For anyone working with software systems will know that there is nothing on the planet that is so completely frustrating, as a solution that does not work. Downtime leads to increased overhead costs, lost productivity, lost customer satisfaction and lost revenue. This hits business users of course, but also those who are there to support the business.
Small business users are especially hit by this since they are completely dependent upon the technology. Take into consideration therefore that if businesses do not understand the provisions of support for a cloud service that they will particularly suffer, especially since they will not, in the main have direct access to IT staff to aid them.
Office 365 carries with it solutions (SharePoint, Lync, Mail, Yammer, Office) within a significant number of feature such as Identity, Exchange, Rights Management, etc. Just think of what a small business will need to go through to start to raise a call concerning an issue if there is a problem with one or more of those solutions. And those with internal IT teams to help will fair no better. Having an IT team to turn to, without understanding that self service is available, that tools, troubleshooting techniques, videos, forums that are available, does not warrant a successful support structure. Additionally, the support level in Office 365 needs to marry with expectations from the client. You can only do that by understanding the provision of support provided.
So, here’s a call to action. For those utilising Office 365, or even providing Office365 to clients, I would strongly suggest that the following article is read and understood. And, before you start saying ‘this will not apply to me because I am using SharePoint 2013 on-prem, and I might be using an Office 365 tenant’ – it does!
The article describes:
- Community and self-service support options – describes the various resources that can be used to provide self-help.
- Pre-sales support – describes the various assistance provisions for understanding features, benefits, plan comparisons, pricing, licensing, etc.
- Billing and subscription management support – describes the kind of assistance for signing up, renewing subscriptions, paying bills, etc.
- Technical Support – describes what areas of support will be covered and how.
- Shared Support Responsibilities – very important for those who will need multiple roles in their Office 365 administration and support management scenarios.
- Additional support options – describes three other levels of support like Microsoft Cloud Vantage, Premier and Professional Direct Support, including partners, developers and volume licensing.
- Features – describes the support options, like phone support, technical, billing, pre-sales, etc. against the differing licencing options available for Office 365.
So check out the article on this link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office-365-support.aspx
Bold statement time. The Internet is a collection of machines – and there is more data generated by machines than humans. IOT (Internet Of Things) is connected devices providing data which will simplify, enhance, and enrich our lives. Already connected devices are beginning to revolutionise our lives; but to understand the nature, challenges and opportunities we need to understand how we can take informed decisions concerning this technology and trends.
Things like how the data our devices upload and download is shared, used, managed, controlled with clear data integrity. What should be our focus, what and who can help us understand this technology. IOT has implications for those working within the SharePoint sphere. As SharePoint workers, we will need to roadmap and further refine data provided (from internally or externally provided systems harvesting sensor data) to define an IOT strategy.
We will need to learn how to promote use of devices used within organisations, so they become smarter devices thus turning our companies, and ourselves, into smarter people. The article I have written for TechNet, aims to describe, simplistically, the nature of IOT, some of the key opportunities realised by Microsoft and others, the challenges we may face in control, management, security, privacy. The article suggests some take-aways in what we may need to address to support the infrastructure and manage the data.
Sometime ago, I also wrote about the skill-sets coming into the fold of data analysis (the Data Scientist). We are already seeing the emergence of the CDO (Chief Data Officer) whose skillset will become more and more entrenched in helping people make decisions on data coming from sensor feeds and the management of IOT in organisations.
Even my kids know about IOT and sensor technology. My eldest daughter, an ardent follower of fashion, running her own shop, mentioned to me that she was really into reading up and working on opportunities concerning nano-technology in clothes, as she thought it definitely the future. I thought that nano-technology in clothes was a myth; that it simply didn’t exist (showing my age I suspect) – but I was astonished to find on IET an article talking about just that, even to the point where engineers were busy creating clothes and being designers! Imagine, nano-technology in clothes; that would be able to determine the colour and provide better waterproofing in clothes – wow…. Surely then, we can’t be far away from having our clothes change colour based on the time of year, or maybe even inform how many washing cycles clothes can take before needing repair / replacement? So that means sensor technology in clothes must be a reality…
Anyway, I just had to do more digging. I am sure there are implications from a systems analysis, and service delivery perspective, particularly for data management. I found myself absolutely fascinated by the impact of IOT. From discussing with other techies in this field and more, I was able to put together an article which I’ve had posted to TechNet. Please go read the article here.
List one or all sites on a farm with information concerning size, storage, bandwith, owner, optionally including a switch for displaying those with a specific right on the sites. An enhancement upgrade to the nifty utility GEGETRIGHTS, this is yet another nifty application and FREE! Works with Sharepoint 2013 and SharePoint 2010.
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The Cloud Security Alliance published the Cloud Control Matrix, to support consumers in the evaluation of cloud services and to identify questions prudent to have answered before moving to cloud services. In response to this publication, Microsoft has created this document to outline how we meet the suggested principals and mapped them to the International Standards Organization (ISO) 27001:2005 and ISO 27002. With this standardized response we would like to empower customers with in-depth information to evaluate different offerings in the market place today.
Standard Response to Request For Information-O365-Security-Privacy_v2.docx
Standard Response to Request For Information-O365-Security-Privacy_v2.pdf
Microsoft has today released the Office 365 for business public roadmap. The Office 365 for business public roadmap provides customers with a way to learn more about upcoming change and updates before the change impacts their service.
Go here to see the Office365 for Business Public Roadmap
The public roadmap will be closely coupled with the larger Office 365 Change Management strategy, including integration with Message Centre and the Office 365 direct to admin communication channel.
This is an extremely important and very useful service delivery mechanism to ensure you know what services will affect Office 365 customers – the roadmap page is split into sections allowing you to see what features are launched, rolling out, in development and cancelled.
Another very important read is the Improving visibility to service updates blog which gives more information concerning the concepts behind the Office 365 for business public roadmap.
So what is the public roadmap?
The Office 365 for business public roadmap is a web page on Office.com that provides customers with a list of new and updated features being released to the Office 365 service. The website will list recently launched features, features still rolling out, and features that are still in development. The website will launch with a monthly update cadence.
Note that the public roadmap does NOT commit Microsoft to specific timelines for delivering service updates. It follows a set of policies for what should and should not be included based on when an update is expected to being rolling out and previous disclosure of a particular update. The content goes through a quality assurance pass bi-monthly as part of previous NDA roadmap activities.
Why is the public view of the Office 365 roadmap being created?
As both engineering and marketing move to a services operating model, Microsoft are changing the way they approach customer communications. Part of this transformation is going directly to customers and scaling communications to every Office 365 customer from the individual business owner with 1 employee to the largest enterprise or governmental organization with hundreds of thousands of users.
From examining customer data it has been seen that customers expect a “service” to behave like other services in their life, such as cable or mobile phone subscriptions. They expect notification and communication about any changes to their service. PSAT data, focus groups, and OneList items all show the high cost in the old operating model that erodes customers’ trust and confidence in Office 365.
So what’s next?
Microsoft will be listening closely to customer, partner, and field feedback for improvements that fit within policy guidelines. Improvements currently being evaluated include localization into tier 1 languages, notification or tracking capabilities for the site change log, and expanding to include out-of-scope Office 365 instances. They will continue to refine the update tracking process and use the Office Release Roadmap as the single source for data related to service updates.
