My Office 365 Deployment Experience (Part 2)

In completion of the registration, they are sent emails regarding their access on Office 365. It includes their user name, temporary password and the portal link on where they could configure more their access on Office 365.

On the portal they should login with their email address (user name) and their temporary password.

On their first login, they will be asked to  change immediately the temporary password to their own password as part of IT security measures.

On the “Old Password” you should type your temporary password that was been stated on the email that you receive before login to the portal.

After login your created password, you may now start to setup your PC to be Office 365 capable.

First we install Microsoft Lync 2010, Click “Install ” to download and install this application to your computer.

Click “Install” to start the installation of Microsoft Lync 2010.

 

Click “Yes” to start the installation. Make sure that no Microsoft Office Applications are open to continue the installation.

After Installation, you may start already the application so it may connect to the Cloud Server.

 

Once the application has already been launch, you may click the “Sign In” button to activate the Lync 2010 account.

 

As you activated your account, it will ask for your user name and password. Your user name is your email address and your password is the one you change a while ago after accessing the portal.

 

After inputting the credentials needed to access and activate the account, you may now use the full feature of Microsoft Lync 2010. Next blog will concentrate more on this application so you may see its new features and how to use it.

Now, let setup our PC to be capable to access other features of Office 365. This should be done to access Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint Online.

Click the “Set up” button to start the installations and configuration updates for Office 365.

Enter you email address and password on the spaces given and click “Sign in” to continue the configurations and setup.

Click “Continue” to start the configuration of your PC to be Office 365 ready. As you may see, its wizard driven so you will not experience errors on setting up your PC. Even the users may do it themselves on their PC’s and specially on their laptops, very convenient on mobile users isn’t it?

After Clicking the “Continue” button, it will automatically setup/configure/update your PC and after that you will see this screen. Wait, why was my Microsoft Outlook was not configured? It ask me to do a manual configuration? As my opinion to that, maybe it assumes that you may have a existing email account and it don’t want to overwrite its configuration. But that’s me, maybe there are some explanation on that issue.

Because the wizard says that it cant be done automatically and it needed to be configured manually, I’ve open my Microsoft Outlook and started to configure the account.

Click “Next” to start the configuration. Make sure that while doing this, you are connected to the internet so it may access the account on the Cloud Server.

After the settings is been downloaded, it will configure outlook automatically. Now, you have already configured your Outlook 2010 to access Exchange Server Online.

That’s concludes the deployment of Office 365 to your PC. Now you can fully utilize the features of this new product from Microsoft.

Microsoft Office 365 Deployment Readiness Tool Beta

This tool provides you analysis on your on-premises environment in preparation for an Office 365 enterprise deployment.  You may download it here

The assessments that the tool could give is:

• Domains
  • Email domain discovery and number of users leveraging each domain
• User Identity and Account Provisioning
  • Statistical information
  • Active Directory schema and forest/domain functional data
  • Trusts extract (checks for multi-forest constraints)
  • Directory Synchronization
    • Pre-requisite checks
    • Attribute assessment
  • Single sign on
    • Attribute assessment
• Exchange Online
  • Statistical information
  • Public folder, public delegates, and proxyaddresses extract
  • 3^rd party and unified messaging proxyaddresses information
• Lync Online
  • Statistical information
• SharePoint Online
  • User object count assessment
• Client and End User Experience
  • Summary of domain joined machines for rich experience/SSO readiness
• Network
  • Port analysis on certain Office 365 endpoints
  • DNS records assessment

My Office 365 Deployment Experience (Part 1)

This morning when I opened my office email, I receive an email form Office 365 that I could already use my Office 365 Beta account. As I clicked the link this displays on my web browser

As per checking on the country selection, Philippines is not yet  available on the list so it could not be selected. I selected Singapore for testing reasons. The “.onmicrosoft.com” shows that Office 365 Beta allows you to be a sub domain in order to be used online.

As per completing the fields, the system will register the new account.

While it is setting up the account, I remember that it has Exchange, Lync, Office and Sharepoint and I wondered how could I configure this? After the Account Setup, this displays on my browser.

