Office 365 Evangelist

So I have been very busy moving clients to Office 365, traveling for speaking engagements (sounds much more prestigious that it sounds) and balancing a home life to be able to blog regularly. So this is a recap of numerous Office 365 (and other) updates over the last couple weeks.

First off, this coming Tuesday, May 29^th at 8pm GMT is the second Office 365 International User Group meeting. I encourage you to attend if you have any interest in Office 365, please go here to get the Lync meeting invite: http://home.office365evangelist.com/Pages/Office365UserGroup.aspx

Here is our schedule for the second meeting:

All times GMT

8:00pm Meeting start…small discussions until we get everyone connected

8:15pm Website Unveiling

8:30pm Deployment Pitfalls Open Discussion

9:00pm Vendor Spotlight – Office365answers.com – Brett Hill

9:30 pm Open discussion

Rene Modery, a Microsoft Office 365 MVP has blogged about some recent news for Office 365, please read: http://modery.net/office-365-links-of-the-week-25-may-2012/. Rene is also the driving force behind the Office 365 International User Group Web Site deployment. He is a great SharePoint resource and encourage you keep up with his blog and twitter feed!

Here is some great info from Loryan Strant, another Microsoft Office 365 MVP, about the Partner Access Licenses (PAL) for Office 365 SharePoint Online, http://thecloudmouth.com/2012/05/23/microsoft-increases-partner-access-licenses-for-sharepoint-online/ These PAL licenses enable a Office365/SharePoint Online customer the ability to allow access to internal SharePoint Online sites for external resources such as Joint Venture, Partners, or customers that need internal access to sites. Loryan as an Office 365 has some great information so I encourage you to read his blog regularly.

Speaking of Loryan, he co-authored a book you should check it out, http://blogs.perficient.com/microsoft/2012/05/microsoft-office-365-mvps-publish-book-on-cloud-migration/

The Exchange Deployment Assistant tool has now been updated to support Exchange 2003, 2007 and 2010 with the Hybrid Deployment Wizard included with Exchange 2010 SP2, http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/05/23/exchange-server-deployment-assistant-update-for-exchange-2010-hybrid-deployments-with-office-365.aspx

Here is a link to my post about my trip to the Microsoft San Antonio, TX Datacenter!

The Denver Broncos had the first official Team Activities (OTA) that both the players and coaches can be involved in this past week. While these are voluntarily workouts in the off-season, only two Broncos players on the current signed roster did not participate. This really marks the first time the future Hall Of Fame QB Peyton Manning, is able to work with the entire team and coaching staff! This is the first step to my Broncos on the way to New Orleans on February 2013 for the Super Bowl!

My little girl graduated from Kindergarten on May 22^nd I am very proud but starting to feel old at the same time!

I am one happy Broncos fan today, the Broncos have landed Peyton Manning to be our QB.  To have a QB of Peyton’s status is great for Denver!  Really not since John retires have we had a certified #1 top flight QB in Denver!  This changes everything, we are not rebuilding anymore, we are reloading!  I know that this move cost Tim Tebow his place with Denver, and while I totally appreciate Tebow the man, Tebow the QB was, in my opinion, not going to take us to the the promised land, the Super Bowl!

Tebow, and the Defense got us into the playoffs and won us the game against the Steelers, but Tebow can not take us any further.  I do not think Elway was lying when he said Tim would be the Starting QB going into Training Camp next year; but when an opportunity to add one of the top 5 QBs all time it became a no-brainer to go after Manning with full force.  It is all about winning now, and not hoping we can win and Tebow can improve at QB.  I wish Tebow much success in the NFL and hope he succeeds, but for me getting Manning is one of the best moves of the Elway Broncos Executive moves, not sure how he could top this other than being able to raise the Lombardi Trophy and say “This one’s for Mr.B”

So I think that Tebow must be traded for two reasons:

1. The Broncos need to let the circus leave town.  We cannot let the Tebowmaniacs start-up the first INT Manning throws or after a Broncos loss.

2. Tebow will be better off working on his game with a team that trades for him.  Tebow was not the choice of the current Broncos brain trust.  He deserves to go to a team who are 100% behind him and Denver is not that place.  Manning wants all the practice reps, and so to keep Tebow would hurt his developement.

GREAT MOVE ELWAY!  The Drive, The Helicopter, and now the Signing!

GO BRONCOS

Little Cartoon from the great Drew Litton (@drewlitton) to summarize today’s events http://www.drewlitton.com/categories-2/football/2012/03/19/elways-day-at-the-office/

The thud you heard Saturday night was the Broncos falling out of the playoffs!  To say the Patriots won, would be an understatement, they pretty much destroyed the Broncos.  I don’t want to dwell on the loss or the end of the season!  The Broncos making the playoffs at all this season was beyond what anyone believed would happen coming from a 4 win season in 2010.  While they didn’t start this season very good, 1-4, they came on with a 7-1 record in the middle of the season before ending on an 0-3 record.  Most credit the winning to Tebow, but this is a team game and the defense, the running game and special teams all contributed to the turn around.

So by making the playoffs the Broncos energized the entire state!  It was great to see everyone wearing blue and orange and rooting for the team.  I am looking forward to next year and the ability of the team to build on this season and be more consistent and again challenge for the division and conference championships!

GO BRONCOS

Check out my Broncos page at my fairly new website, http://home.office365evangelist.com/Pages/DenverBroncos.aspx

Well we backed into the playoffs yesterday with a horrible game by the passing offense and Tebow!  The rushing offense did good, over 200 yards against a stacked box!  The defense played great allowing only 7 points to KC.  We lost the game 7-3 but due to the Chargers beating the Raiders we won the tie-breakers between the 3 8-8 teams, KC, Charger and us.

So our prize is a home playoff game against the Steelers!  I think we need to put in Brady Quinn as the QB for the playoff game!  He will give us, in my opinion, the best chance to win.  The Steelers defense is ranked #1 in the NFL.  We need to be a balanced attack and with Tebow only hitting 6 of 22 passes does not cut it!  I know it probably won’t happen but to have a chance we need a change at QB!

My problem with Tebow as a passer is that it seems he must see the receiver open BEFORE he will release the ball.  This does not work in the NFL, he needs to anticipate a receiver coming out of a cut and delivering the ball to where the receiver will be.  This is why our passing game has been so bad.  Maybe this will change with more work in the off-season, but I don’t think it will.  It seems he has always been this way and because if the high level of skilled personnel he has had compared to the defenses he faced in college it was not an issue.  But now if the NFL where everyone is an all-american and has top level skills it magnifies any minor issues!