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.

A couple months ago, I noticed how stiff I had become. I was playing around with my son when I realized I could no longer touch my toes. I also discovered I didn’t have the same range of motion when throwing a ball. All these years of sitting at the computer was taking a toll on my back and shoulders.

To improve my flexibility, I decided to implement a daily routine of stretching. I now stretch for 20 minutes every evening, ending my workout with a series of sit-ups. The results have been amazing. In just two months, I’ve dramatically improved my flexibility. More importantly, I feel a lot better. I’ve come to realize that a flexible body = a healthy body. 

As I stretch at night, my mind tends to wander and I started thinking about how the concept of flexibility applies to enterprise business. So much of the work we do at Microsoft is designed to help companies improve their flexibility – to increase their range of motion so they can respond to changing business conditions both swiftly and effectively. And, one of my favorite topics, a hybrid approach to the cloud, is one of the ways companies increase their flexibility. Having the option to keep some workloads on-premises while moving others to the cloud gives businesses the full range of motion they need to address the unique challenges they face.

One company that’s increased its flexibility through a hybrid approach to the cloud is MedcoEnergi Internasional. An integrated energy company with 3,000 employees and operations in seven countries, MedcoEnergi frequently buys and sells smaller companies. The company also has many employees who work in remote locations as well as employees who frequently change roles. In the past, all of this meant the IT team had to spend a lot of extra time managing user accounts. 

The company wanted to keep its current on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 deployment at its headquarters. It also wanted to continue serving employees using its on-premises versions of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Lync Server 2010. Yet it wanted a simpler way to create and manage email accounts for new employees and for people who changes roles within the company. It also wanted to reduce costs and workload for IT administrators by reducing the amount of infrastructure they were required to manage on a daily basis.

After testing Microsoft Exchange Server Online as part of the Microsoft Office 365 Rapid Deployment Program, MedcoEnergi decided to transition some of its remote offices and all future businesses that MedcoEnergi acquires to the hosted service. The company can easily move employee mailboxes between Exchange Online and on-premises Exchange Server deployments when people transfer to new positions in the company or to new office locations.

With a cloud-based email service that complements its current on-premises communications solution, MedcoEnergi has been able to continue leveraging its existing IT investments while reducing administration costs. “At many of our locations, we can eliminate our on-premises servers running Exchange Server altogether, which will greatly reduce administration,” says Cecep Saefudin, Manager-Infrastructure Services, MedcoEnergi Internasional. “In addition, when we acquire new businesses, we can avoid deploying additional hardware in those locations.”

By taking advantage of the hybrid approach to the cloud that Microsoft offers, MedcoEnergi has improved its flexibility. And ultimately, a more flexible company = a healthier company. To learn more about the approach MedcoEnergi Internasional is taking to the cloud, please see the full case study.

Tell us about your company. Is it taking a hybrid approach to the cloud? How is this approach helped to increase your flexibility?

Hoping to get into shape, a friend of mine recently decided to take up running. He had scheduled his first run at a local track over the weekend, and talked about it all day Friday at work. On Monday I asked him how it went.

 “I don’t think running’s for me,” he said, a dejected look on his face. “I used to be able to run a six-minute mile in high school. But now I’m so slow. Can you believe that it took me 11 minutes to run just one mile?  And after that I was too tired to go on!”

“It’s not how fast you run. Or how far – after all you’re not 18 anymore,” I told him. “If you just go at your own pace, you’ll get better in time. And you’ll be healthier and in better overall physical shape.”

My friend’s face lit up. “I know you’re right,” he said. “I can’t compare myself to what I could do in high school. The truth is if I just sit back and do nothing, I’ll never get into shape.”

My friend’s running experience can translate to many business scenarios and serves as an example of how some businesses may want to approach cloud computing. First, they should keep in mind their ultimate goal. And second, they should set their own pace in achieving it. A hybrid approach to the cloud, allows companies to accomplish both. Many companies initially choose to move some workloads to the cloud while keeping others on-premises so they can test the results and move at a pace that works for them.

