Are you ready for Office 2016?

Office 2016 will come chock full of new features

You can preview the new version of office here.  Office365 Business premium and professional users get it free! Here's a few new features to whet your whistle:

• Outlook overhaul - Outlook will look more like it's web-based cousin, in addition one-drive will be integrated more fully. When you send a document you can choose to store it in OneDrive and send a link instead.
• Real-time editing in Word - like OneNote works now, new content and edits can be applied to a document by multiple people and their changes will show up in real-time - no more locking the document out from editing when you go in.  Other documents like Excel to follow.
• Data Loss protection features - File level encryption and the ability to support corporate DLP policies allow all Office documents to be less vulnerable to security leaks
• Click to run features targeted at the enterprise - Administrators will be able to allow employees to install and click-to-run Office on the fly from a central install point behind their firewall, reducing network traffic.
• Better Clutter Control - exercising the ability for Microsoft to apply big data analysis to your inbox and your activities on email, allows Microsoft to intelligently sort out the wheat from the chaff, putting important emails in your inbox, and stuff that isn't spam but isn't important in a separate clutter folder.
• Help improvements - They moved the help to the top center of the application and made it easier to access and use.
• Groups, Collaboration and Skype for business integration - you can now create - in outlook - groups for collaboration, conversation and status sharing and shared files and OneNotes.  this allows you to more logically manage shared storage and better update each other on the status of information in those shared stores.  You can even set up group meetings quickly with Skype for business.
• Better menu options - some still lament the days when Microsoft removed the menu from the top of our office apps in favor of the ribbon strip. Not everyone finds the ribbon strip intuitive. Well good news! The menu is back. In keeping with the return of the start menu in Windows 10, Office 2016 will feature the return of the menu as a star attraction, with better menu integration, better file browsing to more easily support multiple file sources, and smart menus that adapt as you use the product to present the right context information depending on what you want to do.
• Sway your audiences - Powerpoint is so old-school, and Microsoft knows it - so while keeping the old powerhouse in the library they're adding a new presentation app called Sway.  Featuring a much more free-form drag and drop presentation authoring process, Sway is like many other "break the borders" presentation platform.

To find out more about Office 2016, or to find out how you can convert your old office licenses into the new cloud based-office licensing model contact me via private message, phone or email at OS-Cubed, Inc.

What would you say to $2000 worth of software for $150/year?

Microsoft Office365 will give you $2000 worth of Office licenses for $150/year. 

With their Small business Microsoft Office 365 premium plan you pay no upfront licensing costs, $150/year and get 5 copies of Office 2013 pro (or whatever the current version of Office is).  You also get 1TB of storage for files, and a 50GB mailbox with full calendaring, web mail, mobile mail and outlook support.  You get the equivalent of GoToMeeting in a professional web meeting format, with audio, video, screen sharing and session recordings (Lync).  You get secure instant messaging.  You get online web versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote.  It works in IE, in Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox.  It works with your full Outlook, or with third party email clients.  For $150.   You get your OWN email domain with your own domain name. You get sharepoint online for internal communications. You get a website in the cloud if you don't already have one.  All bundled into ONE product at a ridiculously low price.  To put this in perspective for the full retail cost of 5 copies of office professional 2013 you could instead get all of this for the next 13 years and 4 months.  And that's not even counting the mailbox and mail, the web enabled versions, the 1TB of storage or the 50GB mailbox.  Did I mention all your mail will be virus and spam filtered?  No? Well it will be.

Seriously if you use Office AT ALL this is a no brainer deployment.  Don't need more than the 5 copies of office?  You can mix and match with $60/year mailbox and web only accounts.  Over 25 mailboxes - the same thing is $15/month/mailbox for midsize businesses (though midsize business doesn't have a mix and match option).. 

Need even more flexibility for licensing and email options for $20/month/mailbox you can mix and match enterprise plans that range from $2/month for limited email only to the full $20/month for Office365 Premium.

Contact OS-Cubed today to learn about how to get Office365.  I seriously want to save you tons of money, and we are experts at deployment/conversion.

Microsoft License Compliance....

