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The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) has finally certified Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s respective public cloud services with the highest level of compliance clearance. CSRA, a provider that offers IT services specifically to government agencies, also reached the long-awaited FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board (JAB) Provisional Authority to Operate (P-ATO) clearance.
Microsoft today turned on a new “external groups” collaboration feature in its Yammer enterprise social networking service.
The external groups feature permits Yammer collaboration with people outside an organization. It can be used today by those who have Yammer group creation privileges, according to Microsoft’s announcement. The creation of Yammer external groups requires approval by a group administrator.
Yammer Enterprise edition is needed to use the external groups feature. It doesn’t work with Yammer Basic.
Security
Security controls are enabled through Exchange Transport Rules for configuring Exchange Online, according to an Office 365 support article. It doesn’t work for premises-based Exchange Transport Rules if an organization lacks an Office 365 tenant.
Microsoft described a new “reporting portal” that’s rolling out as early as today for Office 365 subscribers.
This reporting portal shows user activity within the Office 365 Admin Center, which is the new management portal for organizations that Microsoft began turning on for its subscribers earlier this month. The older “classic” management portal is being replaced by the Office 365 Admin Center.
This first release of the new reporting portal, which shows data in the form of charts and graphs, just displays some Office 365 user activity information at present. The types of user activities that can be seen in this release include:
Even if you only use the Exchange Server and Microsoft Office services, making the jump to Office 365 will be well worth the investment for your enterprise.
Office 365 adoption continues to gain momentum and Microsoft is adding new features all the time. Even so, there are still plenty of organizations that haven’t transitioned to Office 365. Believe me, I get it. Some organizations may have concerns about cost, privacy, compatibility or may just feel as though they do not have a justifiable need for Office 365 — and that’s OK. Even so, there are two key areas in which Office 365 will probably be of a huge benefit to your organization even if you choose not to go “all in” and leverage every available Office 365 component.
Microsoft has improved the user profile feature of its Delve solution that’s offered with Office 365 subscriptions.
The improved profile now shows a user’s contact information, photo and recent activities. It also shows shared documents plus the people the user works with in an organization, according to Microsoft’s announcement today.
The updated profile feature will gradually reach Office 365 subscribers. It’ll be available to “first release” testers “over the next several weeks.” The general rollout is expected by Q2 of this year.
Converged infrastructure has various meanings, depending on the supplier and IT professionals. For Gridstore, the company has decided to focus on offering hyperconverged infrastructure for Hyper-V-only environments. The company, which offers an appliance consisting of Intel-based multicore servers and scalable flash storage, last week said it has raised $19 million in equity finding from Acero Capital, GGV Capital and ONSET Ventures.
Microsoft has started rolling out its lightweight project management tools, Planner preview to Office 365 First Release customers, a new experience in Office 365 that offers a simple, visual way to organize teamwork. Although primarily designed for business use, Office 2016 users can also use Planner to plan vacations, creative projects and more
In addition to task management, Planner makes it easy groups share files, discuss workloads, your team to create plans, organize and assign work, and conduct chat sessions. Think of it as a virtual boardroom for team meetings
The Planner preview is available to First Release customers who have Office 365 Enterprise E1, Office 365 Enterprise E3, Office 365 Enterprise E4, Office 365 Enterprise E5, Office 365 Education, Office 365 Education E3, Office 365 Education E4, Office 365 Business Essentials and Office 365 Business Premium
As 2015 comes to a close, it’ll be remembered as a year full of surprises. Who thought back in April that the New York Mets would make the playoffs (along with the Chicago Cubs) and somehow make it to the World Series? While Microsoft was on pace to have a good year when 2014 was coming to a close, it was hard to imagine Redmond would gain such a high level of respect and dialog among so many longstanding critics.
If Goldman Sachs’ mea culpa last week wasn’t enough, when I picked up this week’s issue of Barron’s magazine, which is my Saturday morning ritual, I glanced at the cover and saw the headline, “The New Microsoft,” with Satya Nadella’s photo plastered on it. Usually when a company is featured on the cover of Barron’s, it’s because it has determined its stock is going to soar — or crater. In this case it was the former. Noting that since Nadella has taken over, Microsoft’s shares are up 48 percent — 67 percent if you go back to the day his predecessor Steve Ballmer announced he was “retiring,” it has emerged again as a growth company whose shares could jump another 30 percent. The article suggests, while Amazon’s AWS cloud business is Microsoft’s most significant competitor, the growth of Azure will give it a run for its money. At the same time, the author suggests Microsoft is a beneficiary of Amazon’s growth. In April, Amazon disclosed AWS’s revenues and profits for the first time, and its shares have since grown 70 percent.