Microsoft recently completed its acquisition of Yammer to bolster its enterprise social networking capabilities. While it’s too early to share details about the impact on your business productivity in the workplace, I am very excited about its potential! In the meantime, there are a lot of social features Office 365 customers can take advantage of with SharePoint Online.
Do you want to maximize teamwork and talent while having a protected dialog when information is sensitive to your business? Great! You’re in the right place to learn how the community capabilities of Office 365 go beyond what Google delivers.
With SharePoint Online, you can share information and exchange ideas with colleagues. What’s more, you can collect information when you need it without interrupting others or waiting for them to respond in email. You can also tap into your organization’s talent, contribute to wikis and blogs, and subscribe to information, discussions and documents. I’m sure you’ll appreciate the fact that no one in your organization has to search out these capabilities. Unlike Google users, who need a consumer product such as Google+, which is not supported within the Google Apps Service Level Agreement, for key social networking tools, Microsoft includes and supports each SharePoint capability I am describing here, through Office 365.
Sharing Ideas and ExpertiseLike a coffeehouse culture, SharePoint brings communities of employees together around common ideas and interests. For example, SharePoint Online My Sites lets you create your own personal site to share information and professional expertise. You can use “my profile” to create your professional biography that includes projects you have worked on, interests, education, and skills. The “colleagues” feature of My Sites suggests co-workers you might want to connect with. This provides a way to collaborate with colleagues that you may not otherwise realize have similar interests and activities.
SharePoint Online makes it easy to find specific talent within your organization. The SharePoint “organizational browser” and “people search” features help you locate peers, find managers and the people who report to them, and view each person’s profile information.
Using the “organizational browser,” employees can see an organizational chart with each user profile. They can also search for people based on attributes stored in their My Sites profile. In the screenshot above, for example, Erika identifies her expertise at improving organizational processes, a skill others in her company may want to tap into. SharePoint and the suite of Office 365 tools also display presence information, so you can see if specific people are available. From a SharePoint site, for example, you can easily start an IM conversation just by accessing a user’s name.
Keeping Information ProtectedFor those wanting to gather in-depth information or have information sent to them in a streamlined way, SharePoint offers the ability to schedule RSS feeds for specific topics or content. In addition, employees can craft or contribute to wikis and blogs.
No matter how they use SharePoint Online, users don’t need to worry about sharing sensitive information like they do with Google+. SharePoint gives IT administrators the security tools they need to protect company information including permissions and Information Rights Management.
Google+ a Minus for BusinessesBy contrast, Google punts social networking capabilities to Google+, which wasn’t built for business users. For one thing, Google fails to provide a service level agreement for Google+, which defines the level of service enterprises can count on. Google+ also lacks the administrative features that give IT managers control over sensitive information. Google+ provides nothing like the Microsoft Exchange global address list or the SharePoint organizational browser. And if that’s not enough, Google+ is still a beta experience.
Google has built Google+ as a central hub that encourages traffic to the company’s ad-funded technologies like search, Android, Picasa and YouTube. It requires Google+ users to sign and comply with its consumer terms of service. If an organization wants to administer Google+ within a business, Google provides no option to disable its games. It provides only “yes” and “no” access privileges with no other administrative controls and no privacy settings.
There are no centrally built and deployed sharing circles, and Google+ delivers no warnings when a user shares information externally. Instead, the company has designed a service built for consumer scenarios like watching videos on YouTube, playing games online with friends, and sharing thoughts and links with circles of friends.
That might be sufficient if you’re a consumer. But it certainly doesn’t meet the needs of today’s enterprises. If your business wants to improve collaboration and maximize your talent, SharePoint Online and Office 365 are where it’s at socially.
Each week, we round up industry news and articles you might have missed. Enjoy this week’s selections.
Microsoft: Office 365 Sees Growing Adoption in India Indian firms of all sizes are choosing Office 365 over Google Apps.
Google App Store Policy Raises Privacy ConcernsGoogle’s privacy practices draw heat after an Australian software developer said the company was providing him with personal information, including email addresses, of everyone who purchased his mobile app.
Microsoft Office 365 Cloud Data Privacy Rules ExplainedWhile Google search-mines customer data for the betterment of its product, Microsoft has worked to assure customers of the cloud data privacy protection and security standards that Office 365 meets.
Microsoft Launches New Scroogled Video for Valentine’s Day, Says Google Will Read Your Love LettersDon’t want Google snooping on your Valentine? That’s the question Microsoft asks with its latest “Scroogled” video.
Skype Adds E-Gifting to its Mac and Windows ApplicationsNew updates allow Skype users to send each other gifts in the form of Skype credit gift cards.
7 Things About SharePoint 2013 All IT Pros Should KnowSharePoint 2013 provides useful enhancements “including some that have the power to transform the level of understanding you have about your business.”
Surface Pro Sells Out at Microsoft's Online U.S. SiteMicrosoft's new Surface Pro sells out online at Microsoft's website in the U.S., hours after becoming available.
Tighter integration. Fuller functionality. Better enterprise value. These are among the reasons why the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) chose Office 365 over Google Apps as its cloud platform for communication and collaboration.
India’s largest and oldest apex business organization, FICCI wanted to upgrade its email system from Rediffmail server to a more stable and secure platform. After evaluating several hosted solutions including those from Google and IBM, the organization selected Office 365.
Office 365: The More Advanced ChoiceKey reasons why FICCI chose Office 365 over competitive solutions included compatibility with the organization’s existing infrastructure, Active Directory synchronization, Microsoft’s 99.9 percent uptime Service Level Agreement (SLA), and the easy ability to configure and set up Office 365 for both desktop and mobile users including those using Windows, Blackberries, iPhones and Androids.
“We looked for ways to deliver cloud on our terms along with enterprise-class security, thereby reducing capex,” says Rajiv Mishra, Additional Director and Head of IT for FICCI. “Microsoft Office 365 emerged as a better fit with our overall IT strategy, as it is much more integrated and advanced than Google Apps and offers more of the functionality our employees need. Combined with the extended functionality in Lync Online, Office 365 offers much more enterprise value than Google.”
Improved Accessibility, Reliability and Security FICCI completed its migration to the cloud in just two months. Among the benefits the organization is seeing include:
Making Google Look Outdated“FICCI’s decision to deploy Office 365 across its offices worldwide is further evidence of the enterprise-class quality and scalability of the world’s most popular productivity platform,” says Ramkumar Pichai, General Manager of the Microsoft Office Division for Microsoft India. Office 365 clearly makes Google Apps look outdated when it comes to enterprise-class security and delivering cloud on your terms.”
As a Seattleite, I only have to look out the windows to see a variety of often spectacular cloud formations. Businesses are following suit, creating their own cloud arrangements. Core productivity applications like Office 365, as well as many other applications for specialized business purposes are available in the public cloud. That is, they are outside the firewall, accessible via the web. Why are organizations transitioning applications to the public cloud, or prioritizing applications to move to the public cloud? In order to understand the public cloud deployment choice, let’s also consider why businesses are maintaining traditional, on premises software, using a private cloud, or using hybrid, private/public cloud applications.
Why use traditional, on-premises applications?Many companies, non-profits and educational institutions have certain applications which are “humming along”. Their user base is satisfied or enthused, they have current software license agreements in effect, and the accounting group is happily writing off investments in the IT infrastructure directly supporting those applications. In many cases, these solutions keep business-critical information or customized software on-site for maximum security and reliability. Since sunny weather prevails here, there are no near-term plans to migrate these, particular applications to a web paradigm. This software meets the expectations of the users and the enterprise. In addition, it may possibly be state-of-the-art, and innovative.
Why deploy a private cloud?Many companies and organizations choose to virtualize their servers to keep applications inside the firewall, optimize use of hardware, and make applications available to employees, partners and customers over the web. These organizations have talented IT teams or capable system integration partners, motivated to secure and enable business applications for ubiquitous access, and may have priorities such as: • Taking time to learn about information security best practices for public cloud applications, or about newer application capabilities and technologies • Financial interest in writing off capital assets: servers and storage • Applications written and maintained in-house which are intellectual property, or are specialized for that business • Regulatory constraints or in-house business policies regarding information privacy, such as for personal identity information or sensitive records
With a private cloud, an enterprise can enjoy many of the benefits of public cloud computing, such as self-service, scalability, and elasticity. As a bonus, they benefit from the additional control and customization available from dedicated resources.
Why choose the public cloud?This is a subject I’m passionate about, partly because I’ve found that organizations and businesses are planning for and using the public cloud for so many reasons. Businesses are saving money and, in many ways, the public cloud is changing the day-to-day work in IT for the better.
Striving for Higher ProductivityToday, IT serves a multi-generational workplace with Boomers, GenXers and Millennials, each having distinct work styles when it comes to technology. Applications like Office 365 support their diverse modes of interaction with integrated messaging, presence, online meetings, unified communications, calendar and email. Public cloud applications can help companies’ IT staff attain the best ROI on assets and on cloud applications, helping IT workers spend less time on day-to-day maintenance and troubleshooting for server and storage infrastructures. IT staff in companies using the public cloud can free that time to remove technology hurdles and enable employees to work the way they want, for better productivity. For example, they can focus on optimizing mobile interfaces for employees, and enable more collaboration using unified communications and messaging.
Dynamic IT and SavingsCloud applications let you address spikes in demand for software. A company’s general ledger application may have peak utilization towards the end of the month, just when payroll application use peaks, and also when the sales force automation tool sees a spike in usage as field offices post their forecasts. With cloud deployments, capacity is available for peak and off-peak conditions, and you save money by not having to acquire in-house hardware to fit your heaviest load periods.
