I’ve been working with Microsoft and Express Data here in Australia to present a number of breakfast session around the new options available in Office 365 from the 2nd of April.
These events will be held in most major capital cities initially (and maybe roll out to other regional areas later on). To register for these breakfast sessions visit:
http://www.ed-marketing.com/microsoft/get-smart/365.html
I’ll be presenting along with Microsoft and Express Data. I have worked hard to ensure that the content is relevant and engaging for attendees and not just a stack of slides. We’ll have interactive discussions, questions and answers, ask the experts, migration scenarios and a whole stack more.
Also, as part of these events I’ll be running an informal get together somewhere in the city the night before. Very much like the Cloud Business Blueprint meetups these will be totally informal get togethers over some dinner and a drink to discuss business, technology or whatever. If you are interested in attending please email me directly via director@ciaops.com and let me know what city you’ll be attending so I can send you the arrangements.
I hope to see you there.
Category: Uncategorized
February Sydney Meetup next week
Our first meetup in January was a blast and exceptionally well attended. Now it’s time to do it again for February.
We have therefore arranged our next Sydney meet up to be held:
Date: Monday 17th February, 2014
Time: from 6.30pm
Location: The Oaks Hotel, Military Road, Neutral Bay in the “Bar & Grill” area
Map: https://goo.gl/maps/Flaaz
This is a completely informal get together with the goal of allowing attendees to network with each other and share interests, contacts, strategies and general information.
We are also happy to welcome anyone along who thinks they get value from attending even if they are not currently a member of the Cloud Business Blueprint yet. Feel free to come along and join in the conversation, no obligation.
If you planning on attending we would ask that you let us know via an email to info@cloudbusinessblueprint.com so we can ensure we have enough seats reserved for you at the table.
Come along and chat to other IT Professionals about how they are successfully running a business focused on the cloud.
Image courtesy of stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
This is BIG news for Office 365 in Australia
Some sharp eyed contacts alerted me today to this post on the Official Australian Partner blog yesterday:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/auspartners/archive/2014/02/05/introducing-more-ways-for-partners-to-resell-office-365-amp-windows-intune-to-smbs.aspx
I knew that Office 365 via Open Licensing was coming but I didn’t know about this:
Microsoft Online Portal
In this scenario, Office 365 is purchased online via the Microsoft Online Portal. This option is subscription based, with the choice of monthly or annual billing. Microsoft resellers will be able to sell via this option by attaching a ‘Partner of Record’ to a customer account.
So, that seems to mean that you can now also buy Office 365 direct from a Microsoft via an online portal! Thus your purchasing options are now:
1. Open licensing
2. Telstra T-Suite portal
3. Microsoft Online Portal
4. Via Retail for Small Business Plans
Personally, this means that the upcoming changes to Office 365 (which will happen on April 2nd, which was announced in the same blog post) are going to have a much GREATER impact for customers and more so resellers I believe here in Australia. A much greater impact.
I’ll try and ferret out some more details and report back when I have some more facts.
I got the Lumia Black Update
I received notification of an update on my Nokia Lumia Windows Phone yesterday so I pressed the button and commenced the upgrade.
It all went seamlessly across the air and after a few reboots I am now running the Lumia Black update. If you want to know the details about what the Black Update contains then I’d point you here:
http://www.wpcentral.com/lumia-black
Once you have the Black Update you can also get some new Nokia apps for the Windows Phone. One of these is Nokia Beamer.
Start by downloading the Nokia Beamer App from the Windows Store. Then visit:
where you’ll see a QR code like so:
Capture that with the Nokia Beamer App on your phone and then you will see the screen of you Windows Phone in your browser like so:
That’s really cool I reckon and for me really handy as it make doing demos of the Windows much, much easier.
If you have a Windows Phone check to see whether you can get the Black Update. If you can, do it! Then check for the additional cool apps you can now get like Nokia Beamer.
Exchange Online message tracking extended to 90 days
Used to be a week, now it is 90 days per this blog post:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2014/02/04/extending-message-trace-to-90-days-in-exchange-online.aspx
Brilliant.
The ever improving world of Office 365.
Next Cloud Business Sydney Meetup
We’ll be doing the next Cloud Business Blueprint Sydney meetup here:
Date: Monday 17th February, 2014
Time: From 6.30pm
Location: The Oaks Hotel, Military Road, Neutral Bay in the “Bar & Grill” area
Map: https://goo.gl/maps/Flaaz
This is a completely informal get together with the goal of allowing attendees to network with each other and share interests, contacts, strategies and general information. We have a lot to discuss this month including a new CEO at Microsoft, changes to Office 365 available in Australia, and more.
We are also happy to welcome anyone along who thinks they get value from attending even if they are not currently a member of the Cloud Business Blueprint yet. Feel free to come along and join in the conversation, no obligation.
If you planning on attending we would ask that you let us know via an email to info@cloudbusinessblueprint.com so we can ensure we have enough seats reserved for you at the table.
Remember, it is totally informal some along and enjoy a good feed and great conversation with a fantastic bunch of people all looking to better their business through the cloud. Everyone who attended last month had a blast!
Image courtesy of stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
[VIDEO] Using a site template with a new site collection in SharePoint Online
I’ve just uploaded a new video to my YouTube channel that shows you how to take a site template from one site collection and use it as the base site in a completely new site collection. You’ll find the video at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeeTPTLYjaU
This is based off an earlier blog post I did on the same topic.
Now using this technique you can create and template a site (including the content if you wish) and use this as the first site in a completely different site collection with SharePoint Online.
Ask us weekly webinar
I am happy to announce that we have scheduled our first Cloud Business Blueprint “Ask Us” webinar for Thursday the 6th of February at 12.30pm Sydney Australia time. This is a follow up from the CIAOPS Virtual Meetings that I ran last year. You can register at:
http://www.cloudbusinessblueprint.com/ask-weekly-webinar
Schedule willing, we plan to offer this webinar on a regular weekly basis, so you’ll be able to use that same URL to register for each weekly event. These may be not the same day every week but certainly we are aiming to run it regularly.
So what’s the “Ask Us” webinar all about? Well, it’s designed to allow you to ask any question you want about the cloud, business or technical it doesn’t matter. I am also happy to take questions in regards to SharePoint as well. There is no set agenda, just turn up at any time during the webinar and ask any question you want and we’ll do our best to answer it. If we can’t answer it during the webinar we’ll aim to get you the answer afterwards. We can also demonstrate anything specific on the screen.
Again, there is no obligation and the webinar is free for anyone to attend. We encourage you to attend to get all those burning cloud questions answered or just attend to see what others are asking.
Of course if you can’t attend this session look out for upcoming webinars at the same URL.
We hope to see you there.
CIAOPS 
