Microsoft lost its trademark battle with BSkyB, and as a result is “rebadging” SkyDrive as “OneDrive”.
The service is the same (for now). Microsoft appears to be making some lemonade from the situation with promises of new and improved features, and you can sign up for a preview if interested.
When you have a document or file which needs editing or updating by more than one person, in more than one place, controlling the process to avoid the dreaded “intervening update” problem can be a challenge.
In the early days of personal computers the answer was often the “sneakernet”. Create document or file, write to a diskette, put on your Chuck Taylors and walk it to your collaborator, then get it back the same way. Later, LAN technology allowed the file to be placed on a local server and opened across the LAN for editing, with a lock on the file at the server while editing is being performed. When needing to get beyond the local LAN email attachments could be used, or FTP if you had a pre-Web internet connection. Management of “check-in/check-out” and resolving update conflicts was done by humans, not software.
Sounds like the stone age now, but it beat printing a document and editing with a red pen.
The advent of the Web and its browsers, along with widespread, always-on internet connectivity brought new opportunities for using that connectivity and various software design strategies to support collaboration.
There are three essential design strategies for addressing the problem: pure web app (think Google Drive, née Google Docs), file syncing (think Dropbox), and local editing with central locking (think MS Office+Web Folders/WebDAV). Each has its pros and cons, and which approach will work for a given task depends on factors like file type, file size, editing feature set, and client platforms supported.
The Pure Web App Approach
A real web app runs in a browser using javascript and (more and more often) HTML5. This approach in theory can support any device that has a modern browser, including tablets and smartphones, as well as Macs, Windows PCs and Chromebooks. Perhaps the premier example of this approach is the applications available in Google Drive. Simple documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and drawings can be created, edited and shared easily. Collaboration is as close to instantaneous as networking technology allows. Documents are always in synch. The first time you co-edit a word processing document with a colleague on the other side of the world, and you see edits in real time, you should pause for a moment and marvel at how amazing this technology is.
That’s the good. The bad includes:
This is using Google as an example. There are other services using the web app approach. SkyDrive from Microsoft for example, or Quickbooks Online from Intuit. The bottom line is all these online apps have limitations, never mind cost (Quickbooks Online costs between $12.95 to over $70 per month).
The File Synchronization Approach
File synchronization apps like Dropbox work by running applications on all your devices, with a special folder that communicates with their servers to propagate new and updated files to other devices. This works well when the only person involved is you, and you have multiple devices (work desktop, laptop, home PC, and sometimes mobile devices). Another plus is the ability to synchronize a wide variety of file types. Each device that will be used to edit or update a file or document will need the appropriate application installed on the device, and all copies or versions of the aforementioned application must be able to handle the internal format of the particular file. For instance, Quickbooks file formats for Windows and Macs are incompatible.
The typical problem for apps using the file synch approach is lack of “file locking” to keep two people from updating a file at the same time. Some file sync apps attempt to resolve intervening updates but usually with little success.
The Local Editing With Central Locking Approach
Server-based file locking apps keep the file on a central server, and use specialized server plus client applications to do the following each time a file needs to be edited or updated:
After editing the process is reversed:
It is also a good idea for this approach to offer a “View Only” or “Read Only” copy of a locked file for others to look at (but not edit).
An early example of this approach is WebDAV (DAV stands for “Distributed Authoring and Versioning”). Microsoft refers to its WebDAV support in Windows as “Web Folders”, and supports locks and editing in Office applications such as Word and Excel. The problem with WebDAV and Web Folders is that virtually no other applications other than Office have implemented support for WebDAV locks.
A more general application that can support almost any file type while also supporting central file locking is available from My Docs Online via their java-based Desktop App. The Desktop App uses a “Lock & Open” to lock the file on the central server, downloads the file to a temporary location on the PC or Mac, and then launches the right application based on the file extension. When the editing session is complete the file is saved and closed locally, and then the user does a “Save & Unlock” in the Desktop App to send the updated file back to the server and release the lock.
The ability to support virtually any file type is a strong benefit of this design.
Potential issues with the approach include “network latency”. The bigger the file the longer it takes to download and open the locked copy, or sent it back to the server. The use of Java brings support for multiple operating systems, including all versions of Windows or Mac OS X, but does require Java be installed and kept up to date on the machine.