In addition, you don’t have to worry about costly server deployment or time-consuming server maintenance tasks. Keeping expenses down while reducing the environmental impact of a datacenter is a tough challenge. The public cloud helps IT departments reduce their environmental footprint, while still keeping costs down and implementing advanced technology.
InnovationYou may want to use the latest software innovations at your company, and also want customers and employees to perceive your business as current in terms of technology and productivity tools. Microsoft offers enterprise-level security, financially-backed 99.9% reliability, applications and tools that scale as you need them, and services tailored exactly to your business needs. In particular, as a public cloud application, Office 365 reduces the burden of performing routine IT management tasks such as retaining current security updates and upgrading back-end systems. With Office 365, your IT staff retains control over user management and service configuration, so they can adjust the services to meet how your company does business.
Why create a hybrid, public/private cloud?Perhaps your organization is a hospital. As Chief Infrastructure Officer, you are responsible for safeguarding deeply personal, intensely private information about individuals: their medical histories, past treatments, health conditions, and organ donation preferences, existence of private wills, billing and identity information. Your organization also manages information about its specialties, achievements, facilities available to patients, accreditations, medical and community services that are very relevant to the public. This particular, community information is not private to individuals.
In this case, your business application needs seem to map pretty neatly as “public” or “private” and this organization could benefit from a hybrid approach to cloud computing. You may be able to reap public cloud benefits for applications such as web site hosting and publishing, and external fundraising campaign management, as you retain your sensitive data and applications behind the firewall.
Cloud FormationYou may be ready for a first step or a bold, second step in leveraging the cloud. First, take stock of your users’ workload needs and begin mapping them to potential cloud solutions. Identify factors such as regulations and privacy policies that would mean that an application is best retained on-premises. Look at whether you have an application which needs to be customized for your business, and whether you would like to retain that application on site through its transformation.
Next, consider businesses cases for taking key, portable workloads to the cloud. Moving an application to the cloud can save money. Look at budget priorities and budget allocations. Evaluate the IT cost savings and the ROI. Finally, look at ways you can streamline licensing and reduce any deployment backlog by moving applications to the cloud.
Commuting along route 520 this week, with Mount Rainier on the horizon, a strip of clouds formed a white ribbon following the path of the highway, surrounded on each side by openings of blue. After the coldest April in 120 years, spring is coming to Seattle. I hope your cloud formation is promising.
As part of the Real World with Cloud Services series, we spoke to Muttia Alkhayyat, Chief Information Officer at UrbaCon General Contracting about why, after adopting Google Apps for Business, UrbaCon switched to Microsoft Office 365. Here’s what he had to say:
Q: Please tell us about UrbaCon. Alkhayyat: UrbaCon specializes in full-service design and construction. We are one of the largest contracting services providers in the region. Our main office is in Doha, Qatar, and we have 8,000 employees. UrbaCon’s subsidiaries include Khayyat Contracting and Trading Company (KCT), Loyalty Business Development Investment (LBDI), and Highness Design.
Q: Why did you originally make the move to a cloud-based messaging and collaboration solution? Alkhayyat: We work in a very fast-paced industry. The majority of our workforce operates outside of a traditional office. Whether they’re at a job site or meeting with a prospective customer to review a project proposal, our people need anywhere access to email, documents, and collaboration tools. One of the major challenges for our IT team has been: how do we support a highly mobile and distributed workforce with limited staff and still maintain the highest levels of network security? In 2009, we decided to transition to Google Apps for Business because we thought it would help us quickly scale our email environment—while making it easier for employees to use mobile devices to stay connected to the information they need.
Q: Why did you switch from Google Apps to Office 365? Alkhayyat: We used Google Apps for approximately two years. And, at first, it seemed to meet our needs. But over time, we realized that its limitations were actually getting in the way of productivity, not facilitating it. For example, Google Mail lacked support for unified communications. Specifically, it did not offer a way to capture both email and voice-mail messages in a single inbox. This meant that executives who were traveling might not be aware of important client calls until they returned to the office. Also, because Google Mail did not work with our Active Directory database, administrators spent up to 10 hours each week manually updating and reconciling user account data.
Q: What benefits are you experiencing by using Office 365? Alkhayyat: Microsoft Office 365 is a more complete, enterprise-ready solution for our company. Integration between Active Directory and Office 365 gives us much better control of our network infrastructure. Now we can extend the same security policies to email that we use to manage our other critical systems. And, in terms of enabling greater productivity, Office 365 delivers a richer set of capabilities than we ever had with Google Apps. Our people don’t have to worry about compatibility between desktop applications, email, and collaboration tools. They all work together. Plus, with unified messaging through Exchange Online, they can receive email and voice mail all in one place. The availability of our employees, even when they’re on the go, is crucial for the success of our business. Office 365 gives us enterprise-grade tools that work with software we already own, so we can keep our people connected to customers and suppliers at all times.
Read the full story online. For more success stories about people like Muttia Alkhayyat at UrbaCon General Contracting, read other real-world testimonials on the whymicrosoft website.
Today's post is the first of two guest posts this week by Julia White, Sr. Director of Microsoft Exchange Product Management.
For those of you who don’t know me, I run the Exchange product management team at Microsoft. I often post to the Unified Communications Group Team Blog; but my colleague, Tom Rizzo, suggested I guest blog here. So today and tomorrow, I’ll be posting my thoughts about email, on-premises and in the cloud.
As part of my role, I talk regularly with customers about their email solution. Nearly all of the conversations I’ve had in the past year include a discussion about cloud-based email and how IT departments should think about their next upgrade. The discussions appropriately center around three key areas: control, capabilities and customer support & service. Within the area of control is where discussion of uptime and Service Level Agreement (SLA) comes up.
Get the Truth on Uptime and SLA
Google has attempted to take jabs at Exchange uptime as compared to Gmail and as such, I wanted to take this issue head on. Email is considered a mission critical application at most organizations, so uptime is certainly important and worth understanding. You may hear Google tout that Gmail’s uptime is much better than on-premises Exchange. Through their claims, it is clear that Google is clueless about on-premises email and are insulting to the dedicated IT Pros who run these systems. But, beyond that, I want to make sure you have an apples to apples comparison of uptime.
The majority of Exchange customers have either recently completed their upgrade or are in the process of upgrading to Exchange 2010. Utilizing the latest tools available in Exchange 2010, our customers are seeing up to 99.999% uptime on premises. On the services side, Exchange Online customers get a financially backed, 99.9% uptime guarantee. If you are considering Exchange for your next e-mail system, these are the only two versions that are relevant to you. Make Google talk straight to you – and stick to what they know, which clearly isn’t on premises email.
Customers Need Feature Predictability...with More Than 1 Week Notice!
Getting to aspects of control that are beyond uptime and SLA, a key concern I hear from customers is the predictability of a cloud email service. Over the past 10+ years, Exchange has provided a steady, predictable set of innovations, so it’s no surprise customers have learned to rely on this. We know the cadence of our product release cycles is important to large enterprises and small businesses, because it provides a predictable series of events that our customers can plan for and depend upon. For enterprise products, we generally disclose upcoming features in the next version of the product at least 12 months in advance. We hold a public beta that allows people to test an early version of the product and provide feedback. At the end of this process, we release a fully tested, finished product. Within the next year, we make available a Service Pack that is also made available as a public beta, with minor enhancements and a rollup of bug fixes. We maintain the same disciplined cadence whether we’re releasing an on-premises or online product.
Google takes a different approach, which serves Google well, but not customers. Recently, Google announced some modifications to their release cycle with two tracks: those who get access to features immediately and those who get at least a week’s notice. While it is clear Google is trying to show they are beginning to understand the enterprise, it is also clear they have a long way to go. Not all features will adhere to the new release cycle and not all features will be in beta or even final versions, nor is there a timeline that shows when those features will be pushed out, without a choice. This isn’t the first time customers have experienced ambiguity from Google. Gmail was in beta for four years, Google Wave came and went, Google Docs was available offline with Gears and then offline access was removed. Can you trust Google with your business, and will your employees trust such a haphazard feature release strategy? Google’s release cadence is convenient for Google, painful for consumers and downright disruptive for businesses.
As we release online products, we follow the same predictable process we use when releasing major updates, but with the added benefit of minor software updates, delivered on an ongoing basis. Plus, current Exchange Online customers will have the option to schedule an upgrade to Office 365 for up to one year out. That is the type of control we know our customers need.
Does IT have All Tools Required to Effectively Manage Cloud-based Emails?
Another area of control I hear a lot about is e-mail administration and this comes down to tools. With the upcoming release of Office 365, our customers have the same features available in Exchange Online as they do in Exchange Server:
For those of you who want to read more about the features listed above, visit the management tools page on the Exchange website. With these tools, you have the same rich features in the web interface, and you can use or modify them just like the administration console in Exchange Server.
Check back tomorrow, when I will discuss the flexibility and familiarity you have with Exchange.
Julia WhiteSenior Director, Exchange Product Management
Q: Can you tell us about Hickory Farms? Mahler: Hickory Farms is a leading purveyor of specialty foods, known for our cheeses, summer sausages, and popular food gift baskets. We deliver our products to consumers across North America through the hickoryfarms.com website and a network of department stores, mass merchandisers, leading supermarkets, and more than 750 seasonal mall stores that are open from October through December.
Q: What led Hickory Farms to adopt an online services model for its collaboration infrastructure? Mahler: To help reduce costs, we started to explore replacing part of our IT infrastructure with cloud technology. By 2010, our Exchange Server environment was aging, and it no longer made financial sense to maintain it. We were interested in updating our legacy messaging infrastructure and we selected a popular, online platform that was competitively priced and seemed like a good solution.
Q: Why did you switch to Office 365? Mahler: When we adopted the previous online service, results were mixed. Employees still used Microsoft Office 2007 in addition to the email, word processing, and spreadsheet components of the non-Microsoft service, so we had no single point where people could share work easily. When employees converted messages, documents, or other materials between Office 2007 and the other online service, graphs, pictures, and other elements would change, or type fonts would be switched and colors would not remain true. Sending email messages and calendar invites to customers, retail partners and vendors also presented compatibility challenges. It created extra work for the IT department, too.
By 2011, we understood that we had to find something more effective and our IT partner, Bennett Adelson, helped us switch to Microsoft Office 365 very quickly. With Office 365, we still had a collaboration environment managed for us in the cloud, and it brought us back to a familiar environment that our employees were comfortable with.
Q: What kinds of benefits are you experiencing by using Microsoft Online Services? Mahler: By switching to Office 365, we’ve delivered tools that are familiar to our employees, which they can use to easily and effectively collaborate with each other. They can share work without compromising documents, and they can send email messages and meeting invitations that recipients can open and read. With our previous cloud-based email, employees were constantly asking us how to use the system, but by adopting Office 365, employees can use Outlook exactly the way they’re used to. We’ve also streamlined our IT management by no longer having to remediate problems or reconcile two separate messaging and collaboration environments, and we’ve developed the flexibility we need to efficiently scale our seasonal operations up and down.
Read the full story online. For more success stories like Jeremy Mahler’s at Hickory Farms, read other real-world testimonials on the whymicrosoft website.
At the Worldwide Partner Conference last month, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer predicted that this will be “the most epic year in Microsoft history.”
I couldn’t agree more. And, in my opinion, one of the key products and services that will contribute to the epic year that lies ahead is Office 365. As the cloud-based service enters its second year, it’s on track to become one of Microsoft’s most successful offers in history. As Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Office Division, put it: “The magic of the service is in its flexibility, familiarity and breadth of options.”
As Office 365 begins year two of serving customers of all sizes, it’s admittedly still a startup, yet an incredibly successful one. Like a champion first-year baseball star, Office 365 has already racked up a whole wall of awards, successes, and distinctions that separate it from the competition. So what exactly are those first-year successes? While there are many, here are seven we’re especially proud of:
While our first-year successes have been many, like any startup, the first year of Office 365 has not been without its hiccups. Customers have been slower than expected to migrate to Office 365 from Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS), due to individual customer requirements.
We’ve also steadily improved the reliability of Office 365 after customers experienced some service interruptions with our old service, BPOS. As one blogger put it: “To Microsoft’s credit, the Office 365 cloud suite seems to have gotten more and more reliable since launching in June 2011. Initially, Office 365 — the successor to BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) suffered multiple outages. But more recently, chatter about Office 365 reliability concerns seems to have quieted down in the IT channel.”
A Long-Term Marriage to Our CustomersAs with migration and reliability, we’re continually working to improve Office 365 to make it even more productive for our customers. And as Office 365 enters its second year, we’ve also been thinking about our long-term relationship.
It’s been said that the secret to a good marriage is to understand that “it must be total, it must be permanent, and it must be equal.” Microsoft has 20 years of expertise in the enterprise arena, and the release of Office 365 a year ago only extends that commitment. Our commitment to our customers is both total and permanent. What’s more, it is equal, meaning that we’re always listening and will continue to evolve to meet our customers’ needs and desires.
By contrast, it’s hard to determine whether Google’s commitment to its enterprise customers is either total or permanent. Google Apps for Business (GAFB) grew out of a consumer offering and does not generate a significant portion of Google’s overall income. Not surprisingly, Google once again showed a lack of innovation and investment in Google Apps for Business at its recent Google I/O conference.
As for Office 365, we’re in it for the long haul, and we look forward to a long and prosperous marriage to our customers. As Steve Ballmer declared more than two years ago when discussing Microsoft’s commitment to cloud computing, “We’re all in.”
Q: Please tell us about Note. Johansson: Note is one of the largest contract manufacturers of electronics equipment in Scandinavia. Based near Stockholm, we manage nine facilities and 1,000 employees in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, United Kingdom, and China.
Q: Why did you want to manage your messaging and collaboration with cloud technology? Johansson: Contract manufacturing is a very information-intensive industry, and effective communication and collaboration is very important for us. For example, we may have to build prototypes and processes at development centers in Sweden or Norway and then transfer those processes to production facilities in Estonia or China. We must manage a large amount of internal information and communication, and our employees need to be able to access those resources from different locations and different devices.
We managed email messaging with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 but had separate, third-party solutions for instant messaging, web conferencing, and information sharing. We wanted a modern tool that we could use to unify communication and information across the enterprise, and in late 2010, we adopted the Google Mail cloud-based messaging service.
Q: Why did you switch from Google Apps to Office 365? Johansson: Initially, Note was a high-profile customer reference for Google, but we soon determined that the collaboration features in Google Apps were not rich or broad enough to unify our communication infrastructure. By December 2011, we had abandoned Google Apps and had migrated to Microsoft Office 365. We thought that the integration of Office 365 was much more advanced than Google―and offered more of the functionality our employees needed.
With Office 365, we could offer our employees a familiar messaging and work environment they could adopt without additional training, and when it was combined with the extended functionality in Microsoft SharePoint Online and Microsoft Lync Online, we thought Office 365 offered much more enterprise value than Google.
Q: What benefits are you experiencing by using Office 365? Johansson: Office 365 is a better fit with our overall IT strategy. Now, we have a single environment we can use to help organize and share information within the group. Google has no equivalence to the deep integration between Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online. Our employees can communicate more effectively between business teams and across multiple facilities and devices. We can manage our Office 365 subscriptions under a single agreement and avoid the cost of third-party intranet and web conferencing solutions.
Whenever we can effectively outsource our IT burden like we can with Office 365, we build competitive advantages for our business. With Microsoft Office 365, we have richer functionality and more options than we did with Google Apps, and we expect to save $30,000 a year in direct IT costs. I can’t even begin to estimate the savings due to our enhanced communication efficiency. Looking in the rear-view mirror, I don’t think we would have adopted Google.
Read the full story online. For more success stories about people like Mikael Johansson at Note, read other real-world testimonials on the whymicrosoft website.
Top Resources on Why Microsoft Website: Part 3 of 3 “The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.”
--Babe Ruth, member of Baseball Hall of Fame and the first player to hit over 50 home runs in one season.
As an avid sports fan, I love this time of year! There is so much happening: the NBA playoffs, the Stanley Cup and my favorite, the start of the Major League Baseball season. In particular, I love team sports, and this time of year, I remember one immutable truth: success in business is a team sport. Over the past few weeks I have been blogging about the new Why Microsoft site, opening this 3-part series with “Office Web Apps vs. Google Docs – See for Yourself” and following up with “Look Before You Leap”. Today’s blog is similar in that I am highlighting a new section on Why Microsoft that you should really take the time to explore. – It is the Industry Leader section. What’s important about this section and how does it relate to team sports? This section is all about the Microsoft’s Office division’s ‘team’ of products – Office 2010, Exchange 2010, SharePoint 2010, Lync 2010 and Project 2010. Microsoft did not create the content in this section. It is coming from one of the industry’s leading analyst firms: Gartner. In this section you will see that this ‘team of products’ participates in a variety of Gartner Magic Quadrants (MQs). Our placements in individual MQs are impressive but we feel it is even more impressive when you take a look at how the entire team does across the various MQs we participate in. Together, this team of products participates in 16 Gartner Magic Quadrants. The MQ is like the Sweet 16 of IT for everything from Social Software in the Workplace to Unified Communications as a Service. Out of 16 total Magic Quadrants, Microsoft Office products were positioned as a Leader in 10 and a Challenger in 5 and a Visionary in 1.
Today’s guest blogger is André Henrique Buss, owner of GW Computadores, a technology consulting firm that specializes in cloud-based infrastructures. Headquartered in Blumenau, Brazil, the firm works with small- and medium-size businesses in Brazil.
Today, there really isn’t a good reason for small- and medium-size businesses not to migrate to the cloud. And those that make the change sooner rather than later will gain a competitive advantage over other companies in their industry.
All of our clients are very interested in cloud technologies. Many of them work with larger competitors that have impressive IT infrastructures. The cloud enables a company with a single employee to use the same tools as a large, multinational corporation. It levels the playing field by giving smaller companies a powerful tool at a price that fits their budgets.
The momentum for Microsoft Office 365 couldn’t be better. We’re seeing intense interest in the cloud-based service, especially with the arrival of Office 2013, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2012. Over the past year, we’ve migrated more than half of our clients to Office 365, and we plan to move all 50 customers representing 3,000 seats by June 2013.
Office 365: The Right Choice for Our ClientsWe always show our clients both Office 365 and Google Apps before the sale, and they always choose Office 365. The first question our customers ask is about support. They want to know what assistance they’ll receive should they run into technical problems. And they’re concerned about the level of support that Google offers. For example, Google only offers an international phone number with support in English for Brazilian customers, which is often a deal breaker. It does not offer support in Brazilian Portuguese, making it difficult to get answers to questions. In addition, our customers are concerned about the confidentiality of their information. With Google Apps, they don’t know where their information gets stored or how it will be handled.
The compatibility of Office 365 with other Office products is also an advantage. Most of our clients have used Office software for a long time and are intimately familiar with it. Since Office 365 offers the same intuitive look and feel as desktop versions of Office, there’s very little training required. Instead, employees can simply open up their email and their files, and begin working. Our clients really like tools like SharePoint and Lync, which help them to communicate and collaborate just like a large company would. While Google Apps offers some of the same functionality, it feels more bare bones.
IT administrators also find they are more productive with Office 365. They like the fact that they no longer have to worry about software patches or maintaining complex servers. And they love the additional storage capacity that they get with the cloud. Their budgets are being freed up for more strategic purposes. For example, the additional hardware that was once required for backup and auditing tasks is no longer a topic of discussion at budget meetings. And IT teams that were once busy keeping the infrastructure up and running can shift their focus to improving user interaction with products, which benefits the entire company.
Office 365: The Right Choice for UsWe at GW Computadores have used Office since we first began operating in 2001, and our own productivity continues to grow with each new version. We moved to the Microsoft cloud with Business Productivity Online Standard (BPOS) when it was first introduced, and our productivity increased even further after upgrading to Office 365. Our employees use Office 365 from their Windows Phones, which enables them to stay productive while on the road or wherever they are. And we’ve adopted Lync Online as our standard for meetings, which allows us to easily communicate and collaborate without the expense of traveling. Our own day-to-day experience with Office 365 has been phenomenal, and we always recommend it to customers.
Welcome to the cloud, San Francisco! Earlier today The City and County of San Francisco and Microsoft announced their intent to bring the benefits of cloud computing to over 23,000 municipal employees by migrating the city’s on-premise email to Exchange Online.
San Francisco joins a growing number of governments that are moving to the cloud with Microsoft, including:
I’m not surprised because Exchange Online will enable the city to offer more functionality to employees and save taxpayers money by consolidating their IT resources. After all, cities gain a resilient system with modern information tools and solid, scalable support provisions.
A City with Long and Short-Term Priorities
While cost savings is a powerful driver for many public sector customers, San Francisco chose Microsoft because they want a long-term, strategic IT partner that can meet their productivity needs and security requirements.
In speaking with our field team in California, I’ve learned that the agreement for Exchange Online is consistent with San Francisco’s long-range master plan to upgrade and consolidate strategic services and share resources, while creating a disaster-resilient system that provides high-level security and reliability. With diligence, the city’s Department of Technology completed a thorough review and was satisfied that the service not only met but exceeded security needs and requirements.
More immediately, the city’s and county’s plans for Exchange Online are in keeping with the commitment from the its Department of Technology to provide customers with high-quality, valued services and to deliver them economically. Their hosted service agreement will keep service management for business-critical communications tools in the hands of the city, and will off-load costly application management to industry experts by delivering the applications directly from a world-class Microsoft facility.
Careful Selection over Google and Others
The City and County of San Francisco took a careful approach in evaluating cloud solutions over a two year period. San Francisco’s Chief Information Officer, Jon Walton, and his team examined numerous cloud-based messaging solutions, including Google’s. In the same timeframe, Google has been challenged in meeting the needs of their public sector customers, and the strains are well documented. Although Google pointed to both the cities of LA and DC as major wins, both deployments have been far from a success. For all of the fanfare around the District of Columbia’s Google deployment, few of the district’s employees were actually using the technology. After more than 20 years in the productivity space, we know that once you win business, that’s when the real work begins.
Through their extensive internal process, the team determined that the Microsoft solution not only met the needs of the city but improved the existing system significantly and opened up future avenues for collaboration. Ultimately, the architecture committee chose Microsoft Exchange Online unanimously. The city had determined that Microsoft met the security, functionality and total cost of ownership metrics they were looking for. So, what’s next? Employees across 60 departments and agencies are beginning the move to Microsoft Exchange Online. They are looking forward with the cloud, like Microsoft. After choosing this public, multi-tenant offering, the City and County of San Francisco plans to evaluate features and functionality for Office365 and SharePoint Online. -- As part of Microsoft’s innovation, nearly every existing product will have a corresponding cloud-based offering, residing on an infrastructure built to support cloud services at a global level.
Benefits for Residents, City Employees and IT Staff
San Francisco is arguably the most charming city in the United States, and likely a great place to live in or work in. What is the impact on San Francisco residents, including those working for the city and county?
As I mentioned above, this move promises to save taxpayers money through consolidating resources. Not only that, the Department of Technology tells us that this cloud-based enterprise messaging solution will provide government personnel with improved communications and collaboration tools including email, calendar coordination, instant messaging, and hosted archiving. Meanwhile, provisioning email and archiving through Exchange Online will not affect current staff size at the Department of Technology. They will continue to manage the service and may adjust some job assignments. Overall, the city expects to make minimal impact on individual departments.
I’m ready to book a ticket to San Francisco to learn firsthand about this roll-out, which begins on June 1st. Tell me what you’d like me to learn in speaking to our client on this trip.
See How People are Using Office Web Apps!
You may have seen my recent post about Collaboration with Office Web Apps to take advantage of sharing/accessing your files virtually anywhere, and collaborating in real time with your colleagues through coauthoring capability. Today, I want to share other interesting ways that people are using Office Web Apps, specifically publishing PowerPoint and Excel files, to enhance their websites and communicate with their readers.
Many of us are using Microsoft Office applications in our day to day life. It is natural to share and express ideas using familiar tools. Did you know you can easily publish your Excel and PowerPoint documents by embedding the files directly on a web page? Here are some creative examples I came across recently:
Advertising Presentation Real Estate Stats Interactive Kite Boarding Calculator
Shift/Work Schedule Workshop Presentation Bond calculators
Tree Decorating Pictures Soccer League Scoreboard Mortgage calculators
I particularly like the mortgage calculator example on George Alzamora’s website. Rather than pay for development time or purchase a 3rd party financial calculator widget, the website simply leverages an Excel file to capture readers’ input and update the mortgage amortization schedule. The natural user interaction creates an opportunity to stay engaged with your audience. From embedding a financial calculator and a shift schedule to a marketing deck and a home slide show, Office Web Apps offers an easy way to jazz up a small business website or a personal blog.
To try it out for yourself, check out How to embed a PowerPoint presentation on a web page and How to embed an Excel workbook on a web page. Be sure to share with us how you applied the embed functionality by adding your URL in the comment section.
As part of the Real World with Cloud Services series, we spoke to Doug Herrick, Chief Information Officer for Jefferson Information Technologies at Thomas Jefferson University, about why the university chose to replace its existing on-premises email system with Microsoft Exchange Online through Microsoft Office 365. Here’s what he had to say:
Q: Please tell us about Thomas Jefferson University.Herrick: TJU was founded in Philadelphia in 1824, and we currently have more living graduates than any medical school in the nation. Along with Jefferson Medical College, the University has five additional schools in graduate studies and health sciences. We have 4,435 staff members and 900 practicing clinicians who serve 3,700 students and 325,000 clinical patients each year.
Q: Why did you want to manage your messaging and collaboration with cloud technology? Herrick: Our email system was based on a Mirapoint secure email appliance that we licensed from them and administered on our own hardware for about 8,000 mailboxes. When our Mirapoint contract came to an end in 2010, we had to decide whether to renew the license and refresh the hardware—which would have meant about [US]$500,000 in up-front costs plus $80,000 in annual maintenance—or switch to a new system. We weren't displeased with Mirapoint, but it didn't offer all the functionality we wanted. We were looking for a collaborative unified communications and messaging system with robust calendar options. In the past few years, there has been a clear trend in the IT world towards cloud-based solutions, and we could see that they were an increasingly viable option, so we began looking into them.
Q: Why did you choose Exchange Online through Microsoft Office 365 instead of Google Mail? Herrick: The decision was actually a fairly easy one for us. Although Google Mail has become quite popular, we felt that it really isn't mature enough yet and doesn't have the enterprise functionality we need. Also, our faculty and staff are familiar and comfortable with Microsoft products, and many of them were already using Microsoft Outlook as their email client. Microsoft also provides the excellent Outlook Web App for browser-based access. As our client base increasingly accesses email through a range of mobile devices, they expect to be able to access their email from anywhere they can get an Internet connection.
Q: What were the key requirements for the solution? Herrick: We had one very important requirement that was a key to our decision. Because we have clinical staff using the system, they sometimes need to send protected personal health information by email. For this reason, we needed a solution that met the requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) including data storage, security, and privacy. Microsoft was willing to work with us to develop a Business Associates Agreement (BAA) guaranteeing HIPAA compliance, and we weren't going to get that with Google Mail. We are now the first and largest university with an associated hospital to use Exchange Online with a HIPAA BAA.
Q: What benefits are you experiencing by using through Office 365? Herrick: By adopting Exchange Online, we have given our staff and faculty what I believe is the leading email system available today, in terms of functionality, integration, and mobility. The response from users has been great—they are very pleased with the features, the mobile access, and the increased mailbox storage that they have now. From the IT point of view, we still have some administrative duties, such as provisioning new mailboxes, but most of the system maintenance is handled by Microsoft in their highly secure data centers. And the cost is also a big benefit. Exchange Online is included in Office 365, and that is saving us $500,000 compared to updating our Mirapoint system, and it has eliminated significant annual maintenance costs. It's been a win-win solution for us.
Read the full story online. For more success stories about people like Doug Herrick at Thomas Jefferson University, read other real-world testimonials on the whymicrosoft website.
Today’s guest blogger is Mo Khan, managing director of Xelleration, a consulting and technology solutions company and a Microsoft Gold Certified partner that provides business intelligence and office automation solutions. Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., the firm works with businesses of all sizes across the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Over the past couple of years, we’ve watched a slow but steady stream of companies move to the cloud. Like any transformation, cloud-based computing is an evolution that comes in small spurts. We at Xelleration educate our customers about the cloud every day. And while security and trust are still a top concern for people, I believe we are turning the corner. Over the next few years, there’s going to be a tremendous push toward the cloud both because of the economies of scale and price-performance improvements it offers.
Already, we have moved several clients to Microsoft Office 365, and many more are slated to migrate over the next six months. Many of the larger companies we’ve worked with have opted for a hybrid approach to the cloud. Some of these customers are global companies with a distributed workforce that want to transition to the cloud gradually. Others, including some of the defense contractors we work with, want to take a hybrid approach for security and privacy reasons. Unlike Google Apps, Office 365 offers a hybrid approach to the cloud, making it the best choice for any organization that wants to transition to the cloud in phases or permanently keep some of its workloads on-premise.
Office 365: An Enterprise LeaderFor customers that already use Microsoft software, the decision to move to Office 365 over Google Apps is typically an easy one. It’s usually companies that don’t have an existing infrastructure that compare Office 365 to Google Apps before making a decision. You’d be surprised how many customers are already leaning toward Microsoft but just want the reassurance that it’s the best decision. I don’t hear people say, “Google Apps has a better value proposition than Office 365.” Instead, it’s usually: “Convince me to go with Office 365.”
If customers have questions about the difference in various offerings out there, we usually point them to the Gartner Magic Quadrants and market scope reports, which are among the many comparative analyses that have identified Microsoft at the top. As the Magic Quadrant reports show, Microsoft is rated as a leader in all key enterprise capabilities. By comparison, Google only shows up in one category. We also direct customers to media reports such as the recent column published in Information Week called “Google Enterprise: I’m not Impressed.” Customers usually need no more validation.
In some cases, we’ve switched customers to Office 365 because of the limitations they were running into with Google Apps. One customer wanted more integration with Microsoft Office, which presented some challenges with Google Apps. Others wanted to automate business workflows that would have required custom development in Google Apps. While we’ve switched Google customers to Microsoft, I don’t know of any organizations using Office 365 that want to move to Google Apps.
Increased Productivity, Reduced CostsXelleration itself made the transition to Office 365 at the end of 2011, and it’s just incredible how it has helped to increase our efficiency. We have fewer hardware and maintenance needs, and we no longer have to worry about installing software patches or updates, or keeping our system safe from computer viruses.
Another benefit is that Office 365 has significantly reduced our travel costs. With Lync Online, we now hold most of our meetings via videoconferences. Over the past year alone, this has saved thousands of dollars in travel costs, and Xelleration is a small company with about 60 employees. Imagine how much a business with thousands of employees can save. It’s just phenomenal.
Hands down, Office 365 is a great investment for organizations of all sizes–both in terms of increasing productivity and reducing costs.
Mike Blake, CIO for Hyatt Hotels Corporation, is our guest blogger today and will describe why he made the decision to move to the cloud and why he chose BPOS to meet the needs of Hyatt's employees world-wide. Hyatt Hotels Corporation first began in 1957 when Jay Pritzker purchased the Hyatt House motel in Los Angeles. From that single motel, Hyatt Hotels Corporation has grown to worldwide portfolio of 434 properties and includes marquee brands such as Park Hyatt, Grand Hyatt and Hyatt Regency. Recently, Hyatt Hotels Corporation made the decision to move to the cloud for their productivity solution and chose Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) for 57,000 employees.
Hyatt Hotels Corporation had been looking at the cloud for quite some time before making the decision to move from our current solution, Lotus Notes. Our internal surveys showed that there was a lot of user dissatisfaction with Notes, and once I became the CIO of Hyatt, I decided that it was time to make the change. We needed a complete, next-generation cloud solution from a provider that could be a strategic partner to us.
Making the leap to the cloud was a big decision for Hyatt. We operate more than 400 properties worldwide, meaning IT must serve users around the world – as well as enable collaboration with a huge network of partners. The cloud seemed like the perfect opportunity for us to reduce the costs of operating such a distributed infrastructure as well as improve our ability to collaborate with partners and suppliers. We had heard a lot about security and privacy concerns as well as data sovereignty and control, but after we really began evaluating cloud solutions, we found that we could actually improve our security and privacy controls by moving to a single cloud-based provider globally and providers such as Microsoft provide rigorous protection protocols that in some areas exceeded our own.
The decision to move use Microsoft BPOS was made after careful evaluation of competitive solutions offered by Google and IBM. We ultimately decided to go with Microsoft because of their proven track-record and commitment to the productivity category. We also expect to save upwards of 30% over our previous solution. This reduction in TCO appealed not only to me but to other members of the executive team who were part of the decision process including our CFO, COO and CMO.
BPOS provides a complete communications and collaboration solution to meet the needs of our 17,000 information workers. Given the nature of our business we have many employees who do not have regular access to a PC but still require access to email and other corporate materials. Microsoft offered a compelling way to connect our 'deskless' workers into the same system. With BPOS, 40,000 of these 'deskless' workers, front desk agents, hotel staff, and housekeeping personnel, will now have access to the same email system as the rest of our company.
Looking ahead, we will begin our transition to BPOS in August and be fully deployed by the end of the year. We anticipate many tangible benefits.
Hyatt Hotels Corporation is excited about this new partnership with Microsoft. At Hyatt we pride ourselves in being a top provider of vacation properties and a leader in the hospitality industry. To be a leader in our industry you need to carefully choose all providers – this includes our technology partners. Microsoft will help us bring Hyatt to the next level of service to our clients. We are excited to bring BPOS to our teams!
Another major win for Microsoft this week. VINCI, the world’s leading facilities management and construction group, recently replaced Google Apps for Business and two other collaborative working solutions with Microsoft Office 365.
The company, which has 183,000 employees in 2,500 subsidiaries spread across 100 countries, wanted to create a social network that encouraged employee collaboration and nurtured the development of its corporate culture and working methods. The company chose Office 365 for three reasons:
Maturity – VINCI wanted a complete and unified solution founded on Microsoft's 30 years of expertise and capable of meeting the company’s specific business requirements. Executives particularly appreciated the unified communications tools with Lync.
Innovation and roadmap – VINCI liked the Microsoft outlook for future innovation in the realm of business social networks, concluding that it would open up new prospects for collaboration.
Flexibility – The company sought the flexibility of a hybrid solution that could be deployed in the cloud or on-premises so that it could serve its numerous subsidiaries with varied technological requirements. It also wanted its employees to be able to work both online and offline.
“‘Working together’ is now a central concept and has taken on an extensive meaning in our strategy,” says Bruno Dupety, COO of VINCI Construction. “The convergence solutions for our systems proposed by Microsoft appeared to be the best placed to meet these needs. We are looking forward to taking up this challenge together.”Microsoft France’s Office Division Director Ariane Gorin called the arrival of VINCI a “decisive step forward” in the deployment of Office 365: “VINCI's decision to opt for Office 365 proves that the flexibility of a scalable solution in the cloud and on-premise meets the needs of a market comprised both of small businesses and major international groups with specific business needs.”Indeed. Maturity, flexibility, and an innovative roadmap. Three great reasons for organizations of all sizes to choose Office 365. To learn more, download the read the Bing translated press release or view a Word version of the document.
In this post I plan to share why schools, colleges and universities use Microsoft cloud and desktop services. Students, administrators and educators are using the hosted service, Live@edu to collaborate and be productive with email and calendaring. In fact, while educators have counted on Microsoft tools for decades, Live@edu has become the world's most widely used cloud productivity service for education, growing an incredible 100% year-over-year to use by 22 million people. What great momentum!
As more schools and universities reap benefits in moving to the cloud, I’m glad to share this news. Today, Microsoft’s vice president of worldwide public sector education, Anthony Salcito announced in "Live@edu Tops 22M Users, Grows 100 Percent Year Over Year", that Microsoft’s next generation cloud productivity service, Office 365 for education, will be available in 2012. The new suite will bring cloud collaboration to educators and students via the exceptional services, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online.
Anthony cites how customers all over the world are using Microsoft products and services in education. For example, in addition to using Microsoft desktop and server tools and using Live@edu, I’ve learned that some institutions such as the European University Cyprus and Georgia State University in the US are beginning to use Office 365 for its Exchange Online capabilities for email and calendaring, and that Microsoft is also on-boarding qualified education customers to Office 365 to take advantage of Exchange Online and Lync Online. For more about Live@edu and Office 365 for education, check out the Microsoft blog.
Choosing Tools Which Prepare Students for their CareersSome institutions are using Google services. While Google Apps for Education emphasizes 100% Web services, Microsoft provides both online service and offline tools, with rich capabilities for educators and students.
As schools and colleges prepare students for their future, Microsoft tools are helping educators and students to be productive day-to-day, and are helping schools provide students with useful skills that they will need in the workplace.
Scanning top job sites, you can quickly get a sense of core skills that are in demand in the workplace. Using Career Builder as an example here is what I found today, November 16th.
Given these figures, which tools should students use to prepare for their career?
