Cloud computing is not some magic pill you can take to make your business instantly successful. As with any business tool, it must be used properly to be of any help to your company. If you have any preconceived notions about the promises of the cloud, you’ll need to adjust your mindset so you can start off on the right foot.

Consider cloud value over costs
When considering the cloud, too many entrepreneurs get hung up on costs. Instead, as a business owner, think about how the cloud impacts your business and saves you money. You must look at the cloud as no different than any other investment you made to grow your organization.

To help you make the proper shift in thinking, ask your IT leaders just how the cloud will benefit your business. They’ll mention how the cloud will provide you value, such as easier team collaboration and the ability for anyone in your organization to work anytime, anywhere.

Think “strategy” before migration
Once you’ve considered the value the cloud provides, you’ll likely come up with goals you’ll want it to accomplish for your business. If you haven’t, do it now, before signing up for the service.

Let’s say you want to gain the productivity benefits of letting your staff work remotely without sacrificing cybersecurity. Therefore, prior to rolling out the cloud in your company, have the specific goal of increasing the use of vetted mobile devices among employees.
Clearly define your cloud goals beforehand, then work with your IT staff to come up with the nuts and bolts of the plan for accomplishing that goal. By having a plan instead of just winging it, you’ll have a better idea of what you want to achieve, have the ability to recognize when you’re getting off-track, and be more prepared to make adjustments in case things don’t go as expected.

Learn to love the quickly evolving nature of the cloud
Compared to other IT tech, the cloud is still relatively new and subject to rapid change. New updates, features, and enhancements are rolled out regularly, so if you want to get the most out of your cloud, it’s best to keep up. Of course, this is a scary idea for many business owners and IT managers alike as fast-paced flux can feel like instability and chaos.

Some cloud services make it easier than ever to keep up with changes. Let’s take Office 365, for example. Adding users and implementing new changes can take mere minutes. Yes, adapting can be frightening, but just remember that Microsoft and your IT managers are in your corner. If you still have some bad memories of long and frustration-filled transition periods after updating your legacy technology, rest assured that updates to cloud-based services nowadays often only require a small learning curve. Most new features are intuitive by nature, making adjustment to these changes painless and problem-free.

One of the best ways to assure your cloud updates go as smoothly as possible is to have a cloud enthusiast who’ll be up to date on the newest features and enhancements and can quickly tell you whether or not an update will benefit your business.

Moving to the cloud is pretty much an all-or-nothing business decision. If you adopt it, the cloud will become an integral part of your business, and you and all of your staff will interact with it on a daily basis. So be prepared for a big transition and a big payoff of higher productivity and connectivity for your entire company.

Are you ready to embrace cloud solutions? Give us a call to learn more about how we can help you migrate to the cloud and realize its full potential for your business.

The cloud is not like some magic beans that’ll sprout sky-high stalks overnight and lead you to a castle full of riches. Don’t be misled by shiny words such as “increased productivity” and “collaboration” — your organization won’t realize these benefits unless everyone actually puts in the work to make the cloud work. If you want to use the cloud successfully, you might have to change your mind about a thing or two before you migrate to the cloud.

Consider cloud value over costs
When considering the cloud, too many entrepreneurs get hung up on costs. Instead, as a business owner, think about how the cloud impacts your business and saves you money. You must look at the cloud as no different than any other investment you made to grow your organization.

To help you make the proper shift in thinking, ask your IT leaders just how the cloud will benefit your business. They’ll mention how the cloud will provide you value, such as easier team collaboration and the ability for anyone in your organization to work anytime, anywhere.

Think “strategy” before migration
Once you’ve considered the value the cloud provides, you’ll likely come up with goals you’ll want it to accomplish for your business. If you haven’t, do it now, before signing up for the service.

Let’s say you want to gain the productivity benefits of letting your staff work remotely without sacrificing cybersecurity. Therefore, prior to rolling out the cloud in your company, have the specific goal of increasing the use of vetted mobile devices among employees.
Clearly define your cloud goals beforehand, then work with your IT staff to come up with the nuts and bolts of the plan for accomplishing that goal. By having a plan instead of just winging it, you’ll have a better idea of what you want to achieve, have the ability to recognize when you’re getting off-track, and be more prepared to make adjustments in case things don’t go as expected.

Learn to love the quickly evolving nature of the cloud
Compared to other IT tech, the cloud is still relatively new and subject to rapid change. New updates, features, and enhancements are rolled out regularly, so if you want to get the most out of your cloud, it’s best to keep up. Of course, this is a scary idea for many business owners and IT managers alike as fast-paced flux can feel like instability and chaos.

