SMBNation Fall 2011–Day 2

Today started off again with breakfast in the keynote room. Luckily it was a later started compared to yesterday. The first session by Paul Morimoto on Security best practices was excellent. He spoke about the need to secure remote devices and how many of the products already in place (e.g. Windows) already contain substantial security features. All they need to be is simply enabled.

 

The next session was around building a cloud “practice’ and contained a nice overview of the areas that people should consider as they start implementing cloud products.

 

Later in the day was the technology panel, basically where attendees could ask questions of MVP’s and subject matter experts. These sessions are always well attended and probably something SMBNation should have more of.

 

The day finished with Security MVP Dana Epp talking about, and demonstrating, how to break the credential of many of the standard technologies that people use today including, Word, Excel, Windows and so on. He help the audience understand how to better protect themselves and their customers from attacks.

 

So, only one more day to go and I have 2 presentations to give on Office 365. They are:

 

GS12 – All Aboard Office 365 E3

 

and

 

GS11 – Office 365 + SBS 2011 Essentials

 

wish me luck.

SMBNation Fall 2011–Day 1

After attending a few sessions yesterday (pre-day) the first “official” day of SMBNation Fall 2011 started early with breakfast in the main room. I was surprised to find that I was one of the first to arrive at 6am, but I suppose this is Vegas after all.

 

Arriving early allowed me to have a leisurely breakfast combined with some interesting conversations with other attendees. After the keynote I attended the session by Jeff Middleton which was more a motivation speak than about the MVP Tour or his swing migration product. It was standing room only, which tell you how popular it was.

 

From there I attended a few Microsoft Office 365 sessions which unfortunately contained some incorrect information I believe. I can certainly understand how some of this important information has been fully communicated to all parties within Microsoft, unfortunately it is this kind of information that SBS and Office 365 resellers need to know. Hopefully, I’ll be able to convey the correct information during my presentations on Sunday.

 

Much of the confusion seems to revolve around the Office Integration Module for Office 365 that will plug in to SBS Essentials. Unfortunately, from what I see (and I have no more information that what is publically available), the synch’ing options with any local Active Directory is going to be very limited. It certainly isn’t going to be full single sign on (SSO). I hope to post more about the information soon. I just need to double check what I have found.

 

I also attended a great session by another Aussies (Linus Chang) from Backup Assist. If you haven’t checked out his solutions you really should.

 

My overall impressions so far? The location here at the Rio Hotel is excellent. Most sessions I have attended have been very good but there are a few that I was disappointed with, but that happens. Let’s see what tomorrow brings, but I’m really looking forward to Dana Epp’s session on password cracking. Need to get there early to get a seat I reckon.

The reason why the lights went out

A number of Microsoft services (Hotmail, MSN, Skydrive, Office 365) recently had an outage. Microsoft is now reporting that the issue was due to a failed DNS update. You can read the details here:

 

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/09/20/follow-up-on-the-sept-8-service-outage.aspx

 

The first thing to note is that Microsoft has acknowledged and explained what the issue is. This will hopefully silence the critics claiming a “cover-up” of sorts. The second thing that it illustrates is that even on the Internet there are still critical points of failure (DNS being the case in point here).

 

The service being down was inconvenient, sure, but the reality is that problem was rectified fairly quickly. The major issue is the number of people impacted. That certainly makes the issue a higher profile but the reality is these things happen. Not often, but they do happen. We still suffer the occasional power outage, yet we have learned to live with that. Perhaps we need to understand that moving to the cloud will never mean 100% uptime and there will times (few and far between hopefully) that we won’t be able to access our information stored there.

 

Given that people should understand that, the question is what do they do to prepare for the situation. I can tell you that many people have a torch or candles for when the power goes off but what planning have they done for their IT systems? No matter where IT systems are, I’ve found most people never think they’ll have an issue. They get lulled into a false sense of security because the system is generally so reliable.

 

Let’s rule out technology and simply look at risk. Is there risk? If yes, how do you minimize it? Note, I said minimize not eliminate, because generally you can’t totally eliminate. If you don’t take steps to minimize risk in your business then you’ll suffer the consequences sooner or later. No matter where your technology is you need to, as the boy scouts say, “be prepared”.

CIAOPS SharePoint bootcamp comes to Melbourne

I am proud to announce that the next full day CIAOPS SharePoint bootcamp will be held in Melbourne, VIC. Here are the details:

 

Date: Thursday 27th of October 2011

Time: 8.30am – 5.30pm

Location: St Kilda Road Parkview Hotel, 562 St Kilda Rd Melbourne VIC 3004

Registration and details: http://www.ciaops.com/bootcampmel

 

There will be a limit on the number of attendees and demand is expected to be high. Don’t forget that all attendees also get a 12 months subscription to my SharePoint Guide (www.wssops.com) as well an external USB3 hard disk full of information, files and virtual machine images used during the course.

 

I look forward to seeing you there.

On stage at SMBNation Fall 2011

 

 

If you are planning on attending SMBNation Fall 2011 then I’ll see you there. I also hope that you’ll come to the sessions that I’m presenting on Office 365. They are:

 

GS12 – All Aboard Office 365 E3 (Sunday October 2, 10:20 –11:35)

Robert Crane and Harry Brelsford

Enjoy hands-on tactile takeaways from this combine 100-level and 300-level into Office 365 E3 version. In the first half, Harry will share the step-by-step for becoming a Cloud Essentials Partner and implementing Office 365 E3 in a production environment. Robert will tackle your toughest questions and present advanced topics such as Active Directory integration, federation services, and much more. A can’t miss session!

 

and

 

GS11 – Office 365+SBS 2011 Essentials… (Sunday October 2, 13:00 – 14:15)

Wayne Small and Robert Crane

The combination of SBS 2011 Essentials and Office 365 presents resellers with some unique challenges and opportunities in integrating both onsite and cloud solutions to meet the clients business requirements. Come hear how to integrate both of these for your clients business requirements and learn the tips and tricks from those in the field.

 

If you are attending and would like to catch up please drop me an email (director@ciaops.com) and we’ll make a time to chat.

Office Web Apps coming to Exchange Online

Office Web Apps provides you an online preview of documents created by Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. This is available with SharePoint Online as part of Office 365. Exchange Online will soon be enabling Office Web Apps as well.

 

This is one of the major benefits of a cloud offering like Office 365, new features become available and are automatically rolled out.

 

I’m looking forward to bringing you details of how this works.

Office 365 trial issues

Someone sent me this information about issues when you install a trial version of Office 365 E3 SKU which includes Office Professional Plus (which is also a trial version during this period).

 

Seems to be that when the trial period expires the Office Professional Plus that came with the Office 365 trial SKU goes into “reduced functionality mode” because it doesn’t activate (being a trial license after all). You can use the osaui.exe tool if this happens to re-license the product (one the license is valid):

 

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/word-help/reactivate-subscription-license-1-using-osaui-exe-ha102053194.aspx

 

My general advice to people is that now Office 365 is available on a month by month basis that it really isn’t worth going on a trial, simply buy it. In short do your evaluation of Office 365 before you sign up as converting from a trial version to anything but that trial version can be a little painful sometimes.