How Our Customers Use Office Tools IMC University of Applied Sciences in Austria chose to prepare students for the future with Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. According to Professor Michael Reiner:
“When students are creating team site, blogs, and wikis, they have to think about what and how to communicate—the level of detail, its priority, and how it is delivered. By using Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010, students are learning real-life problem solving skills and the technology skills that they will use in their jobs after graduation. Students are also getting hands-on experience with the latest technology.”
IMC’s Markus Bamberger, Head of IT says: “Recruiters tell us, ‘Your students know how knowledge workers should use the latest technologies.’ Our students and their parents are pleased that potential employers recognize this as an advantage.”
Polytechnic of Zagreb, Croatia’s largest and oldest polytechnic, has a mission to prepare students for successful jobs in technical industries after graduation and is using Live@edu to serve its faculty, staff and 5,000 students. According to Slaven Crnjac, Head of Microsoft and PHP Education:
“Students can use SkyDrive and Office Web Apps to easily share and collaborate on documents, and using Outlook Live prepares them to work in one of the many businesses that use Microsoft Outlook. The Live@edu components also work seamlessly with Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are important applications at the school. When we tested Google Apps, the client integration was not good.”
The Secret is Out: OneNote is a Great Tool for StudentsThe application I wish I had most when I was in school is OneNote! I use it nearly every day to take and organize notes. OneNote and Word extensions for math and chemistry curriculum help students to quickly take notes in class, and then extend their learning with formulas and graphs. Students can capture a review session in video, tag each topic, and link it into their notes. When they sit down to study they can choose to review the whole session, or scan through a few of the topics they have tagged. A student might record audio as their English teacher describes what they want to find in the perfect term paper, tagging key points, and linking the audio into the day’s notes to refer to when they finalize their paper. Students aren’t only recording important information about their studies; they are also coordinating work with teams in OneNote.
If you would like to learn more about how schools use OneNote, see these videos: Office Casual: One Note for School and Office at School: Graphing with the Mathematics Add-In.
Today’s omni-channel customers are more connected than ever before. With so much information readily available, consumers can easily research products wherever they are via their mobile devices, check on a store’s reputation, compare prices right in the aisles, and ultimately choose to buy wherever they get the best deal.
Couple a highly-informed buyer with an environment of slow economic growth, and it becomes increasingly challenging to attract and retain customers. To do so, retailers need to be extremely attuned to their customers, delivering exactly what they want, when they want it.
Improving Customer Service using Office 365Today, 6 out of the top 10 retailers in the U.S. use Office 365. Why? Because Office 365 is a powerful tool that can help retailers deliver a best-in-class customer experience. By connecting businesses more closely to their customers, it can help retailers of all sizes quickly obtain and incorporate customer feedback into their offerings. In addition, it can turn store associates into instant experts equipped with the right information, right when they need it—helping them to close the sale.
Becoming America’s Favorite StoreTwo great examples of retailers that recently chose Office 365 to improve customer service are jcpenney and Tesco.
With 1,100 stores across the United States, jcpenney is using Office 365 to help achieve its goal of delivering a premier customer experience. By implementing Office 365, the retailer plans to increase information-sharing among team members. Office 365 will improve remote access for employees, who can stay connected virtually anywhere, anytime—using smartphones, remote PCs, and other mobile devices. This, in turn will increase communication among stores, allowing team members to work seamlessly with colleagues at other locations while assisting customers.
“In selecting a cloud solution, we were looking for a partner who would support our goal of becoming America’s favorite store,” says Kristen Blum, chief technology officer, jcpenney. “And when we realized that we could improve customer service even more by providing cloud-based collaboration tools to increase communication between team members, it was easy to choose Microsoft and Office 365.”
Delivering a Great Shopping ExperienceLikewise, Tesco, one of the largest retailers in the world, is implementing Office 365 as a way to add customer value.
By using Office 365 as its companywide social and collaboration platform, Tesco hopes to encourage employees across its multinational workforce to share ideas and best practices. The company also wants to give its employees access to the experts, information, and tools they need to deliver a great shopping experience.
“Office 365 will enable us to be a fully connected organization that works closely together, proactively shares knowledge, motivates loyalty and retention of employees, and encourages better working practices to ensure that we create value for customers,” says Mike McNamara, Tesco’s chief information officer.
Putting the Customer FirstIt’s been said that “When the customer comes first, the customer lasts.” No wonder so many retailers choose Office 365. Especially in today’s challenging economic climate, Office 365 is retailers’ ace in the hole when it comes to putting customers first.
With three weeks’ notice and no future date given, Google has mothballed the feature (offline for docs via Google Gears) that one of their largest customers called "an absolute must-have". It’s ironic that when this feature was originally announced, the company touted “It’s NOT an April Fool’s Joke”. However, on May 4th as any Google Apps customer boards an airplane s/he might retort it’s actually a cruel joke. Even SalesForce.com, the self professed SaaS pioneer, whose motto is “No Software”, is shrewd enough to provide an offline client.
Given that 75% of the world’s population does not have an internet connection and last year over 760 Million passengers boarded a flight in the U.S. alone, does Google really believe no offline is the future of productivity and collaboration?
Offline as a Novelty
Despite Google’s marketing claims, the offline scenarios were really just a novelty act. As the chart below* exhibits, the experience was more hype than help. If you wanted to create a new document while offline, just follow Google’s prescriptive advice: “open a few blank files before you go offline”. Huh? Create a new calendar entry? Not so fast.
The Promise of HTML5
Google is apparently scrapping the current version of Docs & Spreadsheets for a HTML5 based version. However despite the promise of HTML5, it doesn’t solve the basic principles of software design. Regardless of the run-time environment, software still requires a sophisticated set of steps to carry out commands. That’s why for example, when you severed the web connection to Google Spreadsheets, you lost access to the calculation engine itself. No calc engine, no spreadsheet.
IE9 and our recent support for one video codec should put any arguments to rest about the future of HTML5. It’s just ironic that Google is selling customers on a vision of ‘good enough’ productivity software only to turn around and build on a platform that clearly aims to add more features than ‘good enough’. And especially one that will require reluctant IT Pros to install untested or non-preferred browsers into IT corporate landscapes OR buy a solution from the Google Marketplace. Wasn’t this all about not installing bits or spending more money?
The other question to ask Google is when? The promise of the future without a roadmap of when it’s coming leaves customers who want offline scratching their heads and frustrated since they can’t get real work done in the foreseeable future.
Microsoft: “What’s your offline story????”
I actually had a customer once challenge me with that question. My response, “Microsoft Office”. Oh yeah was his response. But it’s more than just our rich client apps, which still outdo any browser based approach on both performance and features. (Ever try to scroll down through a big spreadsheet via Google’s browser app? lag à scroll, lag à scroll. All those calls back to the server to fetch those extra cells can take time.) Our approach for PC, Phone and Browser takes into account synchronous and asynchronous work for everyone.
An internet connection shouldn’t be an ultimatum for people trying to get their work done.
Offline as a robust set of features
In Office 2010, Groove has been renamed as SharePoint Workspace. But it’s more than a renaming as the product now enables a user to take full SharePoint list types, including: Discussion, Announcements, Links, and custom lists offline. Even workflow’s can be taken offline so that every time you sync it will correctly trigger any workflows which are idle and listening to activity.
And the Business Connectivity Services (BCS) allow LOB application data to be pulled offline rounding out a full offline scenario. Combine that with the support for InfoPath forms right inside of Outlook and SharePoint Workspace and you can work with all your data and applications whether you are always, occasionally or almost never connected. It’s all about customer choice. Check out the video on building composite applications with SharePoint if you want to see no-code and offline done right.
Offline at some point becomes Online
A key question for Google will be how their future release will factor in synchronizing changes made while a user is offline. In the current (old) version, they sort of scrapped those changes in preference for changes made by others online. We handle this with a robust set of merging technologies to allow everyone to be on the same page. We clearly differ also in the level of control a user has when sharing any file. If you want to share with others but prescriptively keep their changes down to a specific workbook, sheet, cell (Excel) or particular document, paragraph, sentence (Word) we can do that.
Google on the other is pretty much all or nothing sharing. With their offering you have to ask other users to promise not to mess anything up. Now no matter what you do, you certainly can’t “open a few blank files before you go offline” as they just pulled the plug on that. My recommendation, take a look at Office, Exchange and SharePoint 2010. You won’t have to cross your fingers when you want to go offline that your applications and productivity will follow you. . . .
* I created this chart from various Google user/IT Admin help files.
From President Obama’s 2011 customer service mandate to the World Bank’s Demand for Good Governance initiative, governments around the globe are focused on delivering efficient and responsive service.
One way in which they’re improving their operations is by reinventing the way they share information. By boosting communication and collaboration within and across agencies, governments are reducing duplicative work, making better decisions, and ultimately enhancing citizen service.
As governments strive to improve their service, many are turning to the cloud. And they’re choosing Microsoft Office 365 over Google Apps for Government because it provides a more efficient way to communicate and collaborate. As NBA basketball coach Pat Riley once said: “Efficiency of performance is what wins the game for the team.”
The Office 365 AdvantageSo how does Office 365 help government agencies achieve the highest efficiency? It all comes down to richness of features. Simply put, there’s no match for the communication and collaboration capabilities of Office 365. As Woody Leonhard of Infoworld puts it, “Comparing Office 365 to Google Apps is like comparing the QE II to a sailboat.” While Leonhard says both will get you over the water, I know which boat I’d bet my life on if I were crossing the Atlantic.
