Posts Tagged ‘Office 365’

Private SharePoint Cloud: For Large Enterprises, It’s the Way to Go

March 21st, 2012
Posted by: admin

By Jay Atkinson
AIS Network CEO

Just last week, we made a bold statement that has captured quite a bit of attention within the SharePoint community.

We revealed that we are now deploying SharePoint Server 2010 in a single private cloud for less than our competitors are charging for a public or hybrid cloud implementation.  And, we expressed our strong view that enterprise-class Microsoft SharePoint 2010 customers should look only to private cloud environments.  In short, it’s the only way to go based on sheer practicality and bang-for-the buck.

private cloud

Enterprise-class SharePoint Server 2010 is hosted most cost-effectively in a private cloud.

Plain and simple, you want the most control over your SharePoint 2010 environment with the least hit to your organization’s bottom line, and you get every bit of that and more by moving from a traditional deployment to a hosted private cloud architecture.

Currently, hosting providers are steering enterprise-class SharePoint 2010 customers toward public cloud and hybrid cloud hosting models.  Our cost analysis research shows that those deployment approaches are needlessly costing more than they should and the customer sacrifices control at multiple levels.

A private SharePoint cloud is simply more economical and easier to manage for a large organization with security and compliance concerns.  An enterprise SharePoint Server 2010 platform implemented wholly in a private cloud, including the online storage components, exceeds core compliance requirements and surpasses the benefits of a public cloud or hybrid cloud.

With SharePoint 2010 deployed entirely in a private cloud, the customer gets:

  • a hosted environment that is exclusively internal to the organization,
  • complete control of its servers, security, permissions, policies and customization,
  • seamless federation between line-of-business systems and various data sources,
  • quick scalability for system resources, and
  • the ability to move other core applications and platforms to the same private cloud.

Public cloud services like Microsoft Office 365’s SharePoint Online and deployments of SharePoint Server 2010 in a public or hybrid cloud are okay for small to mid-size businesses, but they’re very impractical when it comes to serving the best interests of a large business.

The private SharePoint cloud model is an ideal outsourcing alternative.  Sooner or later, global and large enterprises evaluating SharePoint 2010 deployment platforms are going to realize that an enterprise SharePoint Server 2010 platform implemented solely in a private cloud is, indeed, the only way to go.

Have a different opinion?  I’d love to hear your thoughts below.  Need a free quote on a Private SharePoint Cloud?  Naturally, we’d be happy to help you with that.

 

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What Is Microsoft Office 365? What Are the Benefits and Drawbacks of SharePoint Online? (Part 2 of 2)

January 12th, 2012
Posted by: admin

By Laurie Head
AIS Network Vice President

To review:  In June 2011, Microsoft released Office 365, which is essentially bundled online software hosted in the cloud. Office 365 replaced Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) and bundles together the latest upgrades of its SharePoint, Exchange and Lync Server solutions.  So, when you hear “SharePoint Online,” that means SharePoint as it is presented in Office 365, which is hosted by Microsoft. In my last blog, the first part of this series, I explained what Microosft Office 365/SharePoint Online is.  Now, let’s look at the benefits and drawbacks.

Office 365

In today's blog, we look at the benefits and drawbacks of Office 365/SharePoint Online.

Online SharePoint is like a good off-the-rack suit – it does the job if you are a relatively low-level user. However, like a department store suit, it never fits perfectly enough to feel tailor-made.

The features and functionality limitations may be a deal-breaker for some organizations. For example, Office 365 does not allow for full server control and unrestricted access to customize the online SharePoint environment; it also restricts the maximum number of users to 50 and a number of search features are not included. Because online SharePoint cannot be highly customized, some organizations may eschew it for hosted SharePoint Server 2010, which allows for maximum customization. Organizations weighing the two options should study the service descriptions for each product; they will need to compare carefully the online SharePoint to its on-site counterpart.

