Office 365 RDS world changes again

In the long running story that is Office via Office 365 on a Remote Desktop Server (RDS) things have once again changed from October 1, 2014.

If you have not reviewed my last post on this topic then you will find it here:

https://blog.ciaops.com/2014/09/installing-office-365-pro-plus-on-rds.html

in essence what that blog post said was that from September 1 2014 ANY Office 365 plan that included Office Pro Plus was licensed for RDS no matter where it was obtained for. It also detailed how you could now install directly on RDS from the click to run install using the Office Deployment kit.

However, 1 October 2014 brought new SMB plans and the retirement of M and P plans so things have changed again and here’s the summary to bring you up to date.

1. If you have purchased E (Enterprise plans) that include Office Pro Plus via any means you remain licensed to use these on RDS.

2. If you have an existing M or P plan that include Office Pro Plus you remain licensed to use these on RDS UNTIL either October 1 2015 or whenever you elect to upgrade these plans to the new SMB offerings.

3. If you purchase the new SMB Plans after October 1 2014 or migrate to these plans from any existing plan you are NOT licensed to use these for RDS. This is because the version of Office via the SMB plans is no longer Office Pro Plus (i.e it doesn’t includes things like Access any more for example).

The positive with the new SMB plans however is that you can now mix and match with E SKUs. That means that if you do need RDS capability to can purchase and add onto your existing SMB plan an E SKU that includes Office Pro Plus (say the Enterprise stand alone version of Office Pro Plus).

This may mean you have users that are licensed twice for Office, once with their SMB plans and once via the Enterprise SKU that permits RDS capability.

Now the question is if you have say 10 users but only 5 at any time require RDS capability how many additional E SKUs that allow RDS rights for Office would you need to purchase? The answer is that if all 10 need RDS access at any point in time you would need 10 addition Office Pro Plus E SKUs because each license in Office 365 is assigned to an individual user. Thus, for all users to have the rights for RDS they would each need an E Office Pro Plus license assigned to them.

I had this confirmed by Jeremy Chapman from Microsoft where he told me:

Each user accessing the Office 365 ProPlus install via Shared Computer Activation on the RDS box would need an Office 365 ProPlus license. The users unable to sign in would only get viewing rights with a red info bar stating that Office is not activated.

So in summary:

1. The new Office 365 SMB plans are not licensed for RDS

2. While you remain on an older P or M plan you are licensed for RDS no matter where you purchased that license from.

3. You can now mix and match new SMB plans with E plans so you can add a qualifying E SKU that allows RDS to an existing SMB plan if required, however every user that requires RDS needs a suitable E SKU.

It is therefore very important to understand the restrictions of the new SMB plans when it comes to things like RDS. It is likewise very important to match the clients needs to the right Office 365 plan. As I have always recommended, you should always consider the E plans above and beyond the SMB plans because of their flexibility. I understand that SMB plans have a pricing incentive but given their limitations and lack of features I still firmly believe the E plans represent much better value for any business, especially those with an RDS environment.

A rule of thumb that I would suggest you adopt is that if you need/want to use your own server in conjunction with Office 365 (whether on premise or hosted) then you should only consider E plans.

This to me makes things much clearer around Office 365 and RDS as well providing the flexibility if RDS is required. I am sure there will be folks out there who may not appreciate this but to me things are much clearer on this story than they used to be.

Sydney SharePoint Users Group

I have been invited along to the Sydney SharePoint Users Group on Tuesday the 21st of October to speak about OneDrive for Business. here is the session details:

This session will help you not only understand what OneDrive for Business from Office 365 is but the options that are available for IT Professionals to manage it inside their business. You’ll learn about how the product works and what limitations it has along with the best practices around usage and management. Importantly, you’ll learn how to implement OneDrive for Business as an effective collaboration component inside a business.

The meeting commences at 5.30pm and ends by 7.30 pm and is held at:

Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, Level 1, 280 Pitt Street, Sydney

For more information about the Sydney SharePoint Users Group visit the following links:

www.sharepointusers.org.au/sydney/

https://www.facebook.com/SharePoint.Sydney

If you are able to attend come along and say ‘hi’ and hopefully learn a bit about OneDrive for Business.

Why I don’t like the term Trusted Advisor

In a previous review of SMB Nation 2014 I alluded to the fact that I believe many people are struggling with the concept of MSP (Managed service Provider) and how it operates in the new cloud world. I also stated that I don’t believe the MSP mantra being pushed by so many vendors makes sense any more. It has allowed too to become locked into doing things the old way and that is a huge risk in todays technology world.

One of the most common terms you hear in the technology world, especially in the SMB space is ‘trusted advisor’. The claim is that you need to be a ‘trusted advisor’ for your customers and so on. I disagree.

The reason I disagree is that, to me at least, being a ‘trusted advisor’ means being reactive. It means waiting for your customer to come to you and ask about this or that. You know what? By then they have probably almost made up their minds as to whatever they are considering. They are simply running it past you to either see if there are any major oversights they have made or looking for you to do it cheaper. In todays world, being reactive is not something you want to be.

A more appropriate model for an SMB reseller today is the concept of a ‘virtual Chief Information Officer (CIO)’. This means that you you proactively search out solutions for clients, work out what fits and then present it to them, hopefully before they even realise they need it.

Let me give an example. Many resellers come to me and say they are confused by the plethora of Office 365 plans that are available. There are simply too many options to consider. My argument is that for nearly every customer I know of, the Enterprise E3 suite is the best option. Sure, it isn’t the cheapest but it has the most features, most flexibility and how many customers never have need for change over time? Agility is far more important in technology than price.

When I offer this in regards to the E3 plan being superior the next response from the reseller is that it is too expensive and customers will never go for that. Here is the crux of my argument around being a ‘virtual CIO’. You as a reseller need to DEMONSTRATE the value of the E3 plans to the business. You as a reseller need to KNOW what it includes, what options it has the business can use today and what options they will need in the FUTURE. If the customer then elects to go cheaper that is their decision not yours. I would be hard pressed to find someone whom I have shown the value of E3 who wouldn’t consider it. However, for that to be successful means I have to act far more like part of their business by understanding their needs now an into the future.

As a ‘virtual CIO’ you are looking ahead. As a ‘virtual CIO’ you are PART of their business not standing off on the side simply providing comment. It is kind of the difference between being a coach standing on the sidelines and the captain on the field making the plays. Luckily, being a ‘virtual CIO’ allows you to be a captain/coach in my books, while a trusted advisor is simply a coach and we all know that what happens on the field is very different from what seems to happen from the side lines.

I would also suggest that if you have customers then you are already ‘trusted’ for if your weren’t they wouldn’t have hired you. So if you follow the traditional ‘trusted advisor’ model all you are doing is providing advice which really doesn’t add a huge amount of value. Today’s reseller needs to be more involved in the customers business. They need to bring their skills and expertise to bear in a manner that allow them anticipate what the business needs.

I would therefore suggest to you that when you hear the term ‘trusted advisor’ being bandied around by anyone, that they are in fact living in the past. See if what they offer can be translated to being a ‘virtual CIO’. If it can’t, then I’d be suggesting that it doesn’t provide a whole lot of value for your reseller business in the new world of technology.

Returning to my SMB Nation 2014 review, I think that to be successful you need to look for new business models that challenge contemporary ones like being an MSP. If the old models work in the new world, great, but don’t be afraid to challenge them and see if they really do. Those that are not willing to accept what others say ‘works’ and find their own path through education will prosper, the rest will be lead like lambs to the slaughter in my books.

Image courtesy of Janak Dharmasena at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Brisbane Office 365 and Azure training

A little while ago I announced a kickstarter project to get some Office 365 and Azure training happening in Brisbane in November. I am happy to announce that thanks to some very supportive Brisbane people that training is now proceeding.

The confirmed details are thus:

Location

THE SEBEL BRISBANE
95 CHARLOTTE STREET
BRISBANE QLD 4000

Times

Friday 7th of November 2014 – Office 365
Saturday 8th of November 2014 – Azure

Registrations

You can attend either or both days. The cost per day is $375 ex and you can sign up at:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ciaops/product/499878.php

The course will include all meals, course notes, etc

Content

I am now in the process of putting together the content and agenda but I’d love to hear from anyone (attending or not) as to what topics they believe should be included in these courses. Email me directly (director@ciaops.com) with your suggestions.

I look forward to seeing everyone on the day.

Review of Office 365 Nation 2014

Although I am still recovering from the jet lag, my vision has cleared enough now that I can pen my thoughts on Office 365 Nation 2014 recently held in Seattle.

The event was put together by Harry Brelsford and in another way is really SMB Nation 2014, however this time the theme has been ‘rebooted’ to focus on Office 365 and the cloud.

The first thing I must do is thank Harry for the opportunity to conduct four formal and one informal session. You can download the slides from the my formal presentations here:

T106 – Coming to grips with SharePoint

T107 – The Business of Yammer

T108 – Level up with PowerShell for Office 365

T109 – Lync the red headed step child

unfortunately, there are no slides for my informal Azure session as it was mostly demos and actually went for over two hours! Thanks to all who stayed late to listen to my thoughts.

The next thing I need to do is thank everyone who attended my sessions. The first two were quite late at night, which after a long day, I appreciate you coming along and being an enthusiastic and attentive audience. I also appreciate all the great feedback and questions received in all sessions. And I really appreciate that you laughed at my jokes, corny as they were!

One of the high points of the conference for me was the number of people coming up to me in the hallways letting me know that they read my blog and perhaps a particular post I wrote had helped them. Publishing a blog can be lonely at times, sure you get blog comments but it is so fulfilling for me as a content creator to actually have someone say that what I have created has actually helped them face to face. It makes the whole creation process worthwhile and gives me the energy to continue doing the blog regularly and improving the quality and depth of what it contains.