With Office 365, government agencies get a communications and collaboration platform they can depend on. Using Lync Online, government agencies can see whether colleagues are immediately available and then quickly arrange ad-hoc videoconferences or instant messaging (IM) chat sessions to discuss pressing issues. They can schedule meetings with just a few people or with a large group. And they can share their computer screens or use virtual whiteboarding to collaborate and illustrate points.
Government agencies can also efficiently collaborate using SharePoint Online. Using SharePoint Team Sites, for example, they can create workspaces that make it possible to store documents in a central location, track and communicate about projects, coordinate deadlines, and collaboratively write and edit documents. They can also use the “check-in, check-out” feature to check out documents as you would in a library. This helps to maintain one version of each document and avoid the frustration of colleagues overriding each other’s edits.
Communication and collaborating with Google Apps is a different story. Using Google Talk, government workers can also only hold one-on-one videoconferences – not so useful when working as a team. What’s more, they don’t have access to screen-sharing or virtual whiteboards. So much for collaborating in real time! True, screen-sharing, whiteboarding, and multi-person videoconferencing are possible with the Google+ social networking service, but Google+ isn’t currently covered by the Google Apps service level agreement.
Even more basic, Google Apps lacks support for “track changes,” a widely used editing feature that’s been available within Office since the release of Word 97. Without the ability to track changes, users have no way of seeing who made which edits. Google Docs also uses a proprietary format that often must be converted to Word or PDF in order to be shared with others. When making this conversion, users may lose important formatting. The same is true when opening Word docs within Google Docs. Headers, footers, tables, images and other parts of the document may get lost or jumbled during the conversion.
Another feature missing from Google Apps is the ability to check documents in and out. This opens up the risk of multiple people making conflicting edits to the same document. Taken together, limitations like these add up to less efficiency. As Tony Bradley of PC World put it, “By comparison, Google Apps' menu bars and features seem austere … Google Apps is more limited in what it allows you to do, both in formatting and in functionality.”
Improving Cross-Agency Decision MakingAmong the government agencies that chose Office 365 to improve the way it shares information is the State of Minnesota. With more than 70 agencies that interact with each other to handle state business, communication and collaboration are paramount. “Most government business involves the sharing of information either internally or with citizens, sometimes in matters of life and death,” says Ed Valencia, OET Deputy Commissioner and Chief Technology Officer for the state. “The speed at which the right people can connect with each other—to solve a problem is vital to providing government service.”
Office 365 has given the state’s 35,000 employees access to a shared platform for communications and collaboration. Employees use Lync Online to quickly locate colleagues and start on-the-fly, video conferencing sessions. And they use SharePoint Online to access project information, share documents and collaborate on project content.
“Whatever the focus—job creation, healthcare, law enforcement, or even our IT team’s recent consolidation, when we can collectively share information and accelerate communications across agencies, we put ourselves in a much better position to reform state government and better serve our state residents,” says Carolyn Parnell, OET Commissioner and Chief Information Officer for the state.
Likewise, the Western Bay of Plenty District Council moved to SharePoint Online to improve the way it shares information across governments. The council, which manages infrastructure and economic development on New Zealand’s East Coast, had been using SharePoint for its corporate intranet, and wanted to extend the solution to BOPLASS, a group of nine councils that share information.
“Each council had its own method of storing internal documents, so emailing files between groups was the only way to exchange materials—and that was tedious,” says Marion Dowd, IT Manager at Western Bay of Plenty District Council.
BOPLASS member councils now use SharePoint Online to store shared documents in one, central location, and the enhanced search features to quickly find and organize the information they need. “SharePoint Online gives us one version of the truth,” says Dowd. “We can upload, edit, and distribute documents without worrying about old versions being sent out by mistake.”
Better Collaboration = Better ServiceBy improving communication and collaboration, both the State of Minnesota and the Western Bay of Plenty District Council are also improving service. Says Dowd, the Western Bay of Plenty District Council’s IT manager: “We didn’t need to look at any other solution. We know that with Microsoft and Office 365, we can easily set up additional, shared sites and get right to work. The increased organization and efficiency internally will only help us better serve our communities.”
Carolyn Parnell, Commissioner and Chief Information Officer for the State of Minnesota, agrees: “We now have what we consider one of the most advanced communication and collaboration ecosystems in the public sector. It is this kind of innovation that is going to allow the State of Minnesota to deliver services more efficiently in the 21st century.”
As the English philosopher John Locke once said: “I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.” If Google’s actions at the recent I/O conference are any indication, its enterprise customers just aren’t a priority.
The Google I/O developer conference is supposed to be the main event that showcases Google’s innovations. But once again, Google showed a lack of innovation and investment in Google Apps for Business at the conference. From Android to Chrome to Google+, the vast majority of company sessions were consumer-focused.
As CIO Journal reporter Rachel King said in her article, “Google Sends Mixed Messages about the Enterprise: “Every so often, Google dips its toes into the enterprise just enough to make CIOs think the company is serious about attracting business customers.” King wrote that Google “put on a good show of talking about catering to workers.” But just after Google executives finished talking about the consumerization of business and pitching Google Compute Engine, the keynote cut away to live video of Sergey Brin wearing a pair of Google Glasses and then to a reenactment of the previous day’s skydiving stunt.
“Every so often, Google dips its toes into the enterprise just enough to make CIOs think the company is serious about attracting business customers.”
- Rachel King, Reporter, CIO Journal
What conclusion are we to draw from this? Simply put: I’m sorry, Google enterprise customers, but you’re not the company’s main focus. As InfoWorld reporter Galen Gruman noted about the Android after the I/O conference: “Certainly, Google has largely ignored the specific needs of business in the last year, and now it seems to be even more focused on the consumer electronics side.”
Short-Shrifting its Business CustomersSo what were Google’s so-called “innovations” for business customers at the I/O conference? Google released a version of its Google Drive service for Apple’s mobile devices. So if you’re using an iPhone, iPad, or iTouch, you can “see” your documents. But that’s about it. You can’t edit documents from the iPad or iPhone in the Google Drive app for iOS. You can’t create documents. Nor can you organize and sort your documents. As Eric Zeman of InformationWeek wrote: “That’s pathetic.” The interesting thing is that the Safari browser can already do all of this, so what’s the point of the announcement?
After another year of innovation, Google also announced that it has made offline editing available for Google Documents in Chrome. Note that it only works with the Chrome browser. So, if you happen to use Internet Explorer or Safari, for example, you’re out of luck. And if you want to edit presentations or spreadsheets offline, consider yourself out of luck, too.
The limitations don’t end there. You can’t insert an image or a drawing when working offline. Nor can you print your document. Even more alarming, when an online collaborator deletes the text you edit while offline, his or her changes will override yours.
The bottom line is that 18 months after de-investing in Gears and leaving customers in the dark, Google announced limited offline capabilities, again! As Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, told Computer World: "Offline access is something that Google should have made a priority and delivered before now. Web access isn't nearly as ubiquitous as some might think and being able to do useful work offline is critical to most business people."
Advertising Über AllesGoogle’s lack of business focus at the I/O conference isn’t anything new. Again and again, Google sends the message that its enterprise customers just aren’t a priority. Notably, when CEO Larry Page issued his one-year State of Google update earlier this year, Google Apps for Business wasn’t even mentioned.
The fact is that Google continues to derive 96 percent of revenue from advertising, and that’s where the company’s focus lies. One can learn a lot simply by observing the company’s actions. As the Huffington Post reported in April: “When he took over as CEO, Page quickly made his top priority clear by moving Google's executive offices into the same building as the team working on Google Plus. Page also tied a portion of employee bonuses to the success of Google Plus."
Google is fixated on using Google+ as a way to compete with Facebook for advertising customers. If you have any doubt, just ask James Whitaker. A former engineering director at Google, Whitaker left the company for Microsoft earlier this year because of Google’s preoccupation with advertising: "The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate,” he wrote in a blog post. “The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus."
Indeed, there’s a large disconnect between what Google promises its business customers and what it delivers. Google can make all the promises it wants. But in the end, it’s the company’s actions that matter.
Imagine if you filled up Wembley Stadium (82K seats) and the Rose Bowl (100K seats) with a totally new audience every day for 100 days straight. You would be on pace to be one of the most successful attractions ever.
Well, today we announced that the Office Web Apps have been used by over 20 million people in the first 100 days. By comparison, The Beatles did not even draw 2 million total attendees in the first three US Tours. (I wasn't even born yet, but I am having fun with some numbers to make a point with something 'big'.)
Rapid Fans
When coupled with SkyDrive's 25GB Storage capacity, it's really no wonder why so many people love using the new products in context of their daily lives for free. In fact, we've received over 25,000 items of customer feedback which have helped shape the continuing evolution of the product.
When you compare this momentum with the 9 million Beta downloads we saw with the release of Office 2010, users are clearly very excited about the new capabilities we've included in our latest software.
The Monkees – Google Plays Off Microsoft's Song Sheet
The Monkeeswere a popular late 60's act (I saw re-runs on MTV as a kid), which were a fabricated group meant to copy the Beatles in hopes of creating similar hysteria. However, turns out they didn't really know how to play their own instruments and might have lip sync'd more than fans realized. They were accused of being 'wanna be's' or imposters. UPDATE Some readers gave feedback that the Monkees had success and did learn to play. True. However, their accolades make them a popular novelty more than contributor to music genre's. The meta point that the Beatles were innovative, were named Top influentials people by TIME magazine of all time, record #1's etc is the point.
In some ways this is amusingly similar to Google Apps which are a set of applications brought together via M&A and told to "hit the road" by a band manager desperate for a second act. I've argued before Google doesn't really know (or care) about the productivity market. The majority of Google's self-proclaimed innovations are actually just 'knock offs' to the Microsoft songs that rule the airwaves.
