Parallels® Toolbox is helping users find new ways to increase productivity – especially if you need to optimize presentations! Recently released, Parallels Toolbox empowers users with more than 30 easy-to-use, one-click tools, all packaged within a simple interface for both Mac® and PC. This must-have, all-in-one application has helped Sean Bugler, a technical trainer, simplify […]
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On November 8, 2013, the deadliest typhoon ever recorded in history devastated the Philippines. Typhoon Haiyan was stronger than hurricanes Katrina and Sandy combined. It has been estimated that at least 10,000 people have been killed.
Dux Raymond Sy, VP of Customer Strategy and Solutions, AvePoint Public Sector, has organized an initiative that allows people to trade a donation to a charity of their choice for a one hour SharePoint consulting session with one of a variety of reknown SharePoint MVPs and leading experts.
For every $99 donation, the donator can have a one hour session ($99 = 1 hour; $198 = 2 hours; etc.)
The list of participating experts and MVPs includes Dux, Benjamin Niaulin, Naomi MoneyPenny, Jason Himmelstein, Mark Kashman, and nearly 70 others. Within these one hour sessions, donators can gain mentoring, coaching, training, trouble shooting, etc.
Guest Post by Simon Bain, CEO of SearchYourCloud.
It was only for a few minutes, however Google was down. This follows hot on the heels of the other major cloud provider Amazon being down for a couple of hours earlier in August. This even relatively short outage could be a real problem for organizations that rely on these services to store their enterprise information. I am not a great lover of multi-device synchronization, I mean all those versions kicking around your systems! However if done well, it could be one of the technologies that help save ‘Cloud Stores’ from the idiosyncrasies of the Internet and a connected life.
We seem to be currently in the silly season of outages, with Amazon, Microsoft and Google all stating that their problems were cause by a switch being replaced or an update going wrong.
These outages may seem small for the supplier. But they are massive for the customer, who is unable to access sales data or invoices for a few hours.
This however, should not stop people using these services. But it should make them shop around, and look at what is really on offer. A service that does not have synchronization may well sound great. But if you do not have a local copy of your document on the device that you are actually working on, and your connection goes down, for whatever reason, then your work will stop.
SearchYourCloud Inc. has recently launched SearchYourCloud, a new application that enables people to securely find and access information stored in Dropbox, Box, GDrive, Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint or Outlook.com with a single search. Using either a Windows PC or any IOS device, SearchYourCloud will also be available for other clouds later in the year.
SearchYourCloud enables users to not only find what they are searching for, but also protects their data and privacy in the cloud.
Simon Bain is Chief Architect and CEO of SearchYourCloud, and also serves on the Board of the Sun Microsystems User Group.
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:
AvePoint, announced the latest version of DocAve Governance Automation Service Pack (SP) 2. DocAve Governance Automation SP2 allows business content owners to make content move or copy requests directly within SharePoint or through a newly enhanced graphical user interface that promotes a more intuitive, user-friendly experience.
Governance Automation enables organizations to close the custom code gap created by homegrown governance solutions, by providing Service Catalog Offerings such as site collection provisioning, site provisioning, site collection lifecycle management, permissions management, and now, content move or copy requests.
Through an automated approval process and execution, business content owners can now request to move, copy, and restructure SharePoint sites, content, and topology within or across SharePoint environments while maintaining valuable metadata, security and versioning.
“An organization’s SharePoint environment is only as good as its ability to govern the users and content it supports. Governance Automation SP2 provides unique business advantages that redefine SharePoint as a service, allowing organizations the ability to more effectively deliver business-critical workloads and truly monitor and track what is being done in SharePoint on a daily basis,” said George Petrou, Chief Technology Officer at AvePoint. “Governance Automation is another piece to help solve the enterprise collaboration puzzle, providing organizations with the information management solutions to meet their needs now and in the future.”
Governance Automation SP2 addresses evolving information governance policies and organizational change management by enabling end users to submit content move or copy requests through an enhanced user interface or directly within Microsoft SharePoint via a webpart, giving business users the ability to submit requests on their own, increasing ease of use and productivity.
Enhanced features include:
DocAve Governance Automation SP2 is generally available today, March 5, 2013. For more information visit AvePoint’s website.
AvePoint today announced the general availability of DocAve 6 Service Pack (SP) 2, the next generation of the management platform for SharePoint governance, with expanded SharePoint 2013 and Office 365 support.
Designed to increase business productivity without sacrificing on security and compliance, DocAve 6 SP2 will support the migration, protection, and administration of data in your SharePoint 2013 environment, whether it’s on-premises, in the cloud, or a hybrid deployment. DocAve 6 SP2 supports migration into the latest online or on-premises SharePoint release from a variety of legacy sources, including previous versions of SharePoint, file shares, EMC Documentum, Lotus Notes, and Open Text (Livelink).