With over two thirds of attendees attending SMB Nation for the first time it was brought home to me how many are still struggling to find their feet in this new cloud world. Everyone in attendance appreciates the cloud is here and that Office 365 is a great option but they are struggling with how to integrate that into a successful and profitable business for themselves.

The biggest reason for this struggle in my option is that fact that most vendors are still pushing the ‘Managed Service Provider’ (MSP) mantra which I believe doesn’t make a great of sense in this cloud-first world for many. It can play a part, but these days it is only a small part in a cloud business. However it seems to me that too many people have become too locked into things only working in that MSP way and from where I sit, the world is now a very different place.

In saying that, I’d really like to see business models and ideas come to the forefront that challenge that traditional notion so much so that I think I’ll post a few articles on business very soon, so stay tuned for that.

In short, I believe the path to success in many ways requires a completely new way of thinking. You don’t have to totally abandon your existing business model but you do need to challenge it. You do need to start thinking outside the box and challenge the conventions to find what works best for your business. This is where most struggle I believe. They are trying to put the round peg of the way they have always done things into the square hole that is cloud services. So to provide more light on that I promise to do some follow up posts focused on business for people.

I think that this conference had a some very high quality speakers and none more so then Tom Moen from Microsoft. I am so glad I attended his sessions and got to meet the man. I learned a lot about technology and presentation techniques from him. That alone made my whole trip worthwhile.

Of course the real value in these conferences is the hallway networking, sitting down with peers over breakfast, a coffee, dinner or a drink. It was fantastic to catch up with old acquaintances and past SMB Nation attendees. However, it was also fantastic to make so many new connections and talk with others whom I had never met before about their business and the challenges of the cloud. This is also where I learnt a lot and I appreciate every one of those interactions.

So in summary, it was a long way to travel but a real benefit for myself. I thoroughly enjoying presenting my sessions and listening to some other outstanding ones. However, most of all I enjoyed the peer to peer networking and the opportunity to be at the kick off for many along a journey to successful cloud consulting.

My hope is that Harry’s event becomes the pivotal one for SMB cloud resellers as it was for SBS resellers all those years ago, because there really isn’t anything I have seen that speaks specifically to the SMB IT reseller in the cloud space now. These are the people that manage technology for the gigantic number of small businesses out there that power the economy. If SMB’s can grow then the economy as a whole grows and everyone benefits. For that to happen SMB IT resellers need to retool their skill portfolio and a focused conference like this provides no better way to achieve that. So if you haven’t jumped on board the Office 365 Nation train, then I’d recommend it is time you did.

Well done Harry. Well done SMB Nation team. Well done everyone who attended. I’m keen to come back next year and I hope I’ll get the nod to speak again.

Some maintenance?

Logged into my Office 365 tenant and was greeted with the above message that I have never seen before.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but we’ve made OneDrive and Sites read-only while we do some maintenance.

Hopefully, this means that they are upgrading something in the back end to give me a whole more features.

I wonder what it could be?

Upgrading an Azure virtual machine

One of the real benefits of using virtualization is the fact that upgrading is generally much easier than with physical machines. a case in point.

In a previous post, I mentioned how Azure now makes available machines that use solid state drives (SSDs). This allows disk access to be much faster, therefore improving the overall performance of the machine.

These new SSD virtual machines are of course more expensive but for the demo and testing purposes I need them for, it makes sense. Now, if I had to perform this type of upgrade on a physical machine it would generally mean buying a new machine and doing a complete rebuild, which as you can appreciate is very time consuming.

Even if I had these machines virtualized on a host machine I ran myself it would mean buying and configuring a new host machine and copying the virtual machine images onto this. That would also take a long time given that virtual machine images can be gigabytes and gigabytes in size.

However, with Azure upgrading my virtual machines to take advantage of the latest features is a breeze. Here’s how.

I firstly login to the Azure management portal at:

http://manage.windowsazure.com

I then locate the Virtual Machines menu option on the left and select it. I then locate the virtual machine I wish to upgrade and select it.

I then select the Configure menu option across the top, which shows me the screen above.

In there you can see that current Virtual Machine Size is A3 (4 cores, 7GB or RAM).

What I do is simply pull this option down and select a new machine that is utilizing SSDs, in this case D2 (2 cores, 7GB memory).

I then select the Save option at the bottom of the screen to update the changes for my machine.

Now if the virtual machine you are upgrading is running you are prompted that it may need to be rebooted to apply the changes. In most cases you want to make these changes with the machine off, which it is in this case, so press OK to apply the changes.

Azure now hums away updating the machine.

and a few moments later it is all done and my machine is now running with SSDs.

You can then return to the main Virtual Machine Console, select the machine and then the Start button at the bottom.

You machine will start spinning up and you can then use it without having to install any software or do further upgrades.

How easy was that? This is the way all hardware upgrades should be and the reason why you should be using virtualization and even more so why you should be using a service like Azure. It removes all the pain from the things that keep you from doing what you want to do when it comes to technology.