Today’s (Cloud) Tip…Express Route

Microsoft and AT&T are working together to deliver a highly-secure and reliable cloud solution that will allow enterprise customers to connect to Microsoft’s public cloud platform using a private network. 

Who is the target customer?

The solution is best suited for enterprises that are looking to extend the use of existing IT investments while also taking advantage of the flexibility and agility offered by cloud resources without having to worry about security/ throughput/availability of the connection to the public cloud. According to industry analyst firm Forrester, 70% of multinational enterprises have already adopted global MPLS (multiprotocol label switching) services, high-performance networks that make it easy to create secure, virtual links between multiple geographic locations. This joint solution will allow them to quickly and easily add a public cloud datacenter that appears as just another site on their existing AT&T network.

What is driving the demand for this type of service?

Businesses are looking to the Cloud to do more with less. With cloud computing resources, they can be more agile and efficient without having to invest and own IT infrastructure. Enterprises continue to cite concerns about security and reliable performance in their decision to adopt cloud computing. Working together, Microsoft and AT&T will address these concerns by enabling enterprise customers to quickly and reliably shift information and applications between their own data centers (private clouds) and the Windows Azure public cloud service using the protective confines and high transmission speeds of a highly-secure virtual private network rather than the public Internet.

Today’s (Cloud) Tip…Check the health of your Office 365 service on the go

Office 365 service administrators can connect to their organization's Office 365 service status from wherever they are with the Office 365 Admin app. The new app enables administrators to view service health information and maintenance status updates from their mobile device. They can also filter information by service subscriptions and configure app data refresh intervals. 

Today’s (Cloud) Tip…Windows Azure Import/Export Service for Moving Large Amounts of Data to Blob Storage

You can use the Windows Azure Import/Export service to transfer large amounts of file data to Windows Azure Blob storage in situations where uploading over the network is prohibitively expensive or not feasible. You can also use the Import/Export service to transfer large quantities of data resident in Blob storage to your on-premises installations in a timely and cost-effective manner.

To transfer a large set of file data into Blob storage, you can send one or more hard drives containing that data to a Windows Azure data center, where your data will be uploaded to your storage account. Similarly, to export data from Blob storage, you can send empty hard drives to a Windows Azure data center, where the Blob data from your storage account will be copied to your hard drives and then returned to you. Before you send in a drive that contains data, you'll encrypt the data on the drive; when the Import/Export service exports your data to send to you, the data will also be encrypted before shipping.

You can create and manage import and export jobs in one of two ways:

• By using the Windows Azure Management Portal.

• By using a REST interface to the service.

See http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/services/storage/import-export-service-for-blob-storage/ for all the details.

Today’s (Cloud) Tip…Calendar and Folder Delegation in OWA

Let's say you're about to go on vacation and you don't want to distract yourself from your fun, so you've decided to turn work email off on your phone and leave your laptop at home for this trip. Even though you're off having a good time, it's still business as usual in the office, and someone needs to check your email and calendar to make sure everything runs smoothly while you're away. This is where delegate access comes in. Whether you need your coworker to check your inbox or your admin to manage your calendar, the ability to give delegate access to your Exchange Online data is important. Historically, the ability to configure delegate access was available only in Outlook. Now, you're able to configure both folder permissions and calendar delegation directly from Outlook Web App in Office 365.  

See http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/09/04/configuring-delegate-access-in-outlook-web-app.aspx for all the details.

Today’s Tip….

This week, we will focus on guided walkthroughs available for Office 365.

Now, the Office 365 mail flow Guided Walkthrough and the Office 365 Outlook Connectivity Guided Walkthrough have been out for a while. The Lync Online Sign-in Guided Walkthrough was recently released.

We've made it easy to allow Office 365 administrators to diagnose Lync sign-in issues for their users. 

To start troubleshooting Lync Online sign-in issues, go to the Lync Online Sign-In Guided Walkthrough @

http://support.microsoft.com/common/survey.aspx?scid=sw;en;3695&showpage=1