Nevertheless, a good business case can be made for deploying Office 365. Among the benefits are:

• Comprehensive. The bundled services are attractive to many smaller organizations for which customization is of little importance.
• Fast. Turn-key configuration and anywhere-access go a long way in the small- to mid-size market.
• Less expensive. Maybe, maybe not. However, it does free an organization from the capital outlays associated with on-premise hosting.

Among the drawbacks:

• Storage. It’s more expensive per gigabyte.
• Service Level Agreement. Microsoft offers a lower SLA than most top-tier hosting companies. They do not guarantee 99.999% uptime.
• Comprehensive. An organization may not need or want all of the features offered – or the cost that comes with it.
• Features/functionality limitations. In comparing the on-site and online versions of SharePoint, an organization might find that the limitations of the latter are a deal-breaker.
• Impersonal hosting relationship. Microsoft is the hosting provider, and it will be challenged to match the rewarding, personalized experience that organizations often have with a smaller hosting provider – one who blends seamlessly into the organization’s own IT staff.
• Loss of flexibility and control. An organization can keep its on-premise infrastructure, and using the hybrid capabilities, still deploy Office 365 in the cloud.

However, if you require a high level of control and customization for SharePoint, you would be better served deploying SharePoint Server 2010 in the cloud. If, in future upgrades, Microsoft chooses to match more closely the features and functionality of online SharePoint to its on-site counterpart, namely SharePoint Server, the incentive to move to Microsoft’s cloud may be even stronger for many organizations. In the meantime, third-party hosting of either SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010 may offer an optimal solution.

Are you using Office 365?  What do you think of it?  Check out our white paper for more information.

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What Is Microsoft Office 365? What Is SharePoint Online? (Part 1 of 2)

January 11th, 2012
Posted by: admin

By Laurie Head
AIS Network Vice President

In June 2011, Microsoft released Office 365, which is essentially bundled online software hosted in the cloud. Office 365 replaced Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) and bundles together the latest upgrades of its SharePoint, Exchange and Lync Server solutions.  So, when you hear “SharePoint Online,” that means SharePoint as it is presented in Office 365, which is hosted by Microsoft.

Office 365

You'll find SharePoint Online in Office 365. But, will it meet your needs adequately?

The convenient, pay-as-you-grow subscription plan to Office 365 requires that an organization pay Microsoft for only what it uses – per user, per month. The net benefit to an organization’s IT team is that it is relatively turn-key and requires far less administration than an on-premises deployment of the identical suite of applications. Organizations may find comfort in Microsoft’s guaranteed high availability and recoverability and its back-end administration, all of which are backed by a Service Level Agreement.

When evaluating an Office 365 deployment, organizations should be asking four key questions:

• Is Microsoft offering a better value? How much would it cost to run these same solutions on-premise?

• Do we need all of these products?

• Are the limitations of Office 365 a deal-breaker for us or our customers?

• Are my mission-critical applications going to be safe? What security assurances is Microsoft providing?

Office 365 Plans

Office 365 comes in two sizes – one for small businesses and professionals (referred to as Plan P) and one for medium-sized enterprises (referred to as Plans E1, E2, E3, and E4).

Microsoft designed Plan P for smaller organizations, ranging from 1 to 25 employees, with a cost of $6 per user per month. For somewhat larger enterprises, the more flexible series of “E” plans (“E” stands for enterprise) ranges from $10 to $27 dollars per user per month.   Plan P and the four Plan Es are not exclusive to the company size for which they were designed, so a small business could opt for a version of Plan E.

The Office 365 Plan P, according to Microsoft, “brings together online versions of the best business-grade communications and collaboration tools from Microsoft, plus Microsoft Office Web Apps, at a price that small businesses can afford.”  In our recent white paper, “To Cloud or Not to Cloud:  SharePoint 2010 Hosting Options…and Which One Is Right for You,” you will find a chart outlining what each plan does. 