Whoa! It setups by itself! No hassles on Server Management but also on Configurations as well. System Administrators can sit back and relax while the system do the setups, how swell is that 😉

After it finishes the setup of the three servers, its time to prepare the admin and the client PC for Office 365 Preparedness.

Click the “Set up now” link before installing because its prepares the PC for Office 365 Experience.

When you finish the installation already, its time to install Microsoft Lync 2010 and configure your Microsoft Office to work with Office 365.

The Microsoft Lync 2010 installation is available on both 32 and 64 bit platform and there is no configuring necessary. After installing the Microsoft Lync 2010, click the “Set up” button located on the bottom of the web page. It prepares your Microsoft Office installation for Office 365. Only Office 2007 and higher are allowed to be updated for Office 365 access.

After all of the applications and configuration has finished you will be directed to the HOME Screen on where you could access your OWA or Outlook Web Access, Office Web Apps and your Sharepoint Team and Web Site.

Trying the parts of the home page and using the Office Web apps, I’ve found out that the documents that been done in the Web Apps is been stored on the Sharepoint Team Site where you could share it with other team members or make it act as your personal file storage.

In order for others to use the cool features of Office 365, we will now add users and how would they access on it.

This is the admin screen on where we could add/remove users, reset passwords, configure Microsoft Lync and Outlook and manage Sharepoint Team and Web Sites.

For adding users, Click the “add new users” link for you to see this screen.

After completing the form, click “Next” to continue.

Assigning permissions will allow you to set if you want to make the current user to have administrative rights and the location will check on any licensing restrictions on using the system.

This allows you to manage on what application will the user may access.  After clicking the “Next” button, it will assign proper licenses to the user.

After it assigns the licenses, it will send the login information to the user by indicating the email for it to be send to.

Click “Create” button to start the process.

There you have it, this is how to add a user to Office 365. It just making a user on email while just having more that email.

The Sharepoint part of Office 365 shows the Typical screen as same as the Sharepoint on deployed on local servers. It is also viewable online.

That’ s all for now.

Future of Business Productivity – Office 365

Happy new year everyone!!! A new year, a new technology to be discussed. The future of productivity, the formerly know BPOS or Business Productivity Office Suite has been changed to Office 365. As a follow up to the Cloud Computing I have blogged before, Office 365 is a office productivity suite in the cloud.

In this discussion, we will be talking about Microsoft Exchange Online, Sharepoint Online, Lync Online, and Office Web Apps Services. We will also discuss how do they differ from the local installed software.  For what I see it’s like having your own office workspace within the cloud.

Office 365 vs BPOS

The initial idea behind BPOS is to make Microsoft Exchange, Sharepoint, Office Communication Center and Office Live Meeting without purchasing too much on software and in-house servers. By means of  collaboration of tools and messaging with this product, Microsoft could already answer the needs on the company email, messaging, calendaring, document sharing, presence, audio and video conferencing for as low as Php 400.00 per user/month.

So what could Office 365 deliver? It is an integration of both BPOS and Office Web Apps.  In the Enterprise Version it also even have a licensed  Office Professional Plus working hand in hand with Office Web Apps to promote document sharing and collaboration. This means that if there are updates on the software available on Office 365, it updates automatically and you also automatically adapt the new functions and services of the said software without the hassle of installing and administering it. It is also targeted to have an educational version of this product for schools and other educational institutions.

IT Productivity

The IT productivity transferred to the cloud, that will happen if you choose the  service based Office 365. By having this service you will have Microsoft Exchange Online, Sharepoint Online, Lync which is also known as Office Communication online. All of the software available with Office 365 were all the latest versions of the product and even there is a new update on those product, it will be updated automatically.

Not only the software updates are the advantage on having this service but also there are other takeaways that you will benefit by using this service. The following are only some of the benefits you may have while using this product.

• Data backup, you don’t have to worry about your Exchange Server because it is back up automatically across different locations but if you want to have an another backup server within your offices, you may pay a little extra for that.
• You may not worry about antiviruses and anti-spam because it is already been managed by Microsoft.
• You will still get the same Outlook experience so no training necessarily for email users.
• Just like your local Exchange Server, you may still use it on other platforms like Windows Mobile, Iphone, Mac, PC’s, Android, Blackberry, etc. It also works on different browsers.
• It supports up to 25GB of email storage. (Just like with Hotmail 😉 )
• You may use Office 365 with  you own domain email.

