Office 365 Public Roadmap

There was a major announcement today for Office 365 customers. Microsoft has now publishing the Office 365 roadmap publically here - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/office-365-roadmap-FX104343353.aspx. This is huge and been long awaited. This solution will allow enterprise customers to review the roadmap and prepare for change. I say this make the Office 365 cloud “predictable”!!!

Additionally here is an announcement about the new Roadmap site and the First Release program - http://blogs.office.com/2014/06/19/improving-visibility-to-service-updates/?wt_mc_id=publicroadmapsocial. The First Release program was announced at the SharePoint Conference and it is a new solution that allows customers to opt into a program so they can receive new features and capabilities quicker. You do not have the option to select on a feature-by-feature basis; you are either in the program or are not.

Lync Online, Exchange Online and SharePoint Online Bandwidth Planning and Estimation

Bandwidth planning comes up a lot with customers who are coming to the cloud. Most customers are initially concerned with understanding Exchange Online bandwidth. There are definitely new email traffic patterns that must be considered (especially if you are retaining the MX record on-premise). This can be remediated pretty quickly.

However the one that requires even more planning and consideration is Lync Online.

Here is the reference for the Office 365 Internet Bandwidth guide - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh852542.aspx. In this article it has references calculators for both Exchange and Lync bandwidth calculators. The Exchange bandwidth tool is fairly straight forward.

The real reason why I am writing this blog is for Lync Online Bandwidth estimation. Today Microsoft does not have a Lync Online bandwidth tool; there is only the on-premises tool. However we have always said when using this on-premises tool if you:

1. Treat Lync Online as your Lync server deployment.

2. Then treat all end users as “external” users.

3. Then model out all the locations for where you have end users.

The first 30 minutes of the Lync Online How to Estimate Bandwidth presentation (http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Lync-Conference/Lync-Conference-2014/ONLI301) at the recent Lync Conference 2014 has a great discussion of how you should look and understand the traffic. There are several considerations you need to account for when estimating this traffic. I highly recommend sitting down and watching this session.

If you feel I missed on mentioning SharePoint Online, as you may see here - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh852542.aspx - that there is a tool in the works. However if you are a SharePoint person, you can look at many of the existing SharePoint on-premises planning tools, plan out your content acquisition strategy and look at how much content you have today. It comes down to knowing how many upload / download transactions you expect to have at peak times and what is the average file sizes. There can be other considerations for geographically dispersed organizations that again are working with large files. Organizations can look at their current SharePoint on-premise logs to plan.

Office 365: How we run it

My job requires me to talk with a lot of prospective customers about Office 365. One of the biggest tasks I have is to explain to large enterprise customers how we actually do Exchange, SharePoint and Lync in the cloud. Many customers come to the table with a lot of know about Exchange, SharePoint and Lync. They have a lot of operational experience for supporting these products on-premises and they want to know how Microsoft does it? Not to say they do not believe us; but I get the question a lot “show me”. Personally I am not on the operations team however I have to take customers through a lot of conversations to demonstrate to them how we deliver on such a scale.
There are actually some really good presentations from the past Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC) and SharePoint Conferences which explain how we do it. These discussions cover our operations support, incident response, security, networking, farm provisioning, etc.
I high recommend you take a look at the following sessions:

• Behind the curtain: How we run Exchange Online – MEC 2014 - http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MEC/2014/ARC301
• Making changes to Exchange Online at high scale – MEC 2014 - http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MEC/2014/DMI312
• Optimizing Exchange Online for efficiencies and snappy experiences – MEC 2014 - http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MEC/2014/ARC312
• Secure, Reliable and Evergreen Service at Massive Scale: Lessons learned from Running SharePoint Online – SharePoint Conference 2014 - http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/SPC279
• Office 365 service communications to customers – SharePoint Conference 2014 - http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/SPC238
• Office 365 Change Management – SharePoint Conference 2014 - http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/SPC289
• How We Do It: Operating SharePoint Online – SharePoint Conference 2012 – yes it is from two years ago but still awesome to watch - http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2012/SPC122
• How We Do It: Building and Managing SharePoint Online – SharePoint Conference 2012 – yes it is from two years ago but still awesome to watch - http://channel9.msdn.com/events/SharePoint-Conference/2012/SPC121

New Office 365 Security Whitepaper

There is a new Whitepaper called “The Microsoft Approach to Compliance in the Cloud”. It is really good and you should check it out - http://blogs.technet.com/b/trustworthycomputing/archive/2014/04/22/the-microsoft-approach-to-compliance-in-the-cloud.aspx

Office 365 Federation Updates

There was some good information in this blog that really cleared the air on a few topics which I talk a lot about with customers - http://blogs.office.com/2014/03/06/announcing-support-for-saml-2-0-federation-with-office-365/

A lot of times I am asked, can authentication federation with Office 365 can be done with something other than Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) and Active Directory (AD)? The answer has always been yes as there are other third-party STS servers that have been supported plus other LDAP directories are supported.

