects have suffered from limitations of browser technology. IE6 is still deeply embedded on a lot of machines and desktop roll outs could take 4 years to upgrade.

Most seriously in the face of cuts many CIO might decide that the current client system is working well enough to not risk an upgrade which only PROMISES to reduce costs. Massive Luddites caused by budget conscious IT departments more worried about keeping their jobs than innovation are a massive risk right now.

Windows Live SkyDrive team blog - Windows Live

14 April
SkyDrive adds new features!
We’re releasing a few updates to SkyDrive today! Here’s what’s new:
 Arrange your photos

Now you can arrange the photos in your albums in the order you want them to appear by clicking Sort by, and selecting Arrange photos.

Windows Live SkyDrive team blog - Windows Live

Blogged with the Flock Browser

flickr.com - Traffic Details from Alexa: The rise of Twitter

flickr.com - Traffic Details from Alexa

As Web 2.0 tools go Flickr and YouTube are the old hands.  Yahoo, I have to say has failed against Google's YouTube.  When you think that everyone in the world has a digital camera and can take digital pictures that can be posted on Flickr in SMS, and that it was one of the earliest flagship Web 2.0 its stagnation against a more restricted YouTube is a bit sad. 

But Fickr has never helped people to achieve anything with its tool.

Facebook is a new comer which has recently become and established player much larger than Flickr.  Not because it offers much of anything, but because its easy to use and offers the community a tool where it can own its contacts and discussions.

Its all about ownership in Web 2.0  and we can see what I think to be the ultimate Web 2.0 tool: twitter.  Twitter I can't praise enough as a concept, and watch as it becomes the latest to break past Flickr in the major Web 2.0 field.

I've used Flickr now for about 5 years I think, and I have to say that in that time it has offered almost no improvement in function.   Actually I like Flickr 2004 much more than Flickr 2008 and I almost never use the product.

The main problem is Yahoo.  Yahoo does not get Web 2.0 and I hope Microsoft does take it over and bring some business sense to the product.  Microsoft does not seem to know it but it always has been doing "Web 2.0", Microsoft provides the standard tools for users to communicate with, and it can extend Office to THE web 2.0 tool.

I was a bit sad to see Azure does not yet have a branded Office section.  Office Live IMHO should not just be a PART of the mostly failed Live.com launch, but should be its own brand on the Internet.

flickr.com - Traffic Details from Alexa

Though Live's web presence is strong I find nobody comes to my blogs via Live.com even though I am blogging about SharePoint and Live.com!!!!  I am using Live.com myself and its kind of a lonely experience.

Live is hotmail, IM and maybe Office and I think rather than pushing some strange Azure concept Microsoft should push extending and integrating Office via the Cloud and SharePoint.

And that's my penny

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Microsoft Bashes Secret 'Cloud Manifesto'

Asked to sign off on the anonymous document "without modifications," Microsoft is proposing a new Cloud Manifesto, created and discussed in a public wiki or at a conference.

By J. Nicholas Hoover
InformationWeek
March 26, 2009 11:00 AM

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has criticized the behind-closed-doors creation of an unreleased document prescribing ways to make cloud computing services work well together, saying that other companies want to "control the evolution of cloud computing."

According to a blog post by Steven Martin, Microsoft's director of product management, another vendor (or vendors) is privately shopping a copy of a document called the Cloud Manifesto, and has asked Microsoft to sign the document "without modifications or additional input."

Read full article

And the Google killer is?

Facebook - Google Image Search

Yahoo - Google Image Search

Microsoft Live - Google Image Search




Today I saw an ad for Orange mobile phone showing a combination of Cloud productions that would provide a killer app of mobile Cloud technology. What was striking is none of the products were owned by Google, in fact if Microsoft can get Yahoo, which I think they should, the product set would be dominated by Microsoft.

I see the killer application set of the 21st Century mobile user as based around an improved Windows. Hey I love Linux but the OS space is owned by Microsoft and with Mesh and Singularity it is clear that Microsoft can do better than Vista over the coming years.

Okay so what do you need for a Cloud:

1. Single Sign on Security

Provided by a .NET account. Microsoft is pretty advanced in their area.

2. Email

Hotmail is an established technology that can stand, IMHO up to GMail

3. Social Network

This space is owned by Facebook. Linkedin and MySpace also fill a cluster. Facebook has a very close relationship with Microsoft.

4. Blogging and Wikis

This is where Microsoft has been weak but Live promises to provide platforms for both. If you had a chance to check out Popfly you can see what possible.

5. Search

I think Google surface search is nearing the end of its usefulness. Microsoft is in a much better position for deep search the links back-end systems to an Internet search.

I have been cloud for 4 years and until recently I have had to use a lot of Google technology. I still love Google and I have nothing but good wishes for this amazing company that has done so much to structure the experience of going on line for everyday users. I just happen to think Microsoft has some massive potential NOW to take on Google.

Work with others the easy way with Office Live Workspace

Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta is your online place to store and share documents. When you have multiple people involved in a project or planning an event, Office Live Workspace makes it easy. You can share documents, coordinate schedules, and manage to-do lists in your own password-protected online workspace. It’s a great way to keep everyone actively involved – whether they’re next door or on the next continent.

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Goodbye attachments. Hello sharing.
Avoid worrisome attachments and back-and-forth e-mails by posting documents you want to share in your workspace. Anyone you’ve invited to join has easy access anytime.

No more merging.
In a workspace, everyone works off a single online copy of a document. That saves time and eliminates the confusion that often occurs when you merge multiple copies of the same document.

Password-protected sharing.
Not only is your workspace password-protected, but you control who can actively edit in your workspace and who has view-only privileges.

Want to learn more? Check out our three scenarios to see how people like you are using Office Live Workspace – and then watch our how-to video.

Managing a project

Preparing an annual report, building a Web site, or forming a committee? With Office Live Workspace, organizing a project is a snap.

Post a project schedule.
Give everyone on the team an easy way to check progress and provide their own updates.

Share a budget spreadsheet.
When everyone has access to the numbers, you reduce the possibility of budget overruns.

Keep project documents in one place.
No more asking around for a copy of the meeting minutes or latest PowerPoint presentation.

Make it easy to participate.
All anyone needs to access your project’s workspace is a PC, an Internet connection and a password.

Organizing a study group

Working on a group assignment for class? Studying together for midterms? Learning a language with your travel buddies? See how efficient organizing a study group can be with Office Live Workspace.

Post a meeting calendar.
There’s no confusion about when or where the next meeting is when your calendar is available online.

Assign tasks.
Make sure everyone knows exactly what their assignment is and when it’s due.

Work off a single document.
Whether you’re writing a paper or building a reading list, everyone can make changes to a single copy posted online – no need to waste time merging multiple documents.

Control access.
You decide who can view and edit each document.

Planning an event

Got a wedding or family reunion coming up? Is your company hosting a conference or trade show? See how organized event planning can be with Office Live Workspace.

Share your to-do list.
Giving everyone a clear picture of what needs to be done, and when, helps ensure a successful event.

Track your guest list.
Keep a running tally of RSVPs and share it with those responsible for reminders or updates.

Keep event information in one place.
Save time and avoid confusion by keeping all event documents – from your budget to the invitation design – in one place where those with permission can access them.

Make a day-of-event schedule.
Your event will run more smoothly when everyone knows the schedule in advance.