Freelance or Interim PMO & Project Manager

Nov302015 by adminNo Comments

Single Sign On – OneLogin

Adoption Drivers With a goal of becoming a billion dollar in revenue company by 2017, DISYS continues to grow rapidly and expand globally. After implementing several cloud-based enterprise applications such as SalesForce, Ofﬁce 365 and BMC Remedyforce, the company was looking for an identity management solution that was scalable and could accommodate the addition of new systems. “There was one that SalesForce offered, and some other pretty crude upload/download methods that were not automatic,” said Hachwi, the IT infrastructure manager responsible for desktop, network and voice services, as well as systems architecture. Hachwi’s team looked to Netﬂix for guidance. “We're trying to really mirror how Netﬂix enterprise IT operates and push new applications and infrastructure to the cloud,” said Hachwi. “We don't want to maintain a large internal infrastructure with…

Nov122015 by adminNo Comments

Microsoft to open UK datacentre

CRM, Home Page, O365, SharePoint, Strategy

After a year of constant and often surprising announcements from Microsoft, the key news this time is that they are to open a UK data centre next year, hosting Azure and Office 365. The new UK-based datacentre is said to be opening from late 2016, though it sounds like the MoD will begin using it sooner than that. O365 and Azuze UK data centre coming 2016 At his keynote speech at the Future Decoded event in London yesterday, CEO Satya Nadella stated that customers in the UK would at last be able to store data within the country, allaying fears (even I not actual legal impediments) around governance and data protection. In addition to Microsoft Azure and Office 365, the UK datacentre will support Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online sometime afterwards. Microsoft…

Nov92015 by adminNo Comments

Why companies are switching from Google Apps to Office 365

Google Apps for work, Home Page, O365

Microsoft’s increasingly strong Office 365 performance is coming partly at the expense of Google Apps. Motorola’s recent decision to move from an elderly version of Office to Google’s cloud service bucks the more common trend of companies who have been using Google Apps switching to Office 365. It’s not just Microsoft saying that Office 365 is growing (COO Kevin Turner claims that four out of five Fortune 500 companies use the service). Last year, cloud security company Bitglass said traffic analysis gave Google twice the market share of Office 365 among its customers, with 16.3 percent of the market; that went up to 22.8 percent this year as more companies switched to cloud services. However, over the same year, Office 365 grew far faster, from 7.7 percent to 25.2 percent.…

Nov62015 by adminNo Comments

Microsoft empowers business transformation

CRM, Home Page, O365, SharePoint, Strategy

ATLANTA — March 16, 2015 — Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced the availability of new products and services designed to enable people and organizations to put data to work, driving better results for business of all sizes. The announcements were made at Convergence 2015, Microsoft’s annual conference for its business customers. “Businesses are hungry to seize new opportunities using technologies like machine learning and predictive analytics,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “Only when businesses create a culture that empowers everyone to have access to data and insight that drive action will they be positioned to truly transform.” Nadella demonstrated products and services built by Microsoft to empower industries, organizations and individuals to drive insight and action from their data. “Microsoft Azure IoT services combined with Windows 10…

Nov62015 by adminNo Comments

Office 365 E5 enterprise plan – December 1

Home Page, O365

Microsoft's high-end Office 365 E5 SKU for enterprise users -- which company officials are expecting to grow significantly Microsoft's subscription business -- will be available starting December 1, 2015 The Office 365 E5 plan, which Microsoft announced in July, will be available to customers starting December 1. The E5 SKU is listed on the Volume Licensing price list preview which Microsoft published on November 1. The Office 365 E5 SKU will be replacing the current E4 version. The Office 365 E5 SKU will include Skype for Business (Lync) with support for features including Cloud PBX and Meeting Broadcast; new analytics features, like Power BI Pro and Delve Organizational Analytics; and new advanced security features, such as eDiscovery, Customer Lockbox, Data Loss Protection and Safe Attachments. "With E5, we have expanded…

Nov32015 by adminNo Comments

MS Word 2016 real-time co-authoring

Home Page, O365

Now that Office 2016 is officially here, we are giving a special nod to one of our coolest features within the suite—real-time co-authoring. The Word team is honored to debut this new capability in Office 2016 for Windows. We work and live in a world where collaboration can’t always happen in person and sharing ideas and information can’t always wait. In fact, a lot of real-time collaboration went into delivering this very blog post—weaving comments and content together between engineering and marketing teams located in different buildings. At times, multiple people were in the document making changes at the same time. Real-time co-authoring in Word 2016 allows for this and, in fact, has been available since 2013, when we introduced real-time collaboration in Office Online. But with Office 2016, we…

Oct272015 by adminNo Comments

MS OneNote and Office Mix integrate with all major Learning Management Systems

Home Page, O365, Uncategorized

Today, OneNote and Office Mix team up to talk about the work we are doing to integrate with all major Learning Management Systems (LMS) and the benefits this brings educators. We have three key announcements: OneNote and Office Mix are both officially certified to the IMS Global Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard. OneNote Class Notebook LTI is now in General Availability release. OneNote now automatically adds all students enrolled in the LMS course to the course’s OneNote Class Notebook. LMS integration with LTI In June, both Office Mix and OneNote Class Notebook announced LTI support. This means that both apps are easily integrated with all major LMS—including Canvas, Engrade, Blackboard, Haiku, Moodle, Brightspace, EDUonGo, edX, EdCast and Schoology. OneNote Class Notebook allows teachers to launch the OneNote Class Notebook app…

Oct12015 by adminNo Comments

Students benefitting from individual secure, cloud-based document storage

CRM, Home Page, O365

When OFSTED ‘Outstanding’ West Kirby Grammar School wanted to upgrade and integrate its ageing systems to better support the faculty and high achieving student body, it turned to Microsoft. Using Office 365, Skype for Business unified communications, Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012 and powerful Window 8.1 tablets, the teaching and learning experience has been transformed with truly anywhere working. The school can confidently look to the future supported by a secure, cutting-edge platform that delivers unparalleled experience and the scope to develop and grow in line with the school’s success. As one of the top 50 performing schools in the UK, West Kirby Grammar School has a highly driven body of 150 staff and 1,200 students to equip and empower each day. What sets the school apart is…

Sep302015 by adminNo Comments

ExpressRoute for Office 365

CRM, Home Page, O365, Projects, Strategy

Announcing general availability of ExpressRoute for Office 365 Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365 enables organizations to establish a private, managed network connection to Office 365 as an alternative to connecting over the Internet. This direct connection offers customers more predictable network performance, an SLA for guaranteed availability and additional data privacy. As more organizations depend on Office 365 for document collaboration and communications, they will come to depend more and more on the network connectivity they have between their users and Office 365. Today we’re pleased to announce that Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365 is now generally available from these network operators: British Telecom Equinix Tata Communications TeleCity Group Verizon You can read about how Microsoft is using ExpressRoute for Office 365 in the Microsoft IT whitepaper, “Optimizing network performance…

Sep282015 by adminNo Comments

How SAML is used for Single Sign-On (SSO)

Home Page, O365, Strategy

Within SAML, there are profiles that define how assertions, protocols and bindings are combined to satisfy a particular use case. Think of a SAML profile as a template, each profile uses different combination of bindings, protocols and assertions. One of the most used SAML profiles is the Web Browser SSO Profile. The SAML Web SSO Profile provides the ability for users to access multiple applications with a single set of credentials entered once. This is the foundation of federation and also of single sign-on (SSO). Using SAML, users can seamlessly access multiple applications, allowing them to conduct business faster and more efficiently. You may not have realized this, but you use SAML SSO every day. Whether it’s logging into your bank online, using a mobile application, or pretty much anywhere…

Sep282015 by adminNo Comments

SAML — what is it ?

Home Page, O365, Strategy

Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is an XML-based framework used to authorize, authenticate and communicate attributes and privileges of a user. It provides numerous benefits to enterprises, organizations and governments. However, SAML has been widely adopted for three primary reasons: SAML is standardized, secure, and provides an excellent user experience. Three Benefits of Using SAML 1. Standardized The SAML standardized format is designed to interoperate with any system independent of implementation. This enables a more open approach to architecture and identity federation without the interoperability issues associated with vendor-specific approaches. White Paper: Introduction to SAML Learn how SAML is used by enterprise organizations for SSO Download 2. Security In the modern era of computing, security is of the utmost importance when it comes to enterprise applications. SAML is used to…

Sep242015 by adminNo Comments

Outlook 2013 wont send after Windows 10 upgrade – Fix

Home Page, O365

Click on the search icon, search on 'CMD' when you find the application (Command Prompt) run as administrator (i.e. right click it and click run as administrator). You will then see a rectangular black window appear with folder> then type in sfc/scannow and sit back and wait (takes a while to run). You should see a progress '%age' text. It can take 30-45mins. When finished type in exit. Then close outlook, restart Outlook and problem solve. Be careful if you have a lot of emails in the outbox as they will send immediately, so if you have sent them another way , on a phone perhaps, be sure to delete them before you restart outlook.

Sep42015 by adminNo Comments

Why Power BI is the future of Excel

Home Page, O365, Strategy

Excel isn't going away, but it's going to stop accumulating extra tools like barnacles. Instead Power BI Desktop will become the self-service analytics hub. In recent years, some of the most significant improvements to Microsoft Excel haven't been part of the familiar spreadsheet software directly. Instead, the new analysis and visualization tools that turn Excel into a hugely business intelligence (BI) platform arrived as add-ons –available only if you have a separately installed Office ProPlus license (or an Office 365 E3 tenant) -- that live on their tabs in the Excel ribbon, but launch separate apps. Excel formulas and pivot tables might arguably be the most popular programming language in the world and these new tools – Power Query, Power Pivot, Power Map and Power View – are even…

Aug262015 by adminNo Comments

Cut the Cord: How Print From Anywhere Is Changing The Way We Work

Home Page, O365, Strategy

Print drivers. Remember those? Just the words are enough to send a shiver up the spine of nearly any office worker who survived the early days of office printing. Sure, it wasn’t exactly a stone and chisel, but once upon a time, office printing wasn’t very easy or convenient, either. How many times did you find yourself in a position where printing your project was even more difficult or complicated than writing it? Or find that a simple, “print and sign” task was harder than closing the deal to begin with? With Xerox Mobile Print, those days are over. Workers have been released from their printer cord tether, free to work – and print – from anywhere. Xerox Mobile Print combines convenience, options and security (three of our favorite words)…

Aug262015 by adminNo Comments

Could this be the Perfect Office365 implementation

Home Page, O365

Case study Fostering organisation uses Microsoft technology to keep vulnerable children protected Without modern technology, UK Fostering was struggling to work on the move, easily share information securely and support the many carers who help keep some of the UK’s vulnerable children protected. Now with up-to-date cloud services and powerful devices from Microsoft they face no barriers. The team work effectively from any location, armed with information and tools to be immediately responsive so valuable time savings can be spent supporting the carers who make such a difference. (more…)

Aug182015 by adminNo Comments

New features and functionality to Office 365

O365

Microsoft have been bringing lots of new features and functionality to Office 365 over the past year, building upon existing functionality and even creating brand new applications as part of their offering. It’s an exciting time to be using Microsoft technologies with the amount of investment and enhancements that are being continually rolled out. We’ve already covered a few of these new offerings, which you can click on below to find out further information: Office Mix – a powerful PowerPoint add-in allowing more interactive presentations and analytics Sway – a new web-based visual presentation app that takes care of the design for you Delve and Office Graph – the new search functionality to help you find your documents easily Now, we want to have a look at Office 365 Video.…

Aug182015 by adminNo Comments

SharePoint Online customisation – or not !

Home Page, O365, SharePoint

Are You Are Planning A Move To SharePoint Online, If So, Have You Considered Your Customization Strategy? With the release of SharePoint online the way in which you customize your SharePoint implementation has changed. With the back-end being in the Microsoft cloud, the need for back end coding has now diminished. Microsoft are actually doing this to make your implementations more secure, as if there is no customised back end code the chance of your environment breaking Is greatly reduced and your eventual migration path is much easier. SO HOW DO YOU MAKE YOUR SHAREPOINT BESPOKE? Despite what many think Microsoft don’t want everyone to conform to the SharePoint that comes out of the box and recommend trying the three below methods for customization: - Browser based customisation (Using the site settings…

Aug72015 by adminNo Comments

OneDrive – Limiting file sync to domain joined PC’s

Home Page, O365

OneDrive for Business enables users to synchronize their files for offline use across their PCs or Macs. One of the most common requests from IT admins is to have the ability to block sync on unmanaged PCs. Now you can enable file sync to work only on domain-joined PCs (and you can even specify which of your domains you want to allow to sync), thereby blocking file sync on personally owned or unmanaged PCs. Note that using this setting means that you will disable file sync on all Macs as they cannot be domain-joined and managed like PCs. This new control uses PowerShell to limit file sync to a list of permitted domains and, if your organization uses multiple domains, you can select the individual domains from which you allow…

Jul302015 by adminNo Comments

Your Office in the Cloud

Home Page, O365, Uncategorized

Office 365 brings together the power of the familiar Office applications with business class email (powered by Exchange Online), document sharing (powered by SharePoint Online), and instant messaging and video conferencing (powered by Skype for Business Online). Everything works seamlessly together to give you the best productivity experience across your devices – from PCs to smartphones to tablets. Because it is a cloud-based service hosted by Microsoft, you always get the latest technology without the need to upgrade your servers and it comes with virus/malware protection, automatic backup, and 99.9% uptime guarantee with a financially-backed service level agreement. Office Latest version of Office desktop applications licensed as a subscription Per user licensing across 5 devices including PC, Mac, iPad/iPhone and Android Tablet Stream any Office application on a PC while…

Jul302015 by adminNo Comments

Snacking Dining Cooking

Home Page, O365

Imagine if you could access the latest Microsoft desktop suite, while taking advantage of trusted communication and collaboration products to enhance efficiency and reduce cost. Imagine if it was available for a per user per month price, meaning you could pay for what you need, when you need it. With Microsoft Office 365, that possibility becomes a reality. The Office 365 offer helps you take full advantage of the latest technology, whatever the size of your business. What is more, with our ongoing support, you can secure maximum business benefit from your investment. With Microsoft Office 365, you can: Collaborate: Office 365 enables colleagues and business partners to work effectively together, sharing documents and information with ease. This enhances efficiency, and facilitates productive team working. Work remotely: Because it is…