The University of California, Merced selected Microsoft Office 365 for their business productivity and E-Mail needs. The full complement of 8500 faculty, students and staff will be migrated in 2013. According to implementor CloudBearing, “After evaluating Office 365 for education versus Google Apps, the UC Merced team indicated in a report that it preferred Office 365 for email, calendaring and collaboration. The campus will be rolling out 25 GB mailboxes for everyone; a modern calendaring system that directly integrates with mobiles devices, Outlook and the Web; SharePoint for document management and file sharing; and Lync which provide enterprise-grade instant messaging, audio/video conferencing and whiteboard capabilities.”
The fact is that businesses and educational institutions are familiar with and trained in Outlook and the Microsoft Office suite, and any perceived gains from embracing alternative platforms is lost when you have no user acceptance of the new platform you have worked so hard for and paid so much to implement. People like the familiar, and managing change is already going to have to involve both technical guidance of how to work collaboratively as well as business process analysis and re-engineering.
Many companies, educational institutions, NGO’s, foundations, businesses and government agencies are worried about compliance.The fact is that legal compliance for businesses including SEC regulations, Sarbanes Oxley are covered. Government agencies in the United States will be pleased to know that the GSA has specified that Office 365 and related Microsoft Cloud products are legally compliant for government agencies. Healthcare organizations and medical research foundations enjoy the benefits of built-in HIPAA compliance. ISO 9000 compliance for up-time rounds off the list with 99.97% up-time guaranteed by a financially backed Service Level Agreement (SLA) which refunds customers in the event of an outage. Microsoft Office 365 is continually backed-up, but the Web and I can assist you with additional backup methods on-site including hybrid on-site off-site co-existence.
When you tell your Information Technology people that you are ready to go to the Cloud, their reaction is one of terror. They are interested in working by waiting around for malfunctions, not providing new usability and change management. The fact is that the maintenance of servers, the licensing of the software, and the technical assistance provided by Microsoft to solve any and all problems can make most of an organization’s IT staffing costs disappear. The cloud solutions typically cost less than the ancillary services. Any IT staff that is needed are functional problem solvers, teachers, advocates, and business engineers. The Functional Engineers must have large project completed with a management-level role before taking on your project. Your project is not the place for your engineer to learn, you need seasoned veterans.
Today, responsible implementation involves Total Quality Management (TQM) practices, which specify the best proven ways to make your implementation work as it should. Accepted project management techniques, metrics, software testing, usability testing, and employee training all serve to make sure the best use is made of your new system. We at the Web and I take care of keeping up with the latest not only in technology but also in the best practices for our industry. We know how to make Microsoft Office 365, Dynamics CRM and related technologies work for your institution. Call us at (646) 853-0573 for a complementary consultation with a knowledgeable professional.
This project is intended to provide a secure intranet environment for the multiple offices of Your Corporation with the features of secure services including zones for document collaboration, E-Mail with Exchange, remote PC access from tablets, and the ability to have multiple users collaborate on the same documents simultaneously. Corporate instant messaging and online meetings are also desired features. In short, an environment should be created on local servers in one office and be usable by the other offices. Security considerations include a secure locked area for servers at least consisting of a lockable server cabinet for access control and removable drives. Removable drives should be consistent in size and type across all servers so that they can be changed without powering down the servers. The parity information on the drives should allow for rebuilding of information on a freshly inserted drive. Two load-balanced web servers with firewalls will serve as application servers. Additionally, a firewall appliance can act as a second level of firewall protection. The firewall appliance should be a Linux-based model with statefull packet inspection, because this is a complementary firewall strategy to that of Windows. This strategy has been successfully used by clients including NYU School of Medicine and our own offices. The servers needed are: Lync Server 2012, Lync Edge Server 2012, SQL Server, Exchange Server 2012, Office Web Apps Server 2012, IIS Web Server (A component of Microsoft Server 2012), and SharePoint Server 2013. Using the most recent products will bring You in line with the upgrades for Office 365 scheduled tentatively for the end of December 2012. Investing in the latest technology has risks involved with using the newest technology including undiscovered performance issues. As an alternative, the earlier versions of the software can be purchased and used. Backup will be relegated to a dedicated appliance that provides continual automated backup, one backup appliance for each server. These appliances can be carried away from the premises if needed just as easily as the removable hard drives.