However with this recent announcement this story has been cleaned up a bit. Here are the high level facts you need to know:

• Active Directory (AD) can be used to synchronize your directories to Office 365. You can use DirSync to do this. Everyone knows this. If you have multiple AD forests, you will need to use Forefront Identity Manager (FIM).
• LDAP directories can also be synchronized with Office 365. Again you will need to use FIM to support this. Recommend that you talk with your licensing person at Microsoft. Remember a full FIM CAL is not needed when all you are using is the FIM synchronization service. I am not a licensing expert on FIM so I recommend you double check.
• SAML 2.0 is now offered as an authentication federation option now with Office 365. This allows a whole host of STS identity providers to authenticate with Office 365. The important note is that SAML 2.0 support is for “passive authentication” scenarios which as you may know is used for browser based authentication.
• Office 365 has supported and will continue to support WS-Federation and WS-Trust to support ADFS and other WS-* identity providers.
• So what about the Rich Clients? When we are talking rich clients we are talking such client applications as Lync client, Office Desktop clients (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc.), etc. In the Microsoft Office 365 world, it is not just browser only, there are tons of other clients that can to connect to Office 365 service. Authentication using these rich clients is referred to as “active authentication” which currently requires WS-Trust. If you want to have federated authentication and you need to support rich clients, you will need to use an STS identity provider that supports WS-Federation and WS-Trust. You will need to use either Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) or a qualified solutions partner that can support this level of authentication. A list of third-party approved providers is listed here - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj679342.aspx and information about the program for getting third-party qualified is listed here - http://blogs.office.com/2014/01/30/the-works-with-office-365-identity-program-now-streamlined/.
• So is the Rich Client scenario ever going to support SAML 2.0 and Passive Authentication? The answer is YES. It is reflected in the public roadmap of these two blogs http://blogs.office.com/2014/02/10/multi-factor-authentication-for-office-365/ and http://blogs.office.com/2014/03/06/announcing-support-for-saml-2-0-federation-with-office-365/. There will be an update to Office 2013 client applications, in the year 2014, which will allow Office 2013 client applications to support SAML 2.0 (or Shibboleth) passive authentication.

These changes in Office 365 federation authentication are great changes to supporting more enterprise scenarios.

Office for iPad and Office Mobile

There was a major announcement for Office 365 this week that I think almost everyone heard about this week. iPad for Office is now available. For business Office 365 business customers (and consumers) this was long awaited and a proof to world that Microsoft is making a commitment to be a devices and services company. Here are the big facts that everyone should know:

• Office for iPad supports Word, PowerPoint and Excel.
• Office for iPad for free allows you to read, view and present.
• Office for iPad subscription service with Office 365 allows you to create and edit.
• Office Mobile for iPhone and Android phones is now free, just like on a Windows Phone. No Office 365 subscription is needed.
• Office for iPad when creating and editing will ensure that content and formatting will be maintained. This is really important for business scenarios to ensure the integrity of documents as a record.
• Remember all this gets hooked into OneDrive and OneDrive for Business. This means your documents follow you everywhere. I will have to say that OneDrive for Business has literally changed the way I work. When I work with files on my laptop on in OneDrive or any SharePoint Online document library, I have access to all my recently edited Office files on my phone. So when I am on the run, I always have access to what I have been working on. Plus all my OneDrive for Business files accessible from Office Mobile / Office for iPad. Office is not longer just on my PC, it is everywhere I am working across devices. All the Office files (and other file types) are managed in the corporation and are discoverable.

I am telling you. Office Mobile / Office for iPad / OneDrive for Business is literally a game-changer in how your business people work across devices.

Then when you start looking at all the Lync Apps available on Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad and Android you can really see how productive people can really become.

http://blogs.office.com/2014/03/27/announcing-the-office-you-love-now-on-the-ipad/

SharePoint Online Unlimited Storage

I have not had a lot of time to blog about the most recent SharePoint Conference. There was a lot of good things presented. With my focus on Office 365 and SharePoint Online, the announcement that gave me the most excitement was that Site Collection storage was being expanded to 1 TB with the ability to purchase unlimited storage - http://blogs.office.com/2014/03/14/sharepoint-online-announces-1tb-site-collections-and-unlimited-tenant-storage-scale/

When I heard this I was blown away. We now have a similar solution for SharePoint Online, like we have for Exchange Online. Customers no longer have to worry about how much data they have. Microsoft Office 365 can hold it all.