Office 365 Newswire: How cozy are RIM, Microsoft? – 2.10.2012

Wow, it’s been a busy week and my 2-day, typical, weekend, looks busier than the 5 days that preceded it.

I think that besides writing this week’s Newswires, my biggest accomplishment was moving my desk. It doesn’t sound like much but the impact has been huge. I don’t even like the new arrangement but its impact has been positive. There is something to the concept of mixing it up from time-to-time…even you don’t think you need it.

My wife thought it would be a good idea to move the desk. I have known her long enough to know that when she has an idea like that, it is best to humor her. Sure enough, when she saw the change she stated, “this won’t do”. I knew before hand it wouldn’t, but I played the hand dealt to me. But, even though I don’t like it and the light creates a significant glare on my monitor, I feel more productive. I think I will leave it as is for a few weeks.

Moving on….

        There are certain events that cause a man to be circumspect…

               Graduating College and starting a job…

                       Getting married…

                                Having kiddos…

                                          Realizing most professional athletes are younger than him…

These events cause a man (and potentially a woman… but I am not a woman, so I do not pretend to know and will use the masculine pronoun) to pause and ponder just what is the true meaning of life?

The event I refer to is my 40th birthday. It is upon me tomorrow morning! I have amused myself with how philosophical I have become.

The average American male lives to be 76 years old. This makes me officially over-the-hill. I figure by the time I’m that age the average for we-American males will be at least 80 years. That leaves me at the apex of this mountain known as life.

The first 40 years have been great. I have no complaints. I’m looking forward to the next 40. Because, as Charles Shultz once said:

“Just remember, once you’re over the hill, you begin to pick up speed”

Sooooo… as I enjoy the celebration of the “death-of-my-youth”. Please enjoy today’s Office 365 Newswire… seriously.

Office 365 news!

• After Office 365 Cloud deal, how cozy are RIM, Microsoft? :: I don’t know about this deal with RIM. I think it was made because it makes sense from the Office 365 side. Why wouldn’t they want to support as many devices as they can? Of course it makes sense for RIM too… if only to slow all the negative momentum of the last couple of years. I disagree completely with the headline’s implication. These two are not cozy.
• Cowen lauds Office 365, sees bookings, profit upside :: I have included this news to point that the bean counters are taking notice of Office 365’s success. Did you know 20% of the Fortune 500 are doing “something” with Office 365?
• Take that UC-Berkeley! Universities begin early adoption of Office 365 :: Ever since Cal-Berkeley went with Google Apps I have felt the need to out all the universities that are adopting Office 365. MSFT has some big wins here… Nebraska, Tulane, New Mexico, UT-San Antonia, and Georgia State. One benefit pointed out in this article is the co-existence features of Office 365. This is a big deal when an organization wants to keep certain information on-premise while taking advantage of the cloud offerings. This points this out while mentioning other reasons why these universities adopted Office 365.
• [INFOGRAPHIC!] What are you looking for in a cloud solution? :: This is a “high-production-value” infographic coming to you straight from MSFT and Wired Magazine. There are four main “points-of-consideration” deemed important by the Wired.com community when they consider a cloud solution. For those of you who like text, this article lists them out in bullet point format. For those of you that like pictures you are in for treat. This is a super-cool infographic.
• Microsoft Office 365: an IT system that delivers :: Did you know Office 365 is the “perfect package for innovation, entrepreneurship, and growth”? Personally, I hadn’t thought of it quite like that but since the UK Telegraph mentions it… I can’t argue against it. In fact, I think they do a great job explaining just “What is Office 365”? They might even have done a better than this guy or these guys. To top it all off, they offer a chance to win a 25 user Office 365 account.

Office 365 tips, tricks & tools (aka The Triple-T section)

• How to manually configure Outlook for Office 365 :: Always good to keep handy. Like, say, for instance… when your desktop goes on the fritz and you need to wipe it and reinstall Windows. Yep, that happened to me last week. So, I went looking for these instructions and decided to include them here for posterity’s sake.
• Insert a hotspot using SharePoint Designer :: I thought image hotspots were “so 1999”. But the author of this article makes the case for using them effectively within SharePoint. I include this article in the Triple-T Section because it is targeted towards power users.
• Going offline with SharePoint Online :: SharePoint Online? SharePoint On-Premise? SharePoint Offline? The differences are more than state-of-mind. While almost everyone these days are rushing to place the valuable information in the cloud so they can access it from anywhere, easily collaborate with others about it, forget where they saved it, etc., etc… There is one man crying out from the wilderness… reminding us that we can’t always be online… and that… sometimes… the Internet fails us. So it is good to know we have some offline scenarios when it comes to SharePoint Online.
• Manage documents and content in SharePoint Server 2010 :: This isn’t SharePoint Online specific. But what it is – solid, nuts and bolts, basics regarding document and content management within SharePoint. It’s like blocking and tackling but nerdy.

Office 365 developer & IT admin items of note

• SharePoint Online and Windows Azure: Developing Secure BCS Connections using WCF Services :: Microsoft evangelist Steve Fox is back with a solid post on his blog. This time he mixes and matches SharePoint Online, Windows Azure, and Business Connectivity Services. I dig this stuff because I’m a bit of a data nerd myself. I love the BCS and what it means to SharePoint solution development. Read this and learn from one of the best.
• SharePoint Online Charting Part 1 (Part 2) :: A (thus far) 2-part series that tackles the problem of building automated reports to replace VBA-enabled, Excel Reports. I’m not convinced this is the best strategy for report delivery within SharePoint but the code is interesting… which is probably the point.
• SharePoint Online Extensibility Jump Start videos :: I believe I have previously linked to a video in this series. Whether I have or whether I haven’t, it will not stop me from linking to one now.
• Plan for your upgrade/migration to Office 365 with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 6.5 :: I’m starting to run into more and more businesses looking to migrate to Office 365. This tool is a big help and covers other cloud-related technologies in addition to Office 365.
• Using SharePoint BCS in the cloud (Part 2) :: More BCS.

Cutting room floor

All good stuff but my mind has started to wonder…

• Exchange ActiveSync client connectivity in Office 365
• Looking at Office 365 Security holistically
• Re: SQL Azure + (Office365 SharePoint)
• Glad to be hybrid: Office 365 flits from cloud to cloud
• Google is painting a big fat target on dropbox

That’s it and that’s all!

Have a great weekend everyone. I know I will.