OS-Cubed, Inc. Announces Microsoft Silver Partner and Microsoft Cloud Accelerate Status

Rochester, NY, USA— February 24, 2014 — OS-Cubed, Inc., today announced it has qualified as a member of the Microsoft Cloud Accelerate program by demonstrating its ability to meet Microsoft’s customers evolving needs in today’s dynamic cloud marketplace. To qualify for the Cloud Accelerate program, partners must successfully demonstrate their cloud services expertise through rigorous sales and technical assessments; and ensure the highest quality of services, Microsoft requires customer references to demonstrate successful customer implementations and satisfaction.  OS-Cubed, Inc. is also a Microsoft Silver Competency qualified partner.

OS-Cubed, Inc. formed in 2006, is a development and managed support services company specializing in Microsoft technology based software and infrastructure.  The company provides services to a wide variety of clients across the region and the country.  With dozens of company’s email and cloud services under management – Microsoft has recognized OS-Cubed’s expertise as one of a select few who provide services at the highest level.  Approximately 1000 resellers in the entire world qualify as Cloud Accelerate partners.

 “Joining the Cloud Accelerate Program showcases our expertise in today’s cloud technology market and demonstrates our knowledge of Microsoft’s Cloud solutions,” said Lee Drake, CEO.  “Our clients expect the best support, and the smoothest migration when they move their email infrastructure to the cloud, and OS-Cubed, Inc. has provided that from the very inception of the program – even participating in the beta release of Microsoft Cloud Technologies”.

“Converting to Office365 and cloud technology from our old e-mail platform was one of the smartest decisions we’ve made as a medical practice.” said Laurie Amico, office manager for AAIR, PC. - an OS-Cubed customer.  “We rely heavily on e-mail communication for our growing practice of 5 offices, 10 providers and 70 staff members.  We have close to 100 e-mail accounts and I needed a more efficient, cost effective way to be able to manage that and add new accounts quickly.   The transition went smoothly and the platform is everything OS-Cubed said and more!”
Microsoft Silver Competency partner OS-Cubed, Inc, located at 274 N. Goodman St, Suite A401 in Rochester, NY provides development and technical support services for clients across the US.  In addition, they are experts at development for DotNetNuke, an open source, Microsoft technology based web content management platform.  Among the hundreds of sites under development by OS-Cubed are www.thompsonhealth.com, www.lasermax.com, www.spectracomcorp.com and www.frameofchoice.com. OS-Cubed recently completed major migrations of email  and files for companies such as Allergy, Asthma, Immunology of Rochester (AAIR), and ATD Precision.

Access Apps in Office365 - this is huge!

For years migrating applications from desktop databases like Microsoft Access to the web has been an expensive and time consuming process.  Typically these apps need to be ported to SQL Server, custom forms and reports developed, and tons of translating between "stuff you can do on a desktop database" and "stuff you can do on the web".

Microsoft has now released, free to all Microsoft Office365 users, the ability to port an Access application, complete with forms, database tables, reports, etc. directly to the web.  This lets them begin using a shared web-based database almost instantly, without coding.  It lowers the threshhold for office-accessible secure web based databases.

This series of videos shows how simple it is to create tables, add reports, and port the entire thing to the web in a matter of minutes.  You can create Access apps directly on the web, or in Access offline and move them to the web.

There are limitations to the online version of Access, especially when it comes to imports.  This chart from the Microsoft Learning center shows what you can do with online and offline access:

External data operations available in apps and desktop databases

This table gives you a quick reference of which kinds of files you can import or link to Access apps or desktop databases.

	ACCESS APPS CAN IMPORT…	ACCESS APPS CAN LINK TO…	DESKTOP DATABASES CAN IMPORT…	DESKTOP DATABASES CAN LINK TO…
Microsoft Excel				(read-only)
Microsoft Access
ODBC Databases
Text or comma-separated value (CSV) files				(add new records only)
SharePoint List		(read-only)
XML
Data Services				(read-only)
HTML Document
Outlook folder

These databases aren't suitable for everyone - you need to figure out the best solution for your needs.  But this is a new, surprising development, offered free to Office365 pro users, that will push your database requirements online faster.

OS-Cubed is a Microsoft Cloud Accelerate partner, and are experts at Office 365 database development and design.  Contact us to chat about your requirements.