Plan P highlights include:

• Email, calendar, contacts, personal archive, and 25 GB mailbox storage with 25 MB attachments using Exchange Online

• Support for workgroups of up to 50 people

• Online document viewing and basic editing capabilities using Office Web Apps

• Easy access to files from a mobile device using Office Web Apps

• Consistent file formatting from desktop Office to Web versions with Office Web Apps

• Sites to share documents and information with SharePoint Online

• Capability to design/ maintain a professional, public Web site with SharePoint Online

• Instant messaging, presence, online meetings, and PC-to-PC audio/video calls with Lync Online

• Ability to share a desktop with colleagues and partners using Lync Online

• Premium antivirus and anti-spam filtering with Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange

Plan P’s SharePoint emphasizes sharing content rather than collaborative content creation. Collaboration on creating and editing documents with Office Web Apps is “basic.” Plan P assumes that, unlike larger companies, small organizations are less likely to require robust collaboration.

The convenient, pay-as-you-grow subscription plan to Office 365 requires that an organization pay Microsoft for only what it uses – per user, per month. The net benefit to an organization’s IT team is that it is relatively turn-key and requires far less administration than an on-premises deployment of the identical suite of applications. Organizations may find comfort in Microsoft’s guaranteed high availability and recoverability and its back-end administration, all of which are backed by a Service Level Agreement.

Plan E Series

If Plan P feels somewhat light, an organization might consider Microsoft’s Plan E series. Office 365 for medium-sized enterprises is presented in four plans, each with access to some level of SharePoint. Not all four plans come with the same level of SharePoint or other features.  Choosing the optimal plan depends on three questions:

• How much are we willing to spend?

• How much SharePoint do we need and what customization is required?

• What other benefits of Office 365 do we need?

All four “E” series plans feature SharePoint’s ability to access information and documents, however advanced content creation and publishing only come with plans E3 and E4. So, to derive the full benefit of SharePoint through Office 365, an organization must choose either E3 or E4 at a cost of $20 or $27 per user, respectively.

Any thoughts yet?  What is your organization doing?

Come back to this site for Part II, the “Benefits and Drawbacks of Office 365. ” Also, you can download our whitepaper about Office 365 vs. on-premise hosting.

 

 

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Examining SharePoint Data Integration

August 18th, 2011
Posted by: admin

By Terry Engelstad
MCP, MCSE, CCNA, MCDBA, MCTS, MCITP
AIS Network Operations Manager

This week, we were contacted by a vendor for a new software product that claims to connect almost any on-premise data source (e.g., databases, ERP/CRM) to Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Office 365.

I’m not sure of the value of this to a SharePoint hosting provider per se.  I’ll need to digest some different scenarios in order to understand how AISN would use this, but it gave me the idea for this blog.  Here’s a little background about data integration with Microsoft Office 365 (SharePoint), and probably, why this type of product evolved.

SharePoint MOSS 2007 introduced a new service called Business Connectivity Service (BCS). It allowed users to access external data in a variety of forms (databases, spreadsheets, files, etc.) from inside SharePoint. SharePoint 2010 renamed it “Business Data Connectivity” (BDC) and embellished the feature-set, including the ability to Search the external data. BCS and BDC do not copy data into SharePoint. They set up virtual connections to the data and allow other components within SharePoint to see and touch the data. At no point is data copied into SharePoint. Connections to external data are not persistent. This means they will exist for as long as necessary, then dissolve, then re-connect as necessary. This is not too efficient for large volumes of data.

When a connection is set up to an external source, there is a requirement to provide credentials in order to access the external data. SharePoint allows only three ways to provide credentials:

1) the Windows account of the logged on user running the SharePoint BCS/BDC process,

2) the operating system account of the service running the BCS/BDC process, or

3) a customized set of credentials.

MOSS only allows types 1 or 2.  On the other hand, SharePoint Foundation 2010 only allows types 1 or 2, and SharePoint Server 2010 allows all three types but needs to retain credentials for type 3 in a service called Secure Store. This service is available only in SharePoint Server – not MOSS and not Foundation.

