Yearly Archives - 2018

Three Azure solutions to SMB problems: The first rule of Azure is you don’t sell Azure

Different MSP's out there embrace the cloud to more or less extent. Most providers are doing Office 365 nowadays, but Azure (or IaaS solutions like it) is still nebulous or even a little scary: Some providers feel threatened by services like Azure, because deploying and managing on-premises servers still makes...
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Showdown: Exchange Active Sync vs. Office 365 MDM vs. Intune (MDM and MAM)

The Microsoft 365 platform offers customers not one, not two, but three distinct Mobile Device Management solutions (well, technically four, as we'll see). In my experience, most small business customers will be fine with nothing more than a well configured Exchange Active Sync policy, requiring basics like a pass code,...
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Deploying Microsoft Office applications using Microsoft 365 Business (and Intune)

Microsoft 365 Business is an excellent subscription--the best bundle available for the money in my opinion (in the SMB space).  One of the benefits of this subscription is the ease of deployment for Office 365 Business (the desktop apps)--shaving precious time off any new PC setups. It is a trivial...
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Exciting: Teams sites now visible in SharePoint admin center!

I just ran across this and had to share. I'm sure it was previously announced somewhere and I've just been behind the times on reading up, BUT--there are new Admin center updates coming soon to a tenant near you, and... THE NEW SHAREPOINT ADMIN CENTER EXPOSES SITES CREATED VIA MICROSOFT TEAMS!!! Yes, I...
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Configure alerts for your 365 Tenant from the Security & Compliance Center

If you have an Office 365 or Microsoft 365 subscription, then you should check out the Security & Compliance Center--there are plenty of tools in here to help you step up your game. Generally speaking, nothing is really configured by default, so if you want to be secure or compliant,...
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How to migrate from Windows Server Active Directory to Azure AD and Microsoft 365 Business (including Teams) in 5 easy steps

Microsoft 365 Business is a very compelling platform for the small business, particularly those that are "born in the cloud," or, those who have shed most of their on-premises server weight already, by moving their line of business apps to cloud-based alternatives. I can't tell you how many clients I...
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Windows Server 2019, Windows Server Essentials 2019, Office 2019 and other 2019 Microsoft products for the SMB

So the 2019 lineup of products are basically all here now--Office 2019, Windows Server 2019, Exchange Server 2019, etc.  Now with regard to the SMB space, I would usually be recommending that most organizations, especially very small sized business of 25 users or less, be looking toward the Microsoft 365...
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12 Steps you can take to up your Office 365 Security & Compliance game

I don't mean to oversimplify things here. This is not a comprehensive guide or anything like that. Every organization has different goals and business objectives, and depending on your industry, etc., you could have very different compliance regulations or whatever, that you need to consider. My goal is just to...
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Understanding Email authentication (SPF, DKIM and DMARC) in Office 365 Exchange Online

For a long time now, we administrators have had the ability to provide email authentication for our customers using SPF, DKIM and DMARC. However, an embarrassingly low percentage of us actually take advantage of these tools. That means it is fairly trivial business for a third party to spoof messages...
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