Posts Tagged Microsoft Office
Migrating from Office 365 to the new Office 365 Wave 15
Posted by Nick Bowyer in Cloud, Office365 on July 28, 2012
Last week the next version of Office 365 was released by way of a public preview. This launch took place with little fanfare as all the attention seemed to be on the new Office 2013 suite. But the next versions of Lync, Exchange and Sharepoint are now all available as a part of the Enterprise experience of Office 2013 and of course the back-end Office 365 products. If you wish to sign up for a preview go here: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/try-office-preview .
I thought it would be timely to repeat some of the information gained over the past few months, recycle if you will, some key articles that will guide you with a move to the new platform. As with any tenant to tenant migration of Office 365, there are certain steps you need to perform in order to move your domain across. As stated previously you need access to your DNS records and some knowledge of how that relates to your user accounts. I suggest you start here: http://itprofessional.co.nz/2012/03/07/migration-from-p-to-e/ Although this article speaks about a migration from the P plans of Office 365 (Small Business) to the E plan (Enterprise), the principals are the same when it comes to moving from Office 365 (current version) to the recently released Office 365 preview (Wave 15).
In addition to this, the final step is “releasing” or removing your domain from the old tenant, allowing you to associate it to the new tenant of Office 365. Your domain can only be associated with one tenant at any one time, so this step is critical in your migration. You will receive an error if you havent followed the correct steps first, removing all references to the domain from your current Office 365 tenant.
For a more detailed step by step guide on how to remove or dis-associate a domain from your Office 365 tenant go here: http://www.configureoffice365.com/remove-office-365-domain/.
The new version of Office 365 is due to be released later this year and customers can sign up for the beta on a 9 month free trial for 25 seats. So if you are at the bleeding edge of technology adoption I suggest you make the move and discover what the next version of Office has to offer.
Office 365 takes control
Posted by Nick Bowyer in Cloud, Office, Office 15, Office365, Sharepoint on July 19, 2012
When Microsoft first launched BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) I had been working for Microsoft New Zealand as a Technology Advisor for just on a year. My experience with cloud solutions pre-dates my time at Microsoft and that gave me some insight as to what this meant for Microsoft as a business. Not only did they make the step into the hosting business, competing against some of their most loyal partners, but they fundamentally changed the way in which they saw their own software. The Office 365 preview was launched this week, and along side it the next version of Microsoft Office, 2013. This falls in line with something I predicted when BPOS was first launched, Cloud will become the way in which you consume Microsoft Software from now on.
The evolution is totally natural and in line with what the industry as a whole is witnessing. Programs have become Apps and more importantly Servers have become a Service. Microsofts licensing model has been playing a game of catchup with this massive change, we have seen a credit card only experience mature into a more traditional distribution model, allowing customers to buy Microsoft cloud services via their regular channels/relationships. http://rcpmag.com/articles/2012/07/09/wpc-2012-office-365-partners-to-get-direct-billing.aspx
Office 365 has become the way in which you buy Microsoft’s Office Suite and all of the associated back office services, Exchange, Sharepoint and Lync. Furthermore it opens up a rich marketplace for partners to show their wares. Office 365 has only been in market for just over a year having had a long gestation period that was fraught with delay after delay (some 9 months or more), its refreshing to see that Microsoft has learnt from its mistakes and with little warning released the beta of the next release of its Office 365 platform known as Wave 15.
Over the next few weeks I hope to share with you some of my observations, covering off some of the improvements to the services and the integration points into your on-premise software. There are many such improvements to talk about, Loryan Strant from Paradyne in Australia has listed a few here: http://thecloudmouth.com/2012/07/17/office-365-wave-15-whats-new/
Hot on my list is the new Sharepoint Experience coupled with Office 2013, this will put out any Google fires within your organisation, along with Lync “click to call” … watch this space New Zealand there are providers working furiously on this capability.
To setup a 9 month trial of the Office 365 beta go here: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/try-office-preview , I suggest that you choose the Enterprise edition and remember that once you create a tenant account you should be able to add the other products bu clicking the appropriate link and using that ID to authenticate again.
It has been an action packed month for Microsoft, starting with the announcement that they will sell their own tablet device to take on Apples iPad, to the launch of its next generation productivity suite in Office 365 / Office 2013. And if that wasnt enough, Microsoft announced today that Windows 8 will be available on the 26th of October http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/07/18/windows-8-will-be-available-on.aspx .
A big year ahead for Microsoft and I am betting those working for Google have something to worry about!
Is Google in panic mode?
Posted by Nick Bowyer in Cloud, Google on June 7, 2012
I have owned an iPhone since they launched in 2007 and an iPad from day one. I love Apple products, however I found it frustrating that Microsoft’s attitude towards the device was one of a competitor rather than just another platform to deliver software and services to. I had the desire to edit documents on my iOS device and had a look around for a version of Office, as we all know none existed, however Quick Office appeared to deliver quite a good experience on both the iPhone and the iPad, it had slick integration with Dropbox and Google docs as well as the ability to send files to and from my Mac/PC over Wifi.
I have used the version of Office that is baked into Windows Phone 7 as well and it IS better, however Quick Office already addressed a large chunk of the mobile / tablet market with some recorded 400 Million users! That is a Massive number and something that Microsoft needs to be aware of when it tries to use the functionality upsell story of their own product. 400 Million users have decided Quick Office fills the gap that the lack of Microsoft Office for iOS left.
The recent news that Google purchased Quick Office came as no surprise to me. A rich “office” experience on the iOS has been lacking an really Quick Office is the only company in the last 2 years to come close to what Microsoft has already established in the desktop world. I do get the feeling that Google are changing their direction with this purchase, remember Google are the company that until recently were pushing a “browser centric” operating system (Chrome OS). The browser (until now) has formed one of Googles more convincing sales pitches, that is all of your information exists purely in the browser/cloud, there is no need for a client application. I disagreed with this approach, applications accessing cloud services is the best experience in my opinion and it would seem that Google have started to recognize this as well with the purchase of Quick Office.
Expect things to get interesting when Microsoft launch their version of Office for iOS later this year (rumored to be November 10th 2012). Microsoft are the current kings of collaboration, offering a richer integration that what Quick Office offered, however the “good enough” approach may see some users stick with Quick Office and wait for the improvements that arise out of the Google partnership.
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