Choosing an App Whose Design Strategy Meets Your Needs
Which approach will work best for you? It depends on particular needs, and you may need more than one solution depending on particular file types or business processes involved.
If you and all your collaborators already have Google accounts, and if the goal is collaboration on a reasonably basic document or spreadsheet, it’s hard to beat Google Drive. If you mostly use Office, then SkyDrive might be a good fit, and so on. Consider a two-step approach, where, as an example, you use Google Drive to do the early drafts of a document when collaboration needs are heaviest, and then export to a more powerful desktop application for final production.
If your collaboration needs don’t require editing by multiple people, but mostly involve pushing updated versions of files and documents for viewing and reviewing, then a file synchronization app like Dropbox could work well.
If you are using specific file types like Quickbooks, CAD, as well as Excel, Word, or OpenOffice formats, and you need to let multiple people in multiple locations edit without fear of wiping out the edits of a colleague, consider an application like the My Docs Online Desktop App.
Guest Post by Chris Pyle, Champion Solutions Group
So you’ve made the move to Office 365. Great!
You think you’ve gone from worrying about procuring exchange hardware and storage capacity, being concerned about email recovery plans, and having to keep up with the constant maintenance of your exchange server farm and the backing up your data, to relying on Office 365 to provide virtually anywhere-access to Microsoft tools.
Sounds pretty good, and we won’t blame you if you’re thinking that your move to the cloud has just afforded you a maintenance-free environment, but not so fast.
While the cost-savings and convenience it may seem like a no-brainer, what many administrators often forget is that the cloud itself doesn’t make email management any easier – there are still a ton of tasks that need to be done to ensure usability and security.
Indeed while moving mailboxes to the cloud may be efficient and provide cost savings, it doesn’t mean administration ends there. Not by any means.
Not to worry, for starters Office 365 admins looking for a faster and easier way to handle mail administration tasks have a number of tools at their disposal, such as our 365 Command by MessageOps. 365Command replaces the command line interface of Windows® PowerShell with a rich, HTML5 graphical user interface that is easy to navigate and makes quick work of changing mailbox settings, monitoring usage and reporting (and did we say you don’t need to know PowerShell?).
From our users who manage about 1 million mail boxes we see the most effective 365 administrators break down maintenance and tasks into daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly buckets. Breaking down tasks this way simplifies work-flow, and the best part is that this can be easily implemented into your routine and should heighten the value and success utilizing Office 365.
Here are best practices for getting started:
Daily: Mailbox Administrators are constantly responding to any addition, change, and removal requests for their Office365 accounts. The most common are daily tasks that are quickly resolved, for example “forgot my password”, “need access to folder X”, “executive Y is on maternity leave, can you forward her files”, and so on:
Modifying Passwords
Modifying Folder Permissions
Mailbox Forwarding
Creating Single and Shared Mailboxes
Weekly: Weekly task groupings are geared toward helping Administrators keep a watchful eye on growth and scalability, security, speed and access. For example, checking for new devices that are being added to mailboxes, comparing them from previous weeks, and verifying that the user did indeed add a new device, and not incurring a potential risk of theft or fraud:
Review Top Mailbox Growth by Size
Review Office 365 Audit Logs
Review Mobile Security
Review Shared Mailbox Growth- (shared mailboxes only have 10GB limit!)
Review the exact location of their servers and their mailboxes within the Microsoft data centers
Monthly: OK, now you’re cooking with gasoline — with those annoying daily tasks and cumbersome weekly tasks out of the way, top-level Administrators turn their full attention to security and access, which we can never have a lapse in attention:
They run reports and lists of all users last login date. They are checking for people who may no longer be employed with the company, thus eliminating the need for that mailbox and its associated cost from Microsoft. Or if there is limited use, they could move the end user to a less expensive Office 365 SKU, again reducing their overall O365 costs.
From a security standpoint, they are running reports to see who is forwarding their mailboxes to external mailboxes, such as sending their email to their home email account (Gmail/Yahoo/ Hotmail, etc.)
Review password strength and the passwords that are set to expire on a monthly basis, ensuring their mailboxes are safe and secure.
Review mailbox permissions, and review who has Send As privileges in their organization. They are confirming with the end user that they allowed these people to have the ability to send email as them.
Review which employees have Full Mailbox access privileges. They confirm with the end user that they do want those additional users to have full access to their mail and calendar.