Maybe Time for the 'It's Not You…It's Me' Talk
Apparently Google has been demonstrating a set of features (acquired from DocVerse) which might allow users to rely entirely on Office for their productivity needs. Such continued public displays of affection for Microsoft Office might make people talk! Dave Girouard, President of Google Enterprise Division once said "We wouldn't ask people to get rid of Microsoft Office and use Google Docs because it is not mature yet." Restated - "Buy my product but don't expect it to entirely meet your needs".
Of course this is a half promise to change and half a 'can't beat them, then join them' reality check by Google. When you see how they copy our UI, create Outlook Add-ins , and license ActiveSync etc, it's clear they are in no way interested in really being an innovator in the productivity space.
It's hard to argue the pattern, and while we are flattered, our customers are much smarter than this. Nine million people downloaded the Office 2010 beta because real innovation creates real demand. Office with Exchange, SharePoint and Lync (on prem or in the cloud) is the best productivity experience. And 'No', Google still does not make Office better.
Security is More Than a Log On
Google also announced 2 factor authentication this week which follows our announcementsfrom earlier this year. But, security has to be a holistic approach, and while I applaud their decision to allow HTTPS and offer ActiveSync PIN enforcement, they still lack a holistic story. Security needs to also include features like automatic password resets, content watermarks, digital signatures, rights management, and granular levels of identity/group management as part of a broader strategy. IT should have the ability to determine which people get to see what information, when they can do it and how they can share. End users should be able to work confidently in a secure and reliable way.
Sleight of Hand – Dissecting the Numbers
They also updated their customer usage figures for Google Apps, "As of today, more than 3 million businesses have gone Google, and over 30 million users within businesses, schools and organizations now depend on our messaging and collaboration tools." After four years in market, this is a huge disappointment. In fact, using Gartner's revenue estimates(Q1 $21M for Google Apps), this would mean that their "Gone Google" marketing hysteria is more 'tempest in a teapot' and some High-school division tells me their average customer is likely about ten users. Gartner estimates GAPE revenue at .3%, yes three tenths of a percent of total Google revenue. This would also validate Forrester's findingsthat Apps are a distant 'also ran' in the workplace. Clint Boulton at eweek is right when he points out just how much harder it will get for them now that Microsoft has launched 2010 and BPOS.
Google Does Have Momentum – The Exits
On a parting note, I did read this week in Der Speigel about some Google momentum where hundreds of thousands of German citizens have opted out of Google Street View given the pending Oct 15th deadline in that country. While it may not be the runaway success they wanted, at least they point to some numbers which appear very real indeed.
Bill Rodgers knew what it took to be a champion. "To be a consistent winner,” he once said, “means preparing not just one day, one month or even one year – but for a lifetime.” It’s that attitude that helped him achieve tremendous success as a marathon runner, culminating in his induction into the National Track & Field Hall of Fame.
With the new Office, Microsoft brings nearly a quarter century of experience developing solutions that help businesses achieve the highest level of productivity. It’s amazing to think how far Office has come since it was first introduced on Aug. 1, 1989. Today, more than 1 billion users rely on Microsoft Office for their productivity needs, and one person buys a copy of Office every second.
Among the reasons for this phenomenal growth: 25 years of championing business productivity. Microsoft continues to build upon its accumulated experience to prepare Office for a lifetime of success.
Introducing the New OfficeThe new Office is the most ambitious release of Office yet. It spans the full family of Office applications, servers, and cloud services. And it comes with a fresh, touch-friendly design that works beautifully on Windows 8 and unlocks modern scenarios in social networking, reading, note-taking, meetings, and communication.
The new Office is full of new tools that transform productivity. Check out this slide show to learn about some of the new features you’re sure to love:
The Distance Grows WiderAs with Bill Rodgers, whose firm commitment to running helped him fly past his competitors, with the new Office, the distance between Microsoft and Google grows even wider. First, Google is heavily focused on advertising, from which it derives 96 percent of its revenue. As a result, it’s been slow to respond to customer needs with Google Apps. As Rodgers said, “If the marathon is a part-time interest, you will only get part-time results.”
Second, compared to Office, which Microsoft has continued to hone and improve over the last 25 years, Google Apps is still incomplete and immature. Simply put, it lacks the comprehensive features required to address a wide range of user needs. To learn more about the differences between Microsoft Office and Google Apps, please see the Why Microsoft website.
The new Office has been getting stellar reviews. Writes Tony Bradley of PC World: “Office 365 is a solid service providing tremendous bang for the buck.”
Don Reisinger of eWeek agrees: “Office remains the most important office productivity suite in the enterprise,” he writes. By comparison, he says, Google Docs “still lacks the power that customers have come to expect from Office. Just try analyzing data in Excel to find out why Google Docs doesn’t hold up. For corporate users, Office is still the natural choice.”
The New Office: No Ordinary UpgradeWhen it comes to business productivity, the new Office is truly a champion. It’s bold, it’s ambitious, and it’s innovative. As Eric Savitz of Forbes put it: “This is no ordinary upgrade.”
General availability of the new Office is planned for the first quarter of 2013. Please stay tuned for more specifics on general availability dates and other Office launch news. In the meantime, if you'd like to give the pre-release version a try, you can visit office.com/preview.
At Microsoft, we know that interactions between people bridge country and corporate borders thousands of times each day, and that for many businesses, transactions occur in-country only. Since business data is an asset which is sensitive to employees, business operations, customers, and partners, we ensure our customers’ data is secure wherever it is in the world. Through our work with governments and organizations, we understand the importance of adhering to a range of international standards, regulations and contractual clauses.
Keeping current regarding the many laws, standards and requirements effecting cross-border data security and data transfer is challenging, and international regulations for data security are often more restrictive than those followed by US-based firms doing business domestically.
With a large, potential scope of considerations for both domestic and cross-border data protection and compliance, what certifications should you be aware of as you begin to leverage cloud productivity tools? Knowing that two standards are particularly important in addressing data transfer for businesses using cloud services, Microsoft became the first, major, cloud productivity service to
Google carries neither distinction for its cloud services.
ISO 27001 CertificationRecognizing its significance to customers as a security benchmark which is also important for data transfers, both cross-border and domestic, Microsoft built Office 365 to adhere to the International Standards Organization’s, (ISO’s), 27000 family of standards. ISO 27001’s broad scope and wide recognition combine to make it a very rigorous certification. The family of standards covers privacy, confidentiality and technical security issues, and addresses established guidelines and general principles for initiating, implementing, maintaining, and improving information security management within an organization.
ISO 27001/27002 outlines hundreds of potential controls and control mechanisms. In addition, ISO 27001/27002 specifies a management system to bring information security under explicit controls. In certifying Office 365 for ISO 27001, Microsoft has implemented a high level of physical, logical, process and management security controls for the cloud suite, which the internationally-recognized ISO verifies independently, each year.
European Union (EU) Model ClausesThe EU Model Clauses help customers certify compliance with the European Commission's Data Protection Directive. Microsoft incorporates the EU Model Clauses into individual agreements that it holds with its Office 365 customers. These clauses require that data transferred internationally meet a high security bar, and that data is safeguarded, even if it resides outside of Europe.
It is important for companies doing business in Europe to have these clauses in place, as European regulators have the option to block use of a service that potentially doesn’t meet the EU's Data Protection Directive, until regulators can determine if the service is compliant. Blocking access to a cloud productivity service that an organization uses daily could be catastrophic. Partly through compliance with the EU Model Clauses, Microsoft Office 365 has a more complete approach to European data protection and security laws than any other cloud services vendor.
US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability ActOffice 365 is compliant with the US-mandated Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Due to this compliance, health organizations using Office 365 can more confidently implement document sharing, and technologies for tools such as paging, IM and video conferencing, while employees access information from any, secure device. At the same time, these organizations can substantially lower their IT operating costs.
US SAS/SSAE AuditThe American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) designed SAS/SSAE as a way to audit and document the design and effectiveness of security control systems. SAS/SSAE includes a review of the organization’s own processes and an auditor’s opinion of how well they are working.
It can be confusing to follow this audit report. Regarding SAS/SSAE, a US firm specializing in regulatory requirements states: “The term ‘system’ and its description can carry a number of meanings and may well be interpreted slightly differently among service organizations having to comply with SSAE 16.” SAS/SSAE doesn’t impose a checklist of security requirements to follow like the ISO 27001 does, and SAS does not point out that the enterprise’s security control system is important to review, as ISO not only points out, but audits.
While Microsoft also supports customers by adhering to the SSAE 16 Type 1 audit of Office 365, Google actively touts an audit report which is not as directly relevant to cloud security as ISO 27001 is, misleading customers to perceive SSAE 16 as being a certification, or a standard, rather than an audit report. SSAE 16 is a list of an organization’s self-stated controls which incorporates how well the organization follows the list. Also, since conformance can vary, parts of an organization may choose to follow a low quality, short list of controls, with a lesser impact on the organization’s overall data security.
The Office 365 Trust CenterFor businesses large and small, I know that
The Office 365 Trust Center describes how Microsoft manages Office 365 data, includes background information on the standards we’ve discussed, and cites additional certifications that Microsoft holds for both Office 365 and its data centers, such as EU Safe Harbor and FISMA. It is an excellent resource for customers in assessing the service’s compliance to standards important to their organization.
If you could choose Office 365 which meets
Or select Google Apps, a service that