If you are like many small business customers you probably have wondered - am I in license compliance with Microsoft?  Do I legally own all the software I am using?  If you are NOT wondering these things - you should.  One of my clients got an audit notice the other day from Microsoft requesting that they update them on Microsoft licensing status.  Fortunately this client was good to go - they'd been aggressively being sure that all their machines were compliant, and all we had to do was document some OEM licenses and send a report on to Microsoft for the rest.  But not everyone is in that boat.  One company came to me after they'd received that audit notice in the mail - they had 6 licenses for Microsoft office - and 26 installs.  Not good. Turned out 5 of them were OEM, so that was ok - but the other 16 licenses were illegal.  Bringing them into compliance represented a one time purchase of 16 licenses for Office Professional.  Not an inexpensive day for them at nearly $8000.  The problem with post-install compliance is that you have to retroactively buy the licenses for the most current version of the software (Because you typically can't buy say office 2010 once office 2013 has been released) and you must buy the downgradeable Software Assurance licenses - the most expensive way of upgrading Microsoft has.  There are lots of options but it's almost always better to assess and upgrade or become compliant BEFORE Microsoft Audits you.

So how do you assess your risk?  Fortunately Microsoft has a standalone tool (That's right it does NOT phone home and tattle on you about your licenses) that will assess your Windows Active Directory network and tell you exactly what licenses you have, and which machines or operating systems can be upgraded. It also helps you plan out several scenarios for virtualizing or moving to a private or public cloud install for your existing infrastructure.  The product is called MAPS - Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit and you can download it here.

We use MAPS when planning out office365 migrations to assess the number of office licenses a client might need, versions we're migrating from, etc. 

MAPS is self installing and self contained - you can run it on any server or workstation in your network.  If you need help planning a migration, assistance with becoming compliant, or help in assessing your systems for upgrades or licensing, please give us a call.

Microsoft Office 2013 OEM licensing - the other shoe drops

Microsoft releases Office 2013 to OEMs

So the other shoe has dropped on Office 2013 - and this one not only emphasizes the THUD from the last licensing reveal, but reiterates it with a thud of it's own.  While a preinstall to hard disk kit is available to shorten download times, Microsoft is pushing (and vendors are hopping on this with abandon) installing Office 2013 OEM entirely from a log-on to Windows Live.

The process works like this - you get only a license key when purchasing an OEM copy of MS Office 2013.  You can't just run the software and activate the license - you must go to www.office.com/setup to install, and you must establish a Live ID and your packaged license code to get to the download and install screen - there is no alternate installation method.  Once there you can download and install your oem version on one machine.  Although it says in the FAQ that you can come back to the site to re-download and install, it's not clear if you can reactivate after say a hard drive wipe and reinstall.  We'll just have to see as Microsoft could not give a clear answer.

Also unclear is whether you can do this with more than one license on a single LiveID - IE must I have a unique live id for each OEM license, or can I use one live ID to download and install all my licenses?  Enquiring minds want to know but even Microsoft Support and licensing couldn't answer this one definitively.  Their recommendation - "try it and let us know how it works - we'll leave this case open".  Helpful.  Not.

This doesn't of course consider the case of whether the end user has a fast internet connection or not.  Over some internet connections the multi hundreds of megabyte office download may well take hours.  Additionally, what is the first thing I want to do with a machine - well.... use it.  But I can't because I may be sitting around for quite a while before any useful software is loaded on it.
Finally there's the issue of the LiveIDs.  How many people will create a one-time throwaway live id and then forget the username and password.  With the old system all they needed was their install disks and their keycode.  They can't even ORDER install disks any more. Update - you can order backup install disks - once you activate using your live ID.

Fortunately you do not need to associate the live ID you used for install with Office for cloud storage etc.  I can just imagine managing this for a 50 user install and having them all share the same 7gb skydrive.  Fortunately once installed and authenticated you don't need to ever log into that account again from that computer.

All this points to a drive towards subscription based systems.  Which begs the question of - are you ready for it?  I predict that OEM and OEM pricing will go away. The new subscription based systems are cost effective on a 3 year new version renewal plan - I suspect rather than noodle with all the rest of this stuff this will drive more small to medium businesses and all individuals into subscriptions.  And with Microsoft's cash grab on the low end subscriptions - resellers make ZERO dollars on these installs and ZERO recurring revenue.  I suspect that Microsoft may have written the death knell for office within the next 5 years unless they fix some of these deficiencies.