Dear Readers:

Starting next week, you’ll be able to read about the future of productivity on the Microsoft Office 365 blog. We have decided to merge the blogs and post our productivity conversations on the Office 365 blog. Why? Because Office 365 is the future of productivity.

Microsoft Office 365 takes the Microsoft Office collaboration and productivity tools that we all use every day and delivers them as a subscription service through the cloud. The productivity benefits of Office 365 have been well documented. Employees can work effectively using high-quality tools wherever they are. IT leaders can spend less time on administration and maintenance, freeing up time for more strategic initiatives. And businesses can lower their overall costs – all with the appropriate layers of security and compliance. What’s more, organizations have the option of moving all or part of their workloads to the cloud – there are no mandates from Microsoft.

As we merge this blog with the Office 365 blog, our goal is continue to help you improve efficiency and drive innovation. The Office 365 blog will deliver the tangible insights, vision, information, and action you need to achieve the highest level of productivity for your employees.

As you transition to the Office 365 blog, we hope you’ll also take advantage of these other resources aimed specifically at enterprise business:

• “Microsoft CIO Network” led by Microsoft CIO, Tony Scott: http://www.microsoft.com/enterprise/cio-network/blog.aspx
• “Viewpoints: A Conversation with IT Leaders”: http://www.microsoft.com/enterprise/blog.aspx
• “Why Microsoft: A Blog about Microsoft’s Strategic and Technical Differentiation”: http://blogs.technet.com/b/whymicrosoft/

And for the latest information about enterprise-focused solutions from Microsoft and its partners, please check out the Microsoft Enterprise web site: www.microsoft.com/enterprise

See you on the Office 365 blog!

The Microsoft Enterprise Productivity Team

Follow us on Twitter (@office365)

Welcome to another round of featured news items from around the web. Each week, we handpick articles for our community related to cloud and enterprise technology. We welcome your suggestions for next week’s round-up— share your links in the comments section or tweet a link to us at @msproductivity.

Rethinking the Desktop, a CIO spearheads a mobile device strategy

Faced with an upgrade to Windows 7, CIO Rick Roy saw an opportunity to launch a mobile device strategy that would save his company money, give employees choice -- and make IT look good in the process. His first order of business was convincing an IT team hardwired for standardization that mobility required a new mind-set. In this SearchCIO.com podcast, Roy, who heads IT strategy at CUNA Mutual Group, describes his meticulous, data-driven approach to crafting a mobile device strategy that will transform the insurance provider's desktop computing environment radically. One important lesson: While the requirements for a mobile device strategy need to be gathered bottom-up, he said, "you need to make those decisions pretty much top-of-the-house."

Enterprise Mobility's Next Phase: Contextual Services 

Forget the mobile operating system wars or the debate about which mobile devices should be the standard. The enterprise mobility discussion needs to shift to the topic of using mobile devices to improve business processes and create contextual services that harness Big Data. In this interview with SearchCIO.com, mobility expert Maribel Lopez, principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research Inc. and founder of market research and strategy consulting firm Lopez Research LLC, delves into these subjects and into the benefits of merging enterprise mobility, cloud and social media strategies.

IM, SharePoint tools will edge out email, CIOs say

Robert Half Technology polled 1,400 CIOs and asked if they think real-time workplace communication tools -- such as instant messaging, SharePoint and Yammer -- will become more or less popular than email among employees. More than half bet on the newcomers. Specifically, 13% of CIOs said the real-time tools will be much more popular, and 41% said somewhat more popular, than traditional e-mail. On the other side of the fence, a minority of email holdouts said the real-time tools will be somewhat less popular (5%) or much less popular (2%) than traditional email. More than one-third (38%) straddled the fence, saying they expect the tools will be equally popular. (1% of respondents didn't know or didn't answer.)

Thoughts from Microsoft CIO Tony Scott

Tony Scott on Business Relationship Management for CIOs

How are successful CIOs managing key internal relationships and helping to align IT with their businesses? What are some prime success factors internal relationship managers need to monitor? Hear about the Business Relationship Management program Microsoft CIO Tony Scott has established based on his experience with these and related questions

Reaching Beyond the Enterprise and Helping to Make the World a Better Place

Why is it important for CIOs and other executives to get behind philanthropic initiatives? What are some of the charitable projects Microsoft is currently involved with, and how can other corporate executives and teams take part in bringing about important change in their communities and the world at large? Hear Microsoft CIO Tony Scott’s point of view on these important issues in this discussion with Microsoft Senior Director of Executive Accounts Sue Hadi.

No longer are information workers confined to the four walls of the office building. The combination of high-speed wireless networks and powerful mobile devices such as laptops, smartphones, and PDAs has made it possible to work from pretty much anywhere. Today, the “office” can be a conference room, a café, a hotel room—or even the front seat of a car.