Office 365 is built on the foundation of SharePoint Foundation (and so is our Shared SharePoint environment). Microsoft has stated that Office 365 does not allow accessing external data through BDC. I haven’t seen a document stating the reasons for this, but I can draw conclusions from the statements above.

First, since data is not actually copied into Office 365 SharePoint, there is no consumption of space, only consumption of network bandwidth and CPU. Since the pricing model for Office 365 is built around space consumption, Microsoft would not make any money if clients used, for example, only external data. Picture a SharePoint environment where there is no data stored locally, only accessed through BCS/BDC. Not too profitable.

Second, Office 365 does not allow access to external data because of credentials. In Office 365, Windows accounts and Operating System service accounts will have no meaning outside of Office 365. Therefore, a user could not authenticate with those credentials to any data source outside of Office 365. And again, since Office365 does not use the Secure Store feature found in Server, special/unique credentials cannot be stored.

So, long story short, there is still a need to get data into Office 365. The method proposed by this new software is to copy data from external data sources into SharePoint Lists. This is an OK way of getting data into SharePoint. I’m just not sure how many people would want to take advantage of it. We’ve had only one client in our Shared environment ask about BDC capabilities, and my research/response to that client has led to the above discovery. We do have one MOSS client using BCS to access several spreadsheets which they periodically refresh on their dedicated server.  None of our dedicated SharePoint 2010 clients are currently using BDC.

I’d be interested in any comments that readers of this blog may have.  What are your thoughts?

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Need SharePoint, but Do Not Need a High Level of Flexibility? Microsoft Now Has You Covered.

June 28th, 2011
Posted by: Michael Emrich

By Michael Emrich – Associate, Marketing & Sales

Today, Microsoft is rolling out its latest service package, Office 365. In what is essentially Microsoft’s follow-up to its Business Productivity Online Services lineup, Microsoft is now offering, in the cloud, its lineup of desktop applications and server products in one virtual box. One of the more prominent offerings in this package is SharePoint 2010. With Office 365, businesses now have the opportunity to purchase an out-of-the-box version of SharePoint, ready to go – without having to shoulder the capital expenditures of hosting SharePoint themselves.

This is great news for lower-level SharePoint users – the ones who just need a basic version of it for their needs. Not much customization or personalization, just the basic meat and potatoes of SharePoint. Office 365’s SharePoint-powered web apps allow you to collaborate on the creation of documents in real-time over the Internet, access SharePoint on your mobile device, and ensures a consistent format that guarantees documents will be readable on any computer and any edition of Microsoft Office. Those abilities will improve both the effectiveness and efficiency of content creation.

However, for the high-end SharePoint users who need SharePoint tailored to them like a fine Italian suit, Office 365’s offering is just too constricted to meet their highly-dynamic and fluid needs. That’s where SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server add significant value and flexibility, whether you choose to host it yourself or contract with a SharePoint hosting services provider.  While self-hosting may seem attractive initially, the high capital expenditures associated with it make the use of third party companies an extremely appealing option.

Ultimately, SharePoint hosting depends on the need of the business. Office 365 is very convenient if just a basic level SharePoint platform is needed and you don’t mind writing a monthly check to Microsoft.  Self-hosting may be ideal if you’re set up for “build-it-yourself” — which is to say you’ve already invested in an IT infrastructure, training and staff, and have limited scalability requirements. In between, however, is SharePoint hosting outsourced to a third party, which preserves your capital dollars and keeps your infrastructure costs variable.  It also allows you to customize to the hilt, scale rapidly, and sleep well knowing that your servers are in a secure data center with 24x7x365 oversight.  Plus, you get access to significant resources, namely a talented staff of SharePoint hosting experts.

So, with self-hosting and Microsoft Office 365 available, you’ll find a good fit if your flexibility needs are at either of the extremes on the flexibility spectrum. However, for those who find themselves in between two extremes, hosted SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server are still the perfect match.

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