Martin Low of the Web and I, Inc. is available to serve as the functional lead and project manager, and he is working from his office to select experts for an installation and integration by technical experts in each server type which can take place over two days convenient to Your Company on that weekend Mr. Low will configure SharePoint, oversee technical staff, clean up the contact list for the Exchange Global Address List, and assign security roles to users at Your Company
Following installation, Mr. Low will initiate training operations at the pleasure of Your Company He can initiate training in the main office in the first week and can provide additional training at other offices in person or through web meeting. In person training is recommended, but the wishes of Your Company will prevail.
Your Company has expressed a concern with server maintenance including software and hardware maintenance hours and expenses. Software maintenance can be had through technical experts in the individual server products by remote access or in person locally from an area accessible to Katonah. We recommend using local resources for increased security. Maintenance of the servers from a mechanical standpoint has a few possible approaches. The Web and I is experienced in the sourcing and construction of quality servers brand new from parts. The advantage to this is the lower costs of the servers Your Company needs to purchase. However the Web and I can also purchase the necessary servers from Dell at a discount through Dell Outlet. The advantage of using Dell for critical equipment is that Dell has service plans that guarantee on-site service including any needed parts all included in low-cost annual plans. The Web and I, Inc., despite our ability to make our own computers also chooses to use Dell because of the security our organization needs for the computers which run our mission-critical applications. The Web and I, Inc. represented by Martin Low will do a study of projected expenses for purchase as well as ongoing expenses for maintenance prior to the commencement of the Project. A formalized project management strategy will be used in accordance with best practices.
Implementation Methodology: Project Management
Accountability
There are people who need to be assigned responsibility for actions, decisions, and policies concerning the management of the implementation and governance, all within the scope of their role within the project. In other words, someone puts SharePoint in place; and project management helps this by defining the what, when, why, and where of this implementation.
Sustainability
While preserving the integrity of the platform delivered to the organization, the platform must meet present needs, but also future organizational requirements. These new technological capabilities need to be managed and governed to grow. Project management helps by providing methods so that issues concerning the economic (user requirements in terms of added features or products), social (the ability to enhance and connect people), and environment (the infrastructure can be scaled, for example) are protected and managed.
Resiliency
A SharePoint implementation needs to be robust to survive. All systems must have the ability to provide and maintain an acceptable level of service in the face of faults and challenges to normal operation. Project management provides processes such as configuration management, planning for backup, disaster recovery, monitoring, and performance levels.
Supportability
These technologies need to be looked after. Project management defines the quality-control measures to be enacted by the team that is responsible for the implementation.
As a Project Manager Mr. Low needs to ensure that when describing the four above elements to the Your Company that they understand there is a timeline to put in these technologies. Best practices do not allow for letting the client put together the timeline themselves, because they will start by reasoning that anything they don’t do is easy to do. Designing a platform for mission critical operations cannot be completed in two weeks, for example.
Accountability, supportability, resiliency, and sustainability cannot be assured in a week. Those are continual processes, and to make sure you can apply those means planning through to implementation. The estimated project timeline is one month. Two days for installation of the servers, and one month for ongoing training, quality assurance, contingency planning, and more.
Securing Office Web Apps Server communications by using HTTPS
Office Web Apps Server can communicate with SharePoint 2013, Lync Server 2013, and Exchange Server 2013 by using the HTTPS protocol. In production environments, we strongly recommend that you use HTTPS. You’ll have to have to install an Internet Server certificate that can be assigned to the server that runs Office Web Apps Server (if you are using a single server) or to the load balancer (if you are using multiple servers that run Office Web Apps Server).
With Microsoft server products, properly integrated and implemented, there is no need for expensive Wide Area Network (WAN) solutions, as these server products can be accessed securely over the Internet with 256 bit encryption.
Next Steps
Approval of Project Outline by Your Company
Contract Signing and 10% down payment of consultation budget. (the Web and I, Inc. will sign any confidentiality contracts you may require at this time by authorized signer Martin Low.)
Plan for Procurement Methodology to be completed by the Web and I, Inc.
Approval of Procurement Methodology for hardware by Your Company
Project Budget to be prepared by the Web and I, Inc.
Project Budget to be approved by Your Company
Project Kick-Off Date selected by Your Company
Staff Selection Completed by the Web and I, Inc.
Staff Approval by Your Company
Technology Maintenance Plan to be completed by the Web and I, Inc.
Technology Maintenance Plan to be approved by Your company
Disaster Management and Recovery Plans to be completed by the Web and I, Inc.
Disaster Management and Recovery Plans to be approved by Your Company
Projected Ongoing Expenses to be completed by the Web and I, Inc.
Projected Ongoing Expenses to be approved by Your Company
Project Plan completed by the Web and I, Inc.