Quarterly: See how easy this is now? You’ve cleared out the clutter, and made sure every box on the system is secure. You’ve taken the steps to keep the system running fast and true, with consistent access and performance across the enterprise. Now kick back, light a fat stogie and do some light clean up and maintenance:
Group Clean Up, review all email groups to ensure they have active members, as well as review which groups have people in them that are no longer employed, or contractors that are no longer involved, which groups aren’t being utilized, etc.
Review the Edit Permissions list.
Review Non Password changes in 90 days.
Conclusion
Just because you’ve moved to the cloud it doesn’t mean management and maintenance of your mail boxes stops there. Many of these best-practices would require the knowledge of PowerShell, but who wants to deal with that? Save yourself lots of trouble and find a tool that will manage these activities, streamline your work-flow and jump-start your productivity.
By Rob O’Shaughnessy, Director of Software Licensing
There’s some good news, and there’s some bad news. The good news is Windows 2012 R2 is being released…the bad news you have to pay for it.
Microsoft recently announced the release of Windows 2012 R2 which will be offering some new functionality described here Windows Server 2012 R2. However, along with the new release is some new pricing that will make you…well…read on.
Microsoft is releasing Windows 2012 R2 on November 1st and will be increasing the price of Windows Datacenter by 28%. This is not a typo. I’ll spell it out for you: Twenty-Eight Percent. For you Twitter people that’s #twentyeightpercentholycow.
Now, only Datacenter is going up in price. Windows Standard Server and Windows Cals will remain the same price. Also, Windows 2012 Cals will be compliant with Windows 2012 R2 so if you own Windows 2012 User or Device Cals you don’t need to purchase new Cals. So it’s just Datacenter right? Yes…well almost.
Also going up in price is Windows Remote Desktop Services Cals (RDS) which will be increasing by 20% on November 1st. Same deal here – if you own 2012 RDS Cals they will also be compliant with Windows 2012 R2. This means new Cals are NOT required for Windows 2012 R2 if you own Windows 2012 RDS Cals.
FAQ’s:
Q: Why is Microsoft doing this?
A: Because, they can.
OK, so here’s what you have to think about:
It’s coming up fast as the last day to purchase Windows 2012 Datacenter and RDS is Halloween night…scary huh?
These are important decisions for your company to make, so if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly roshaughnessy@greenpages.com
The sudden shutdown of Nirvanix, an early but recently faltering participant in the “pure-play” Online Storage space dominated by the likes of AWS S3, Microsoft Azure and Google, is in large part a result of downward pressure on prices as the big players continually lower theirs. Amazon, for instance, launched S3 in 2006 and charged $0.15 per gigabyte-month. After many step-wise price cuts S3 is down to $0.095 per gigabyte-month.
Pure online storage is fast becoming the sole province of vendors who either enjoy economies of scale, or who treat their offerings as a loss-leader to get other business (or a combination of both).
Smaller players may have to add value in other ways to survive. Nirvanix was not profitable, and when their latest round of funding came up short it was the last nail in their coffin.
Did you know that there are over 400 services that can be sold through Parallels Service delivery platform? These are all based on the APS standard. It is important to have such a broad portfolio as the cloud needs of SMBs are quite diverse. At the same time, there are a core set of services that customers expect. They include Web Hosting, Email, Collaboration and Infrastructure. In most cases the preferred choice of customers are Microsoft products. This is why Parallels has always made sure that Parallels software and Microsoft software work well together and that we always have the latest and greatest versions available.
We make this happen by spending time with Microsoft engineers in the product groups and Microsoft sales and marketing in the field. It assures us that we are building solutions that are optimized for service providers and bring out the best of Microsoft products and services.
This has enabled above market growth rates from our service provider partners for Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office 365, and Microsoft Lync.
This week we have updates for all of these products as well as a few more including Microsoft Lync Hosting Pack and soon, Microsoft Azure Pack for Hosting Providers.
If you want to offer Microsoft-based cloud services and offer them soon, let me know.
Thank you Microsoft for being a great partner.
John Zanni, Vice President SP Marketing and Alliances
Starting a hosting or cloud business is easy. Whether you are a small hoster or web designer, infrastructure provider, managed service provider or telco, it just takes buying the right software to automate those services. Parallels has a whole portfolio for the small to the large business. That does not mean you will be successful.