Some cloud services make it easier than ever to keep up with changes. Let’s take Office 365, for example. Adding users and implementing new changes can take mere minutes. Yes, adapting can be frightening, but just remember that Microsoft and your IT managers are in your corner. If you still have some bad memories of long and frustration-filled transition periods after updating your legacy technology, rest assured that updates to cloud-based services nowadays often only require a small learning curve. Most new features are intuitive by nature, making adjustment to these changes painless and problem-free.

One of the best ways to assure your cloud updates go as smoothly as possible is to have a cloud enthusiast who’ll be up to date on the newest features and enhancements and can quickly tell you whether or not an update will benefit your business.

Moving to the cloud is pretty much an all-or-nothing business decision. If you adopt it, the cloud will become an integral part of your business, and you and all of your staff will interact with it on a daily basis. So be prepared for a big transition and a big payoff of higher productivity and connectivity for your entire company.

Are you ready to embrace cloud solutions? Give us a call to learn more about how we can help you migrate to the cloud and realize its full potential for your business.

When Microsoft reported its FY19, Q4 earnings last week, the numbers were mostly positive, but as we pointed out, Azure earnings growth has stalled. Productivity and business, which includes Office 365, has also mostly flattened out. But slowing growth is not always as bad as it may seem. In fact, it’s an inevitability that once you start to reach Microsoft’s market maturity, it gets harder to maintain large growth numbers.

That said, AWS launched the first cloud infrastructure service, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud in August, 2006. Microsoft came much later to the cloud, launching Azure in February, 2010, but so were other established companies in Microsoft’s market share rearview. What did it do differently to achieve this success that the companies chasing it — Google, IBM and Oracle — failed to do? It’s a key question.

Let’s look at some numbers

For starters, let’s look at the most numbers for Productivity & Business Processes this year. This category includes all of its commercial and consumer SaaS products including Office 365 commercial and consumer, Dynamics 365, LinkedIn and others. The percentage growth started FY19 at 19% but ended at 14%

When you look at just Office365 commercial earnings growth, it started at 36% and dropped down to 31% by Q4.

Office 365 is a cloud-based productivity suite that is popular with small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). It’s offered in a wide variety of subscription plans, making it even more popular among businesses. To deal with users’ concerns with storing/accessing data within Office 365, Microsoft has released Office Delve.

What is Office Delve?

Office Delve is a cloud-based data visualization tool that helps business users get the most out of their data related to Office 365. This nifty tool allows you to:

• Discover new information – Delve displays information from different sources in Office 365 that you may find useful for what you’re currently working on.
• Discover what you need – Documents you have seen before, or have recently worked on, are highlighted and made easier for you to find, regardless of where they are stored. This makes it less taxing to find work you have been doing in the past, and continue from where you left off.
• Discover new connections – Typing a name in Office 365 will allow you to see what a user is working on, their connections, and even connect with them to build relationships and share information. 

How does it work?

Microsoft has powered Delve with a tool called Graph to provide users with information they’ll likely find useful. Graph maps the relationships between the various Office 365 users in your company, and the content/information related to them.

This “map” is then used by Delve to provide users with what they need, when they need it. Content and information is displayed on a card-based screen, which can be found under the Delve tab in the main Office 365 launch screen.

Aside from content such as profile information, links to documents, or information, users can also see: likes, views, comments, and tags, which brings a deeper social integration into Office 365.

Delve also orders content a number of different ways, including:

• What you’ve recently worked on – shows you content in card-form that you have recently opened or worked on
• Content that has been shared with you – shows the content your colleagues have shared with you
• Content that has been presented to you – shows content that colleagues have presented recently, or content that has been sent to you

While this idea works great on the desktop, many Office 365 users access their systems from their mobile devices. The good news is that Delve is also available to mobile users. On your device, you can browse cards with files, swipe left or right on each card to view files, and even search for colleagues and view files they have shared with you and their recent activity.

Is my data safe with Office Delve?

In Delve, only you can see your documents because there are no changes in permissions. Unauthorized third parties cannot view your activities, like what documents you opened, what emails you sent out and received, or what conversations you had on Skype for Business. Other people can see that you edited a document, but only if they have access to that same file.

If you are looking to learn more about Delve, contact us today.

More and more small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are relying on Microsoft’s Office 365 as their productivity suite of choice. When this software solution was released years ago, the developers mentioned that they see Office 365 as the ideal tool to help colleagues become more productive, collaborate more efficiently, and get work done. Bringing all these elements together is Microsoft’s Office Delve.

What is Office Delve?

Office Delve is a cloud-based data visualization tool that helps business users get the most out of their data related to Office 365. This nifty tool allows you to:

• Discover new information – Delve displays information from different sources in Office 365 that you may find useful for what you’re currently working on.
• Discover what you need – Documents you have seen before, or have recently worked on, are highlighted and made easier for you to find, regardless of where they are stored. This makes it less taxing to find work you have been doing in the past, and continue from where you left off.
• Discover new connections – Typing a name in Office 365 will allow you to see what a user is working on, their connections, and even connect with them to build relationships and share information. 

How does it work?

Microsoft has powered Delve with a tool called Graph to provide users with information they’ll likely find useful. Graph maps the relationships between the various Office 365 users in your company, and the content/information related to them.

This “map” is then used by Delve to provide users with what they need, when they need it. Content and information is displayed on a card-based screen, which can be found under the Delve tab in the main Office 365 launch screen.

Aside from content such as profile information, links to documents, or information, users can also see: likes, views, comments, and tags, which brings a deeper social integration into Office 365.

Delve also orders content a number of different ways, including:

• What you’ve recently worked on – shows you content in card-form that you have recently opened or worked on
• Content that has been shared with you – shows the content your colleagues have shared with you
• Content that has been presented to you – shows content that colleagues have presented recently, or content that has been sent to you

While this idea works great on the desktop, many Office 365 users access their systems from their mobile devices. The good news is that Delve is also available to mobile users. On your device, you can browse cards with files, swipe left or right on each card to view files, and even search for colleagues and view files they have shared with you and their recent activity.

Is my data safe with Office Delve?

In Delve, only you can see your documents because there are no changes in permissions. Unauthorized third parties cannot view your activities, like what documents you opened, what emails you sent out and received, or what conversations you had on Skype for Business. Other people can see that you edited a document, but only if they have access to that same file.

If you are looking to learn more about Delve, contact us today.

Microsoft Office 365 is constantly gaining popularity with small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). This means the amount of data created by Office 365 is growing, posing some challenges in tracking connections and information. This is where the Office Delve feature comes in handy.

What is Office Delve?

Office Delve is a cloud-based data visualization tool that helps business users get the most out of their data related to Office 365. This nifty tool allows you to:

• Discover new information – Delve displays information from different sources in Office 365 that you may find useful for what you’re currently working on.
• Discover what you need – Documents you have seen before, or have recently worked on, are highlighted and made easier for you to find, regardless of where they are stored. This makes it less taxing to find work you have been doing in the past, and continue from where you left off.
• Discover new connections – Typing a name in Office 365 will allow you to see what a user is working on, their connections, and even connect with them to build relationships and share information. 

How does it work?

Microsoft has powered Delve with a tool called Graph to provide users with information they’ll likely find useful. Graph maps the relationships between the various Office 365 users in your company, and the content/information related to them.

This “map” is then used by Delve to provide users with what they need, when they need it. Content and information is displayed on a card-based screen, which can be found under the Delve tab in the main Office 365 launch screen.

Aside from content such as profile information, links to documents, or information, users can also see: likes, views, comments, and tags, which brings a deeper social integration into Office 365.

Delve also orders content a number of different ways, including:

• What you’ve recently worked on – shows you content in card-form that you have recently opened or worked on
• Content that has been shared with you – shows the content your colleagues have shared with you
• Content that has been presented to you – shows content that colleagues have presented recently, or content that has been sent to you

While this idea works great on the desktop, many Office 365 users access their systems from their mobile devices. The good news is that Delve is also available to mobile users. On your device, you can browse cards with files, swipe left or right on each card to view files, and even search for colleagues and view files they have shared with you and their recent activity.

Is my data safe with Office Delve?

In Delve, only you can see your documents because there are no changes in permissions. Unauthorized third parties cannot view your activities, like what documents you opened, what emails you sent out and received, or what conversations you had on Skype for Business. Other people can see that you edited a document, but only if they have access to that same file.

If you are looking to learn more about Delve, contact us today.

You’ve probably purchased Office 365 to be more productive, but things haven’t turned out well. Don’t feel bad since it’s not too late; here’s what you can do.

Get the staff aboard

To maximize your company’s productivity with Office 365, make sure that every employee with a computer uses it. While this may be easier said than done, you can easily promote the service by encouraging the officers of your company to use it first. When your executives, managers, and top employees use Office 365, others will be persuaded to do the same.  

Train employees

If your employees don’t know how to use Office 365, they won’t be productive, and the cloud service becomes a wasted investment. This is why training is vital. Teach your staff the ins and outs of the platform so they can take full advantage of it. 

One way to train your staff is to make or assemble short training videos. These are easy to digest and will be remembered by employees. They can be viewed over and over again and used anytime. This saves management the trouble of training people. 

Utilize core tools

When you first used Office 365, what did you like about it? You were probably sold on the idea that it increases staff productivity since it allows employees to work and collaborate anywhere. If you’re not utilizing this service for that purpose, now is the perfect time to do so. 

Some of the tools that increase productivity are OneDrive for Business (OD4B), SharePoint, and Skype for Business. OD4B and SharePoint allow employees to upload and save documents to a virtual drive, share that document with another group or user, and edit it at the same time. This gives everyone the ability to access that document and work wherever they want. 

Because it is a flexible communication channel, Skype for Business also enhances productivity since employees, colleagues, and customers can communicate easily. From online meetings to conference calls, video calls to instant messaging, you have a wealth of options for instant communication. 

Be more secure

Not only can a security breach cost you money, it can also destroy your business. While Office 365 already has built-in security with Azure Active Directory, it’s always wise to be cautious of the files you add and share on the service. If you upload files with sensitive company information to the platform, make sure you control them.   

These four productivity tips can help your business grow. If you’d like to learn more, or need additional training on Office 365, give us a call. We are happy to help you!

Office 365 can boost your company’s productivity in many ways, but a lot of people don’t know how to utilize this service fully. Here are the things you can do to be more productive and make the most of Office 365.

Get the staff aboard

To maximize your company’s productivity with Office 365, make sure that every employee with a computer uses it. While this may be easier said than done, you can easily promote the service by encouraging the officers of your company to use it first. When your executives, managers, and top employees use Office 365, others will be persuaded to do the same.  

Train employees

If your employees don’t know how to use Office 365, they won’t be productive, and the cloud service becomes a wasted investment. This is why training is vital. Teach your staff the ins and outs of the platform so they can take full advantage of it. 

One way to train your staff is to make or assemble short training videos. These are easy to digest and will be remembered by employees. They can be viewed over and over again and used anytime. This saves management the trouble of training people. 

Utilize core tools

When you first used Office 365, what did you like about it? You were probably sold on the idea that it increases staff productivity since it allows employees to work and collaborate anywhere. If you’re not utilizing this service for that purpose, now is the perfect time to do so. 

Some of the tools that increase productivity are OneDrive for Business (OD4B), SharePoint, and Skype for Business. OD4B and SharePoint allow employees to upload and save documents to a virtual drive, share that document with another group or user, and edit it at the same time. This gives everyone the ability to access that document and work wherever they want. 

Because it is a flexible communication channel, Skype for Business also enhances productivity since employees, colleagues, and customers can communicate easily. From online meetings to conference calls, video calls to instant messaging, you have a wealth of options for instant communication. 

Be more secure

Not only can a security breach cost you money, it can also destroy your business. While Office 365 already has built-in security with Azure Active Directory, it’s always wise to be cautious of the files you add and share on the service. If you upload files with sensitive company information to the platform, make sure you control them.   

These four productivity tips can help your business grow. If you’d like to learn more, or need additional training on Office 365, give us a call. We are happy to help you!

With Office 365, your business can gain a lot, but you won’t benefit from it if you don’t know how to use this service. Do you want your employees to be more productive? You can’t go wrong if you follow these simple steps to boost your business.

Get the staff aboard

To maximize your company’s productivity with Office 365, make sure that every employee with a computer uses it. While this may be easier said than done, you can easily promote the service by encouraging the officers of your company to use it first. When your executives, managers, and top employees use Office 365, others will be persuaded to do the same.  

Train employees

If your employees don’t know how to use Office 365, they won’t be productive, and the cloud service becomes a wasted investment. This is why training is vital. Teach your staff the ins and outs of the platform so they can take full advantage of it. 

One way to train your staff is to make or assemble short training videos. These are easy to digest and will be remembered by employees. They can be viewed over and over again and used anytime. This saves management the trouble of training people. 

Utilize core tools

When you first used Office 365, what did you like about it? You were probably sold on the idea that it increases staff productivity since it allows employees to work and collaborate anywhere. If you’re not utilizing this service for that purpose, now is the perfect time to do so. 

Some of the tools that increase productivity are OneDrive for Business (OD4B), SharePoint, and Skype for Business. OD4B and SharePoint allow employees to upload and save documents to a virtual drive, share that document with another group or user, and edit it at the same time. This gives everyone the ability to access that document and work wherever they want. 

Because it is a flexible communication channel, Skype for Business also enhances productivity since employees, colleagues, and customers can communicate easily. From online meetings to conference calls, video calls to instant messaging, you have a wealth of options for instant communication. 

Be more secure

Not only can a security breach cost you money, it can also destroy your business. While Office 365 already has built-in security with Azure Active Directory, it’s always wise to be cautious of the files you add and share on the service. If you upload files with sensitive company information to the platform, make sure you control them.   

These four productivity tips can help your business grow. If you’d like to learn more, or need additional training on Office 365, give us a call. We are happy to help you!

Microsoft today announced that is first data center regions in the Middle East are now online. The data centers are located in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and will offer local access to the usual suite of services, including Azure’s cloud computing services and Office 365. Support for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft’s Power Platform will arrive later this year.

“In our experience, local datacenter infrastructure supports and stimulates economic
development for both customers and partners alike, enabling companies, governments and regulated industries to realize the benefits of the cloud for innovation and new projects, as well as bolstering the technology ecosystem that supports these projects,” Microsoft’s corporate VP Azure Global writes in today’s announcement. “We anticipate the cloud services delivered from UAE to have a positive impact on job creation, entrepreneurship and economic growth across the region.”

The company first announced these new regions last March. Back in 2017, Microsoft’s cloud rival, Amazon’s AWS, said it would offer a region in Bahrain in early 2019. This region is not online yet, but is still listed as ‘coming soon‘ on the service’s infrastructure map. Google currently has no data center presence in the Middle East and hasn’t announced any plans to change this.

Arranging meetings that work with everyone’s schedules is a pain — especially if participants don’t work in your office. A calendar that is easy to share publicly simplifies everything from scheduling calls with clients to quarterly meetings with business partners. Here’s how you can achieve that with Office 365.

Share an Office 365 calendar with specific people

Click the Share button from the Home menu along the top of your Office 365 calendar. This will open an email window where you can enter the addresses of people you want to see your calendar.

From that window, you can limit how much of your calendar they see by choosing from Availability Only, Limited Details, or Full Details. The latter two will show recipients the meeting names and participants of events on your calendar, whereas Availability Only will simply display scheduled events as Busy. After you’ve sent the invitation, recipients receive an email with a link to view your calendar in a web browser.

Make an Office 365 calendar public

If you’d prefer to have a link that you can share in a variety of channels whenever you’d like, click the Publish Online button from the Home menu along the top of your Office 365 calendar. From the dropdown menu, first click Publish This Calendar, then Configure This Published Calendar. This will create a link that you can give to collaborators outside your organization. As long as you don’t change your calendar’s visibility, they’ll be able to open that URL and view your availability.

Share your calendar so others can manage it

Users who have administrative control over their Office 365 calendar can set up special sharing settings that allow someone else to send and respond to invitations. From the Account Settings window, click on the Delegate Access button. This window lets you add or remove delegators and configure how much control they have over your calendar.

Even something as simple as sharing your calendar outside your organization has the potential to increase office productivity and efficiency. If you have questions or concerns about managing various aspects of Office 365, get in touch with us today.

Office 365 receives updates so often that they’re hard to track. But the software suite’s basic calendar functions will always be among the most popular. If you’d like to let people outside of your organization see your calendar, all it takes is a few clicks.

Share an Office 365 calendar with specific people

Click the Share button from the Home menu along the top of your Office 365 calendar. This will open an email window where you can enter the addresses of people you want to see your calendar.

From that window, you can limit how much of your calendar they see by choosing from Availability Only, Limited Details, or Full Details. The latter two will show recipients the meeting names and participants of events on your calendar, whereas Availability Only will simply display scheduled events as Busy. After you’ve sent the invitation, recipients receive an email with a link to view your calendar in a web browser.

Make an Office 365 calendar public

If you’d prefer to have a link that you can share in a variety of channels whenever you’d like, click the Publish Online button from the Home menu along the top of your Office 365 calendar. From the dropdown menu, first click Publish This Calendar, then Configure This Published Calendar. This will create a link that you can give to collaborators outside your organization. As long as you don’t change your calendar’s visibility, they’ll be able to open that URL and view your availability.

Share your calendar so others can manage it

Users who have administrative control over their Office 365 calendar can set up special sharing settings that allow someone else to send and respond to invitations. From the Account Settings window, click on the Delegate Access button. This window lets you add or remove delegators and configure how much control they have over your calendar.

Even something as simple as sharing your calendar outside your organization has the potential to increase office productivity and efficiency. If you have questions or concerns about managing various aspects of Office 365, get in touch with us today.