Making the move to SharePoint 2013 is just the beginning. DocAve 6 SP2 extends SharePoint’s native capabilities, enabling application development, scalable storage, compliance and records management, and geo-distributed collaboration with confidence. New SharePoint capabilities such as business intelligence, eDiscovery, mobile device support, and social computing are also focuses of DocAve 6 SP2, as AvePoint continues its quest to enable customers to take advantage of the latest platform releases that Microsoft has to offer.
“As with each previous release, AvePoint is focused on ensuring that our more than 10,000 customers worldwide have all of the tools necessary to realize the full potential of Microsoft SharePoint 2013,” said George Petrou, Chief Technology Officer at AvePoint. “The landscape of business collaboration is ever-changing, and now more than ever organizations need a trusted solution to help them overcome any challenges that may arise. With DocAve 6 SP2, our customers can remove the roadblocks to enterprise-wide collaboration.”
DocAve 6 is built upon all Microsoft technologies and standards, including .NET, WCF, and Silverlight, utilizing only fully supported Microsoft methodologies and APIs. With robust protection, management, optimization, integration, compliance, reporting, and migration capabilities for SharePoint, DocAve is the enterprise-class management platform for SharePoint governance.
DocAve 6 SP2 is generally available to customers today, February 20. For more information about all of the new features and functionality in DocAve 6 SP2, please visit http://www.avepoint.com/
RAMP announced today at the SharePoint Conference 2012 in Las Vegas the launch of MediaCloud™ for Microsoft® SharePoint®. RAMP’s MediaCloud for SharePoint combines RAMP’s award-winning solution for ingesting, indexing and publishing audio and video content with the largest enterprise content management platform in the world. Enterprise customers are now able to leverage SharePoint’s powerful collaboration and content management capabilities to publish, manage, and search audio and video content. Specific features of MediaCloud for SharePoint include:
“Gartner has seen an explosion of interest from enterprises seeking to publish and manage video content as video becomes a ubiquitous form of communication,” according to Whit Andrews, Vice President at Garter Research. “The ability to leverage existing investments in collaboration and content management platforms such as Microsoft SharePoint is a critical factor in the ability to manage video at scale and cost effectively.”
“We are excited to build on our experience and success in managing large scale video requirements in the media industry to solve similar kinds of problems and opportunities now facing large enterprises,” said Tom Wilde, CEO RAMP. “Video is a complex and powerful medium, and our unique capabilities, combined with SharePoint’s expansive customer base give us a huge advantage in delivering value to a new set of customers.”
Mimecast, a supplier of cloud-based email archiving, security and continuity for Microsoft Exchange, Hosted Exchange and Office 365, has revamped its cloud archiving capabilities, with end users now able to access their personal archive from their chosen email client or mobile device. Mimecast has also introduced file archiving and now provides users with the ability to search their archived documents from within Outlook, Mimecast Personal Portal (web), or iPad. The company’s new iPad app, Mimefiles, displays all of a user’s documents stored in email, as well as Box, Dropbox, SharePoint, network shares and home drives (My Documents).
Mimecast has also added tight integration between SharePoint and email, with users able to search their email archive from within SharePoint, or their SharePoint documents from Outlook.
“The archive is now so much more than just a dusty data store,” comments Grant Hodgkinson, Product Director, Unified Email Management, at Mimecast. “We see it as a highly available, highly secure, but most of all incredibly useful source of information for IT professionals and their end users. And not just for occasional eDiscovery cases but for day to day interactions. The Mimecast archive can now store more than just email, but perhaps more importantly we’re providing users with the tools to be able to find what they need, quickly, in ways that suit their personal preferences, whether they are iPad users or Outlook junkies. In short, archiving is not just about what goes in; it’s how useful it is when it comes out.”
The key elements of today’s announcement are:
Mimecast File Archive provides a solution for archiving files from SharePoint, Box, Dropbox, network shares and home drives, with a single point of eDiscovery and management that supports regulatory compliance needs.
Mimecast Services for Outlook Version 4 gives users full access to their entire archive history from within Outlook. Users can browse their historical email folders or use the archive search feature, which enables quicker decision-making and transforms responsiveness. They can also drag and drop emails to their inbox when browsing, or view, reply and forward messages returned by the archive search.
Mimecast Services for SharePoint is designed to allow users to search their email archive from within SharePoint.
Mimecast Personal Portal is a web mail portal that allows users to search emails and files in their personal archive, manage their permit/block lists and continue to send and receive email in the event of a mail server outage.
Mimefiles, which will be available from the Apple AppStore in November, is a custom-built iPad app that provides users with a unified view of all their files from Box, Dropbox, SharePoint, network file shares and email attachments. Users can also view the audit trail associated with each file – who emailed whom and when – and can preview the email that the file was associated with.