Service providers fail because they think that putting a catalog up is sufficient. It is not. The most successful providers have an end to end marketing and sales enablement plan to go with the offer. They take into account up-sell and cross-sell scenarios. They have a strong feedback loop so that they can tune their offers.
We, at Parallels, believe that it is part of our responsibility to give you the tools you need to be successful. That is why we created PartnerNet. This is the location for our partners to get all the best practices and information needed to be successful.
We will be bringing a taste of PartnerNet to you at Microsoft WPC. Come meet with Birger Steen, our CEO, Mauro Meanti, SVP and GM SP Business and of course, yours truly while we present “Succeeding in the SMB Cloud with Microsoft and Parallels” on Monday, July 8 at 4:30 PM in the Hilton Americas. After that session, you will know what it takes to sell those Microsoft cloud services and more. You can also come to the booth and drop off your business card for a chance to win a Surface!
See you there!
John Zanni, Vice President SP Marketing and Alliances
Guest Post by Eric Burniche of AvePoint.
File Shares can be a blessing and a curse when it comes to storing large quantities of data for business use. Yes, you enable a large number of users to access the data as if it were on their local machines, without actually having the data stored where disc space may be at a premium. But native management capabilities of file shares aren’t always ideal, so a third-party solution is necessary to fully optimize your file shares.
The primary benefit of file shares is simple, quick, and easy access to large volumes of data for large volumes of users at marginal infrastructure cost. With little or no training required, users can easily access file shares that consist of individual documents to large files and rich media like videos, audio and other formats than can range up to gigabytes (GB) in size.
The Simple Truth: Organizations are quickly realizing native file share limitations, including notoriously poor content management capabilities for search, permissions, metadata, and remote access. As a result, many have turned to Microsoft SharePoint to manage and collaborate on their most business-critical information and valued data.
The Problem: Organizations have various types of unstructured content on their file servers, which is data characterized as non-relational data– e.g. Binary Large Objects (BLOBs) — that when uploaded into SharePoint, are stored by default with the platform’s Microsoft SQL Server database. Once file share content is uploaded, the overall time taken to remove unstructured content from a structured database is inefficient, resulting in poor performance for SharePoint end-users and exponential storage cost increases for IT administrators.
Difficulty often arises when determining what content is business critical and should be integrated with SharePoint as compared to what content should be left alone in file shares, decommissioned, or archived according to business need. File types and sizes also create difficulty when integrating file share content with SharePoint because SharePoint itself blocks content types like Microsoft Access project files, .exe, .msi, .chm help files, and file sizes exceeding 2 GB violate SharePoint software boundaries and limitations.
The Main Questions: How can my organization utilize SharePoint to retire our legacy file share networks while avoiding migration projects and performance issues? How can my organization utilize SharePoint’s full content management functionality if my business-critical assets are blocked file types or larger than Microsoft’s 2 GB support contracts?
One Solution: Enter DocAve File Share Navigator 3.0 from AvePoint. DocAve File Share Navigator 3.0 enables organizations to increase file share activity and take full advantage of SharePoint’s content management capabilities, all while avoiding costs and disruptions associated with migration plans.
With DocAve File Share Navigator, organizations can:
The native capabilities of file shares are unlikely to improve, but fortunately there are third-party solutions such as DocAve File Share Navigator that can help turn your file share from a headache to an asset, allowing you to continue to collaborate with confidence.
Eric Burniche is a Product Marketing Manager at AvePoint.
AvePoint today announced the launch of AvePoint Meetings, the latest addition to its line of Productivity Apps in the SharePoint 2013 App Store.
AvePoint Meetings, a free interactive SharePoint 2013 app, brings order and efficiency to an organization’s meetings by allowing business users to track notes, actions, and decisions made in meetings against agenda items. While conventional meeting tracking generally involves hand-written notes that must then be typed up and emailed to be shared, AvePoint Meetings enforces a more structured information tracking process that ensures all meeting information is readily available and organized for those that need it. AvePoint Meetings utilizes the “My Task” feature of SharePoint 2013 by creating “Actions” as SharePoint Tasks so your organization can discover all assignments, tasks and relevant statuses within SharePoint or Microsoft Outlook 2013.
AvePoint Meetings allows business users to collaborate with one another in real-time before, during, and after meetings by:
