BPOSitive

End of the Line

Brett Hill — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:12:00 GMT

HI there.

Recently I took a position with Advaiya as Lead BPOS PM where I'll be working on BPOS related projects and content. That means the end of the line for my posting here at Bpostive :) .

You can pick up the thread at my new blogging location BrettBlog.com.I will be actively blogging there and adding a lot of new content so stay tuned for some fun! You can email me at brett.hill{at}advaiya.com

Thanks for all my readers out there, I think I met both of you a couple of times.

-brett

The forecast is sunny for cloud services.

Brett Hill — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:05:00 GMT

Sunny Days for Cloud Services

I spent the weekend at a Microsoft internal event hearing from the makers of the next generation of cloud services to be available from Microsoft. It’s too soon to discuss details but wanted to share some of my excitement about what’s coming nonetheless.

Regarding Business Productivity Online Suite, the current online services provide an excellent value and deliver the key features that many users need. That said, there are differences between Exchange on premise and Exchange Online and in some cases, those features are important to users. Understanding these differences is key to having a smooth migration experience. This requires reviewing the service descriptions at microsoft.com/online and the deployment guide at quickstartonlineservices.com which is available to Microsoft Partners.

So what’s the news? As Microsoft has been saying from day 1 with BPOS, our vision is to work continuously to close the gap so that our online services offer parity or near parity with on premise services. I can say with authority that the next release of our services will make significant progress in closing that gap.

What does that mean? It means that you can look at Exchange 2010 and SharePoint 2010 on premise servers and get a good idea of the kinds of features, administration, and capabilities of future cloud services. Yes, there will still be differences as there are unavoidable impacts from large scale, multi-tenant hosting as it is fundamentally different in significant way than a single tenant, on premise implementation. Those differences, however, are soon to become a lot less significant.

If you considered a company’s suite of on premise solutions and services as a portfolio, with the new services to be available later this year, Microsoft will significantly expand the percentage of that portfolio that can be moved to the cloud. This means a dramatic increase in the size of the opportunity for Partners as there will be more markets, and greater opportunity to provide customizations, deep integrations, and automate administration with the new services.

This is good news for IT Pros who are concerned that servers moving to the cloud means their skills will not be needed, when in reality – their skills are simply “relocated” to managing cloud services. That’s different that managing servers, in that you don’t need to manage anti-virus implementation or service pack applications, and fight the never ending process of maintaining security and high availability. These tasks are now managed for you in a very high end data center with millions of dollars of equipment and ISO 27001 certification and SAS70 type I and II audits among others. (http://blogs.technet.com/msonline/archive/2010/02/24/microsoft-online-services-announces-new-certifications-bpos-federal-for-us-government.aspx)

The result is that IT Pro’s are released from doing mundane, ongoing maintenance and freed to focus on high-value projects that can make a significant business impact. Not to mention that IT Pros that “speak cloud” are going to be in high demand as millions of users, thousands of new services, and hundreds of data centers come online. (One tip – Powershell is your friend.)

The forecast is sunny for cloud services.

25GB Mailbox and a free lunch!

Brett Hill — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:17:00 GMT

Now, when you add a new user in the administration center for BPOS, they will 25GB mailbox assigned by default (assuming you are assigning a mailbox to the user)

Previously, this was 5GB per user. This 5x increase for FREE.

Microsoft is always making the services bigger and better while keeping the costs waaay down. In fact the price recently dropped for BPOS to only $10 a seat. That's not a typo. I mean, just consider Live Meeting Standard which you get with the suite. You can invite 250 (as in two hundred and fifty) non-BPOS users to any meeting, doing voice and video (where allowed). TEN BUCKS a month including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online. You gotta love that.

Microsoft Online Deployment Guide

Brett Hill — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:22:00 GMT

Hi,

A new guide to deploying Microsoft Online has been published and is avaiable on the Partner Portal.

The guide covers planning considerations and provides specific deployment guideance and use of the directory synchronization and migration tools. It should go on your list of technical references for BPOS and read before you plan your migration. If you want a training class on the topic, see the technical links blog post to online training that covers these topics in detail.

Thanks!

Wanna chat about cloud services?

Brett Hill — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:44:00 GMT

Hey for some reason I was asked to be one of the hosts at a couple of online chats coming up.

These are open to the public so if you have questions about Microsoft's cloud stratgey, BPOS, or just want to hang out, come on down.

Thanks,

Brett

TechTarget:

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/Microsoft-chat/

Toolbox:

http://knowledgemanagement.ittoolbox.com/research/Sharepoint-Live-Chat-21349?r=Lounge

Quick Reference for BPOS-Standard Technical Content

Brett Hill — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:05:00 GMT

Hi,

I'm always sending links to people about what training and content is avialable so thought it might be useful to put this all together in a single place.
Send me updates you think should be there and I'll add them.

Thanks!
Brett

Quick- Reference
Technical Resources for BPOS-Standard

Getting ramped up on BPOS-S? Already know the services but want more depth? Looking for way to stay up to date about updates to the services? This list is designed to help get started, get deeper, and stay current. These are my picks for the best technical references and resources.

Some content is available to everyone and some is accessible on the Partner Learning Center or https://www.QuickstartOnlineservices.com – our partner portal for BPOS. PARTNERS – quickstartonlineservices.com is THE PLACE to go for depth marketing and technical content.

Category 1: Must read and keep on a USB key.

In other words, this is core content that you cannot be without. You will constantly refer back to it and it needs to be refreshed every month.

Service Descriptions and white papers

· Exchange Online Standard

· SharePoint Online Standard

· Office Communications Online Standard

· Blackberry and Mobile Details

Category 2: Must read, subscribe and check when updated

....... For the rest see : http://blogs.technet.com/bpositive/pages/quick-reference-for-bpos-s-technical-content.aspx

Recent Webcasts on Technet

Brett Hill — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:52:00 GMT

Hey,

Our new community guy Jim Glynn has been busy and getting some good technical content posted.

Since the services are being updated all the time, it's a good idea to get into a habit of refreshing what you know. Important changes are alwasy being added that open new opportunites for partners and customers.

Check out this list of webcasts now avaiable:

Date	Webinar title and link to video
1/19/2009	Getting Your Directory and Mail Content Into Microsoft Online Services: An Overview
12/3/2009	Business Solutions on BPOS: An HR On-boarding Case Study
12/10/2009	Bet your Business on Microsoft Online Services
12/17/2009	Migration to BPOS
1/14/2010	Microsoft Online Services, the choice of businesses – BPOS or Google
1/21/2010	BPOS 101: Exploring Microsoft Online Services
1/28/2010	Using PowerShell with Microsoft Online Services

Microsoft Online Services Diagnostics and Logging Support Toolkit - Free tool now available

Brett Hill — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:58:00 GMT

I love tools.

Particulalry this kind of tool that can help you when you need it. Direct from our upper echelon support and migration teams comes the MOSDAL (Microsoft Online Services Diagnostics and Logging) Support Toolkit. Not only does it come with the bits, you there's a detailed training help file you can use that provides guidance on how to you can view as well. The certainly goes into the "must have" list of tools for BPOS partners and customers that support the services.

Custom notifications of password expiration

Brett Hill — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 04:18:00 GMT

The guys as Messagops have released a script that can notify deskless workers when their BPOS password is about to expire. Since BPOS Deskless workers use OWA rathe rthan Outloook, this is a very hand capability.

See the post at http://www.messageops.com/blog/index.php?/archives/10-Microsoft-Online-Password-Expiration-Notification-Script.html

-brett

Quickstartonlineservices.com - BPOS Partner MegaPortal updated with - new features - new content

Brett Hill — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:18:00 GMT

Hi,

Santa came to town for BPOS during the holidaze and I wanted to update you on a couple of times.

New Quickstartonlineservices.com Portal launched!

My teammate Damon Sununtnasuk worked tirelessly to get the redesigned portal launched over the holidaze. The portal is a one-stop shop for BPOS partners to find out everything they need to know about BPOS and includes marketing, technical, a replica of this blog, discussion board and detail rich Wiki on virtually every aspect of the services. This is a MUST KNOW resource for BPOS partners.