Take hhpberlin, a fire-safety consultancy for large construction projects around the world. With five office locations in Germany, the company has experienced steady growth. hhpberlin had reduced IT costs by standardizing on a Microsoft environment that includes Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, and Microsoft Lync Server 2010.  Yet the company wanted to examine whether cloud-based services could help it lower costs even further.

Specifically, the company’s goals were to decrease IT costs, improve reliability of the infrastructure, and boost employee productivity, while still getting the most out of its existing on-premises environment. In the end, hhpberlin decided to move some of its workloads to the cloud but to go about it a little at a time.

Says Stefan Truthän, Chief Information Officer at hhpberlin: “Office 365 appeared to be the only hosted services solution that would allow us to transition services to the cloud at our own pace, while still taking advantage of all the great capabilities in Office 2010 and Microsoft server solutions that we already have in production.”

hhpberlin initially tested Microsoft Office 365 on 20 percent of its employees. Concluding that Office 365 would meet its long-term needs, the company will transition some of its Microsoft licenses from traditional volume licenses to an Office 365 subscription service plan that includes Office Professional Plus on the desktop. This arrangement will allow it to move to the cloud on its own schedule.

The company plans to move all of its employees to Exchange Online, while maintaining the benefits it receives from its on-premises SharePoint Server and Lync Server deployments. “The user experience is seamless when employees are working with Exchange Online in conjunction with on-premises solutions like SharePoint Server and Lync Server,” says Truthän. “Employees do not know whether they are in the cloud or not; and they don’t care, as long as it works.”

By keeping sight of its goals and proceeding at its own pace, hhpberlin is achieving concrete results. Truthän expects Office 365 to help the company lower costs by another 36 percent. It also expects Microsoft data centers to provide more robust security and reliability than what it could deliver itself, which will further boost employee productivity.

The company may either gradually or all at once transition its employees to SharePoint Online and Lync Online. Yet no matter how slowly or quickly it moves, IT staff will be able to keep the infrastructure running with little disruption to the day-to-day business.

For more details about hhpberlin’s move to the cloud, please read the full case study.

Also, please share your experience. What are your organization’s goals in moving to the cloud? Are you going at your own pace, and what does that involve?

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.

Could the Cloud Really Replace Offshore Outsourcing?

The cloud is changing much about how IT is done. But has it changed or possibly even eliminated the need for offshore outsourcing? In the short term, the answer is no. That's mostly because the cloud is not yet in full play. However, given the current momentum behind the cloud, change is inevitable and the impact on offshore outsourcing is unavoidable.

Microsoft Forecasts a Hybrid-Cloud Future 

To address that issue, the IT team may decide it needs a way to offer a private cloud aimed at the business, and to manage the public cloud services that departments are using. IT teams using Microsoft Azure, System Center and Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012 will be able to offer public and private clouds to users through a new tool called System Center App Controller, which Microsoft previewed earlier this year as Concero, and announced at its Worldwide Partner Conference in July. Microsoft says the tool is designed to allow a business team to build its own system on a private cloud, scale it out to Azure if it needs more resources, and take it back inhouse without worrying about incompatibilities — and IT can manage all these processes in the same way.

The Cloud Power eBook: Your Guide to the Cloud

The Microsoft Cloud Power eBook will give you a clear-eyed view of your options in the cloud. In this quick read—full of valuable videos, case studies, and white papers—we'll show how you can protect your data and applications in the cloud. And we'll explore how you can move to the cloud on your terms by extending your current infrastructure.

15 Incredibly Useful (and Free) Microsoft Tools for IT Pros 

We've dug through the jungle that is Microsoft Downloads and found 15 of the best free tools you've probably never heard of.

MS Productivity Favorites:

Understanding the Service-Concept in VMM 2010 - from Kristian Nese, follow him on Twitter here: @KristianNese

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