Sharepoint on the other hand could be used in collaborations of documents within the office. It may also be used as a document library for documents safekeeping and updating calendars to make your team updated all the time.

Lync could be used in office messaging, audio/video conferencing. You may also integrate your exchange server online with it by means of voicemail and presence. Lync Servers could also be integrated with your PBX system in the future.

What most important on the benefits that we may have in using this service is having a big Data Center that is located around the world. Imagine the Geo-Redundancy that we may have by only using this service.

Office 365 Flavors

Office 365 will be available for Small Businesses, Enterprise, Kiosk and Education.

• Office 365 for Small Business

o    Replaces Office Live  Small Business.

o    Only available for organizations within 50 users

o    Doesn’t have most of the features of the enterprise edition

o    No Blackberry Synchronization, Active Directory Federation and Email Archiving.

• Office 365 for Enterprise
  

o    May select options on which office features to use and not to use.

o    Has single sign-in feature, voicemail and Unified Communication.

o    Office 2010 Pro Plus is also an option to this feature.

• Office 365 for Kiosk

o    This is a pay per use feature for Office 365.

• Office 365 for Education

o    This is targeted for rebranding the Live@Edu offering.

Microsoft promises that Office 365 will be up and 99.9% operational so it is expected to be always online 365 days a year (Maybe that is why it is called Office 365 🙂 )

Windows Azure: A Consumer Security Point of View

One of the newest buzz today: Cloud Computing, is starting to rampant enterprise companies making them start learning on how having Software as a Service (SAAS) be beneficial for them. Organizations could create, deploy, manage and distribute their web based applications on their local network or in the internet. But the question is, how secure is this technology? Here, we will discuss the so called “Hot Spots” of how Microsoft answers the security issues of Windows Azure.

Cloud Computing has a lot of irresistible features. From its help on savings on physical hardware, scalability and ease of management, Cloud Computing is really a key player on this level. Even though it has a lot of remarkable features, companies still questions on how it was secured. This makes the turn point of companies on this technology to hang a bit.

How does Azure works?

The Azure platform is divided into three parts:

1.       Windows Azure (Operating System as a Service)

2.       SQL Azure (Cloud Based Data Storage)

3.       .NET Services

The platform could be used as Software as a Service (SAAS) or can be used locally (Software plus Service). Microsoft has invested a lot of hardware for Windows Azure to work and to be accessed over the internet. Software developers could build applications that could run on Azure. The data could be stored in SQL Azure, a cloud database based on SQL Server.

Each instance runs on separate machines using Windows Server 2008 and been manage by a Hypervisor design on Cloud Computing Environment. By this, Azure takes advantage of the technology of virtualization. Software’s could be developed by means of Web Role Instance or worker role instance. Worker Role Instance does not have IIS installed on their VM’s and no incoming connections on network but it can send information outside. The Web Role on the other hand can accept incoming and outgoing HTTP and HTTPS request.

Azure on Security

Microsoft developed Azure with a security in mind; one of the important aspects of security they work on is on verifying the identities of those who request to access it. Microsoft does have a .NET Access Control Service which works with web services and web applications to integrate common identities.

They determine the users by means of Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) a token created by Security Token Services (STS). The STS provide digital information of the user and works like a certificate to user for them to access the cloud. STS validates the signature on the SAML which been sent by the client application such as web browser and create a new token for the application to present to the cloud application.

Microsoft Windows Azure Security Layer

Sensitive assets are protected by more sophisticated way of protection such as multi-factor authentications (Smart Card, Biometrics, and Hardware Tokens). The principle of giving least level of access on user level was also been implemented and followed.

SDL or Secure Development Lifecycle Principle (secure by design, secure by default and security in deployment + communications) was applied by Microsoft for the cloud to ensure security on the online services.

Windows Azure is deployed in Global Foundation Service Data Centers so it enjoys the security provided by GFS. GFS also help the developer to ensure that they develop applications data is secured in the application layer but it does not limit the developer on what data to be encrypted.

SQL Azure on the other had is like managing the SQL Server Locally but on this time the server is deployed into the cloud and is capable on spanning the database into more than one physical system.