Project Plan Approval by Your Company
Business Process Re-Engineering Plan completed by the Web and I, Inc.
Business Process Re-Engineering Plan approved by Your Company
Software Testing, Quality Assessment and Quality Improvement Plan completed by the Web and I, Inc.
Software Testing, Quality Assessment and Quality Improvement Plan approve by Your Company
Regulatory Compliance Plan to be completed by the Web and I, Inc.
Regulatory Compliance Plan to be approved by the Web and I, Inc.
Staff Training Plan to be completed by the Web and I, Inc.
Staff Training Plan approved by Your Company
Payment of 40% of Consultation Budget and 100% of Hardware and Software. Alternatively hardware and software can be ordered by Martin Low directly at Katonah using Your Company payment methods for shipment to Your Company
Purchase of Servers to be shipped directly to Katonah Office.
Installation and Integration on Project Kick-Off Date to take place on two days.
Project Kick-Off Meeting.
Install Windows Server 2012 on all 8 Servers (6 product servers and two load-balanced web app servers).
Recently, University of Nebraska, an institute with over 50,000 students and 18,000 faculty and staff using Lotus Notes, elected to change their mail and productivity software to the cloud-based Office 365 suite. Normally, Office 365 migrations are done manually within Office 365, on a user-by-user basis. However with this large installation, completion time was a key factor, and these thousands of users had to be migrated as quickly as possible with minimal disruption to the users. Having many new contractors on campus completing migrations is neither convenient or cost-effective, and the University’s IT contractors and staff had to come up with another solution.
Fortunately there are a number of tools for bulk migration of Office 365 accounts from various other platforms. Fortunately, Quest Notes Migrator for Exchange and other tools were available that fit the bill. After starting, the University of Nebraska was able to complete the entire migration within the allotted one-month time span. University users reported no down time, and their work was seamless, and their departments did not need to experience an interruption in their business processes. Not all of the mailboxes were migrated, many of the users did start from scratch with their Office 365 mailboxes, but the ones they did convert. There were a few specialized needs that any larger organization had that they were able to meet including optimizing network usage so that no users lost performance during the migration, and having multiple consoles on which the migrations could be performed, along with central monitoring.
The University had some concerns of business continuity and the maintenance of community that made them choose such a rapid deployment timeline. This rapid timeline is even more important for small businesses.
Some organizations have a rich and extensive E-Mail history, and they can be assured that with modern tools and contractors like the Web and I, Inc., they can get their many gigabytes per user of E-Mail migrated to Office 365 without any headaches. That is the focus that we bring to your implementation: letting your organization get on with business without worry about loss of performance or capability. Call us for a seamless implementation no matter how large your organization is by calling us at 646-853-0573 today.
Inspired by Europe’s success in creating integrated faxing from Office 365, the Web and I has helped two local businesses to discard their fax machines in favor of virtualized E-Faxing services.
This service is also cloud based, and the benefits include:
The ability to send faxes from your E-Mail from Outlook or Web Outlook.
The ability to receive faxes in Outlook or Web Outlook.
The ability to route faxes directly to Office 365 Sharepoint 2010 Workspace.
The ability to integrate your Multi-Function Printer and Scanner.
The ability to receive and review or print your faxes anywhere.
The ability to print your documents to any fax machine around you, print your documents to your client’s or vendor’s fax machine in their office!
The ability to receive all fax transmissions receipts in Outlook.
The ability to store all fax transmissions, receipts, and received faxes in a legally compliant archive with disaster management and recovery plans rated at ISO 9000 standards. The archive can only be deleted by Microsoft and the standards employed make the proof of sending and receiving documents available in a manner suitable for presentation as evidence in a court of law.
The ability to add signatures, logos, custom fax cover sheets, and other visual refinements.
Mass faxing capabilities.
The ability to send and receive faxes using the Web and I, Secure Faxing capabilities.
Because we are a boutique firm serving many professionals in diverse fields including healthcare, law, real estate, finance, banking, mortgages, and E-Commerce, we are sensitive to the unique compliance needs you may have. Some businesses are happy just to know that everything is backed up and safe. We provide that. But in addition, we serve and fulfill the following additional compliance standards which may be required by your field:
Health Care Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Standards.
Graham-Leach Bliley Act (GLB).
Sarbanes Oxley (SOX).
Experience
June 23, 2011, first integration of Office 365 in the US by a local law firm, the name of which can be announced subsequent to their own press release on June 27, 2011. Our second client is already in the planning phase for a five-line fax installation July 1, 2011.
Clients in Progress
First United Services
The Current Business Process and their faxing
First United Services, a ten-employee mortgage modification firm in Long Island, New York, has been helping people keep their homes for over a decade. Despite others in the field that lack a good reputation or business practices, First United Services actually succeeds in closing mortgage modifications with lenders and securing more favorable terms for their clients, regardless of circumstances. Their need for document faxing is in the thousands per month. They send many documents to banks that are for official business. Right now, many of the transmission reports are kept on paper folders. Sometimes they get lost. Everyone has to wait on-line to use their beautiful state-of-the-art Multi-Function Printer to send a fax. Scanning capabilities are built-in, but nobody knows how to access any scanned documents other than faxing them somewhere. Their office has just implemented Windows Intune and Microsoft Office 365. In addition to being users of Exchange and Outlook, the employees here rely on their SharePoint 2010 databases to track all client activity. They want to also store all of their documents there and integrate fax services with SharePoint and Outlook. They also want to be able to scan from their Multi-Function Printer to Outlook, Fax, and Office 365 all at the same time.
The Solution
The Web and I has come up with a solution whereby each employee requiring enterprise faxing has their own personal fax number for inbound and outbound faxes. Theses are cloud fax services with a land line number, but the faxes are delivered to and sent from Outlook. Each employee can send and receive 200 fax pages per month for $19.95, with add-on plans to cover any additional need. Employees with lesser page needs per month can pool accounts together and share, much the same way fax machines are shared now. Additional accounts involve no contracts to sign, so lines can be added and taken away at will and can be used for as little as a month. This way, First United Services will only have to pay for volume when they need it, and only for what they need. Faxing from Outlook means that everyone working at First United will just select a bank from their contact lists, attach documents to an email and add any text to the E-mail as needed, and then receive a return receipt. Office 365 provides legally compliant archiving of all of the E-mails, so no matter how many fax lines come and go, the archive of inbound faxes, outbound faxes, and transmission receipts will be there available as evidence in court. They can have full confidence in the knowledge that the Web and I has an attorney-approved compliance solution, and that we have attorney references available for prospective clients to provide proper testimonial for the simplicity, viability, and value of our solution as well as its’ applicability with your individual compliance needs.
To get a solution like this today, please call us at 646-853-0573
Office 365 has been here now since June 18, 2011. Users are finding training needs minimal as they are used to the Microsoft Office Ribbon, even when they are using sophisticated add-on applications such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM! Desktop and online and server services in the future will be combined, but you will need a proper consultant in order to implement and make full use of the sophisticated features while maintaining a prudent and compliant information technology policy.
Microsoft Office 365 is a full suite of business productivity servers ready to run all of the computing needs of your business regardless of size. The product handles your corporate E-Mail, document storage, project management, scheduling, video teleconferencing, audio teleconferencing, PBX, enterprise voicemail, blackberry services, and integration with Microsoft Office, the licenses of which are also included with the plans we recommend. Soon you will be able to add-on accounting and project management as well. With the Web and I we are already implementing our first integrated accounting solution for one of our clients.. You may need only some of these services, and Office 365 has a plan to suit every user. However we recommend the E3 and E1 plans because they include the latest version of Microsoft Office for your desktop. With Dynamics CRM you will have integrated customer relationship management including Sales Management, Marketing Management, Order Management, and Invoice Management.
The Servers (and Services) Available with Office 365
Microsoft Exchange Online
Microsoft Exchange Online is an email, calendar and contacts solution delivered as a cloud service, hosted by Microsoft. The service is based on Microsoft Exchange server and offers 25 GB of email storage per user. In addition, Exchange online offers users personalized calendars and contacts with sharing capability and 99.9% reliability in online secure back-up. Exchange ActiveSync provides mobile connectivity to Exchange services and mobile email applications. With added E-Fax service your users can each have their own fax number and they can even send and receive faxes from their mobile devices or laptops.
Microsoft SharePoint Online
Microsoft SharePoint Online is a collaboration, sharing, and document editing service using internal and external sites. SharePoint is a great center for your corporate Intranet, and you can store and organize your documents, lists, and databases. Databases of increasing complexity are available with Office 365 including integration with Microsoft’s flagship accounting software, Microsoft Dynamics. One of our clients, First United Services, uses Microsoft Dynamics Customer Relationship Management software to handle client communications, document storage, information collaboration, sales management, order management, invoice management and interface with their soon-to-be-implemented Microsoft Dynamics GP Server solution.
Articles Written by the Web and I about SharePoint
Microsoft Lync Online provides communications features including presence information, instant messaging, PC-to-PC audio/video calling and online meetings that can include PC audio, video and web conferencing with application sharing, whiteboards, and other collaboration tools. Lync Online is accessed through the Lync client. Lync Online also supports presence information and click-to-communicate features inside Microsoft Office applications. Currently the Lync components of Office 365 exclude Lync’s Enterprise Voice feature set.
Office Professional Plus
Microsoft Office Professional Plus in Office 365 provides the same client software as the Office Professional Plus product available through Microsoft Volume Licensing.
An Article Written by the Web and I about Microsoft Lync:
Office Professional Plus in Office 365 has month-to-month, per-user licensing. It is an “Always On” service that has 99.98% reliability and can protect your data better and more cheaply than your staff can. Most very small businesses can afford no IT staff or servers at all. Office 365 provides server services that were once the exclusive domain of the Fortune 500 companies, who have been using enterprise class software since the turn of the millennium. If you were to purchase the servers, get a full-time IT person, and buy the licenses from Microsoft to do the same thing for a company of ten employees, you would spend $250,000 for the first year alone, and at least $75,000 each additional year. Now take that cost and compare it to the $3000 – $25,000 for the first year and $3000 – $15,000 for each additional year of service for a company of ten. For a sole proprietor like some of our customers are, you will spend between $300 – $10,000 for the first year and $300 – $1500 per year for additional years. These costs assume all of the installation, implementation, and customization costs. The lowest numbers are for the Microsoft Office 365 E3 plan alone.
Office Web Apps are browser-based versions of Microsoft Excel, Word, Access and PowerPoint that enable viewing and lightweight editing of Office documents in Web browsers while preserving the formatting of the original documents. When you have legacy computers or do not wish to tax the speed of the computer you are using, Microsoft Web apps are a great way to access your documents and databases.
For your E-Mail you will be using Web Outlook or your desktop outlook you already enjoy. For those not familiar with Web Outlook, it is Outlook that can be accessed from any modern web browser with all of the features of Desktop outlook and connected to the same information, so you are never away from home as long as an Internet connection is available.
Enterprise users always have access to the desktop edition, but it can be handy. An example would be when you are without your computer at the client’s office. They ask for a brochure that you do not have with you but is on the corporate shared drive for your department. Your client only has Mac computers, and they do not run Office at all. How do you save the day and impress your client? You can either go on their Mac, log in to Office 365 on the Mac Safari browser, navigate to your corporate shared drive, then open the brochure and print the one you need. For our E-Fax users, this can be even easier, they can retrieve any document in their corporate servers on their Blackberry or Windows 7 Mango phones and send it to any fax machine in the world in seconds. Paper records in the home office can be scanned into the Multi-Function Printer and have it sent directly to Office 365 and into the hands of your employees on the road immediately.
Video teleconferencing was always a very expensive but very desirable feature for remote communication with clients as well as staff on the road or in their homes. With Office 365 each employee or client can be connected with a $20 webcam with integrated microphone. Video and audio teleconferencing is a great way to help the environment and your budget by avoiding travel and still meeting. With Office 365, multiple users can edit the same document simultaneously in multiple locations while on video teleconference.
As an added option, Blackberry services will be available, so that you can run Exchange on Blackberry for secure corporate messaging. Remote access to what you need is a big part of Office 365.
Backups are included in Office 365 for Small Businesses, and the Office 365 for Enterprises comes with ISO compliant archiving features, and both editions come with the ability for people in separate locations to simultaneously have open and work on the same document with a picture in picture video conference. All of this securely on your bonded and trustworthy Microsoft-hosted extranet.
With the high costs of IT personnel needed to baby sit servers, as well as the down time and expensive licensing, cloud hosted server services from Microsoft make sense. These are tools of unprecedented power, offering true ERP solutions for small businesses.
Office 365 is the successor to Office Live, which is our specialty. We are part of an exclusive list of Office Live consultants with Microsoft Bizspark Startup grants who can start you out on Office Live today and upgrade you to Office 365 as soon as it becomes available! Take advantage of most of the features of Office 365 by calling us for Office Live now! Call 646-853-0573 and visit thewebandi.com.
Collaboration and Communication Available With Enterprise: Communicate and collaborate with any device and monitor your employees from anywhere in the world.
SharePoint and Office 365, and how you can collaborate as well as track employee productivity.
Lync and Communication including video teleconferencing. Work from anywhere and always contact your employees.
Enterprise Exchange Online and mobile office working. Your employees can help you from anywhere, no more excuses.