By 2013, more than one-third of the world’s workforce will be mobile. And by 2014, more than 130 million enterprise customers will be using mobile-cloud based applications. No wonder more than half of all companies—54 percent—cite effective management of remote employees as their biggest concern in managing a mobile workforce. 

As the office extends to an ever wider range of work locations, it’s important for IT administrators to keep their workers productive, while still maintaining the security of their data. Tasks like opening a document on a mobile device, collaborating with team members, or checking a calendar need to be a seamless extension of the tools workers already know to use. At the same time, back-end processes like security and identity management should extend from the core enterprise platform to the mobile workforce without requiring an entirely new infrastructure. 

During the month of September, we’ll be focusing on how the Microsoft productivity platform addresses the needs of an increasingly mobile workforce. We’ll show how to simplify management by integrating all workers into a single, unified system. We’ll also discuss how the productivity platform enables the enterprise to boost employee productivity without compromising security or infrastructure reliability. Finally, we’ll highlight organizations that have found innovative ways to improve the productivity of their mobile workers, while effectively managing security and identity management.

In the meantime, we’d like to hear from you. Is your staff becoming increasingly mobile? What opportunities and challenges does a mobile workforce present for your organization?Please share your experience by leaving a comment here. 

As the rock band Semisonic once sang, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” I’m sad to say this blog post marks a beginning’s end for me. It will be my final blog post as I leave the Microsoft Enterprise Productivity team for another opportunity.

Yet out of this beginning’s end comes a new beginning for this blog itself. Going forward, the Future of Productivity blog will continue under the leadership of the Enterprise Productivity Marketing team.  It will include posts from the team itself, as well as guest posts from executives and experts from both inside and outside Microsoft.

As always, the goal of this blog will be to help you keep your finger on the pulse of productivity transformation in the enterprise. We at Microsoft are committed to helping you find creative ways to boost productivity while at the same time increasing your organization’s bottom line. To do that, this blog will continue to provide you with the tangible insights, vision, information, and action you need to achieve the highest level of productivity for your employees.

As with each of our careers, business productivity is a journey – one that involves many endings and beginnings as “cutting edge technology” continues to redefine itself.  Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be a part of your journey as you strive to make your organization as strong and efficient as it can be. I wish you lots of great endings and beginnings along the way.

Welcome to another round of featured news items from around the web. Each week, we handpick articles for our community related to cloud and enterprise technology. We welcome your suggestions for next week’s round-up— share your links in the comments section or tweet a link to us at @msproductivity.

US Army Can Keep Soliders on Front Lines Connected with Lync

I was excited to learn how the Army believes Lync can benefit its personnel, and I think you’ll find it interesting as well. At the Command and Control Directorate for the U.S. Army’s Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC CD2), a development effort is underway to understand how the Army can use Lync to extend its communication infrastructure to keep soldiers connected to each other, whether they are at the command post or on patrol. Instant communication is critical to soldiers on the front lines. In fact, soldiers rate instant messaging applications as the most important application they use. Adverse conditions, a wide variety of communications equipment, mobile personnel, and bandwidth constraints make communications difficult. Instant messaging helps the army overcome these challenges.

Microsoft Lync Placed in Leader Quadrant in Gartner Unified Communications

The overall UC market has matured and evolved significantly in 2011. The most notable change has been the shift in emphasis from broad UC portfolios toward fuller UC suites. Other important factors influencing the market were the convergence of cloud and on-premises UC functions, the increased role of consumer products and the continued influence of mobility. Microsoft released Lync (an evolution of its OCS product) and enhanced its telephony capabilities. Microsoft now has references that use only Lync for telephony, which is an important milestone. Microsoft also made important UC as a service (UCaaS) advances with the release of Office 365, which includes Lync-Online. Microsoft's pending acquisition of Skype is likely to lead to Skype-integrated Lync offerings.

Taking Lync for a Test Drive 

Volkswagen Group of America (VWGoA) is a company on the move. The company needed a communications solution to help its people stay connected on the go, save on travel, and reduce the company’s carbon footprint: Enter Microsoft® Lync™ 2010. Over the next several months, VWGoA employees will be taking Lync for a spin and sharing their stories here at TestDrivingLync.com.

Phones and Devices Qualified for Microsoft Lync

Microsoft tests and qualifies phones, headsets, webcams, conference room devices, PCs and other devices for Lync under its Compatible Devices Program. This program has 2 levels:

• 'Optimized for' – IP phones, headsets, webcams, PCs, conference room devices and other devices that offer a rich and integrated experience giving customers the power to get the most out of their Lync experience and higher return on investment.
• Other compatible IP phones – IP phones tested to provide interoperability and quality of experience.