Office 2016 for Mac is now available

Office 365 subscribers get early access to Office 2016 for Mac Office 2016 for Mac is now available Download Now What's New Unmistakably Office Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac features a redesigned Ribbon menu similar to the Windows and iPad® versions. You can navigate your Word, Excel and PowerPoint files with familiar Mac OS Multi-Touch gestures. And it's all sharper and clearer than ever on your Retina display. Your best work anywhere, any time Access your documents whenever you need them, with OneDrive for Business, SharePoint and Dropbox for Business integration. Use state‑of‑the‑art tools to create great‑looking documents, analyse data and present with confidence. Made for teamwork No more sending attachments back and forth via email. Easily share your files with others, then edit them simultaneously in Word, PowerPoint or OneNote. Plus, Office preserves your content and formatting across all devices for seamless collaboration. Download Now

Office for iPad success - topping the charts

As predicted last week, Microsoft released Office for iPad app, and to less fanfare, updated their Office for iPhone app too.

iPad
Looking at the UK charts, the iPad apps have been a huge success, current filling the top 3 spaces on the 'Top Fee iPad Apps' chart

Which is great news, but the free app only provides view access on the iPad.  The better news is that they seem to be doing well on the "In App Purchases" too.

To get the unlock the full functionality for these apps you either need an existing Office 365 subscription, or sign up as a new user through the app @ £79.99 for Office 365 Home.

On the "Top Grossing iPad Apps" charts, which tracks the "in app purchases" Microsoft Word is ranked 7th.  Considering that places 1 - 6 are given to gaming behemoths such as the Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans, this is a great result.

Excel ranks at 22 and PowerPoint does not appear on this chart, however this is misleading as subscribing to any one of these unlocks all three.

iPhone

It has been less well publicised, but the update to the Office application on the iPhone, Microsoft Office Mobile, has also had a major change.

Previously this required an Office 365 subscription to use, however the update has fully unlocked this for all users, for free.  Combined with a free OneDrive account, this is a great way to access, view, edit and create content on the move.  

Again, looking at the UK charts, the Microsoft Office Mobile app is place 3rd, which can only be more great news for Microsoft.

This all shows a clear need for a top quality, consistent, productivity solution for all devices, if only we could have had it last year.

#Office365 Information and Free Trial Options

Start a free trial of Office 365 using the links below.

End of the Line for XP....and Office 2003

Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 Support Ends April 8, 2014

Check out the following link for information on;

• Why this is happening, 

• What it means for you
  

• How can you avoid this impacting your business 

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/endofsupport.aspx

 

 

Office 365 cost calculator / price calculator uk

Office 365 Cost Calculator / Price Calculator uk, office 365  ROI TCO total cost of ownership

Google Apps vs Office 365 Cost / Price comparison UK

The two big hitters in the Cloud productivity market are Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365, but which is most suitable for you?  See the feature and cost comparison below.

Microsoft Office 365 (trial)

Google Apps

Microsoft SBS is Dead

SBS RIP - SBS Axed

It's true, at the time of posting Microsoft have decided to axe their portfolio of SBS (Small Business Server) products. 

The current incarnation, Small Business Server 2011, will continue to be available for most of 2013, but after that it will be no more.

SBS essentials will die,
SBS Standard will die,
and SBS Premium will die.

Microsoft have been repeating a mantra insisting that their coud suite, Office 365,will provide everything that a small or medium size company would need and more, but is not right for everyone and we want choice.

As a reseller, support company and advocate of Microsofts Cloud services, a large volume of our business is still with the SBS family of products.
So if SBS is dead, what can we do?
The on-premise alternative to SBS is to buy the separate Microsoft licenses - Windows Server and Exchange.

At the very least (when following best practise) you will need two Windows Server licenses and one Exchange license. The approximate license cost for a 15 user company would be about £2,750.00. This compares to a cost of approx' £1,400.00 for the equivalent SBS software.

So, why do customers continue to buy SBS over Office365? Simply because it works, it is affordable and it is tried and tested over many years. For the same reasons, they don't yet trust Office365.

I think that there is no doubt that Microsoft is the clear market leader in the small and medium business server market, largely thanks to SBS.  So it seems very strange to risk this dominant position to go toe to toe with Google Apps and other cloud offerings.

They key here is choice, if customers are faced with no choice, even the most ardent Microsoft fan is going to at least look at the competition to see how it compares.  Microsoft may find that some customers who would never stray from SBS will suddlenly shop around for the best cloud offering and they won't all buy into the Microsoft dream.

And up it goes again!

Further to the news that Microsofts Cloud productivity service "Office 365" has had a considerable reduction in subscription cost, we can announce that the price is about to go up again (for UK customers)!

Effective July 1st, the cost of the Office 365 suites will increase by up to 21%. 

Microsoft have reported that "these changes are due to sustained currency differences in the EU/EFTA region between Euro and Non Euro currencies." 

These increases are not limited to the Cloud service and similar changes have been annonced accross all lines of Microsoft software products.

Office 365 price drops!

There have been considerable price drops accross the Office 365 product range. 

For example you will save 20% on the cost of Exchange Online service - Was £3.25 // Now £2.60 per user per month

Get a free trial : https://portal.microsoftonline.com/partner/partnersignup.aspx?type=Trial&id=8b1ae17f-78a6-45c1-a8c3-02b2a7dae3fe&msppid=3347081

here is is from the horses mouth:

byKirk Koenigsbauer 

on March 14

Customers continue to give us fantastic feedback on Office 365. Since we launched last summer, we've been happy to serve great companies like JetBlue, Patagonia, Campbell Soup Company, Groupe Marie Claire, and Tata Steel Europe. We're regularly delivering new value in the service, releasing updates now monthly, and recently brought Office 365 to another 22 new markets to grow our global footprint to 64 geographies - with more to come!

As we rapidly add customers, the cost to run Office 365 becomes more efficient. This is the beauty of the cloud where we can deliver economies of scale through our worldwide data centers and economies of skill with our engineers, administrators, and support teams operating the service.
With these efficiencies, we're able pass on savings to make it even more affordable for customers of all sizes to move to Office 365. So, I'm thrilled to announce that we're lowering the prices of most of our Office 365 for enterprise plans by up to 20%. These changes are effective today at Office365.com for new and renewing direct customers.

We are also excited to make pricing changes to Office 365 for education. In line with our longstanding commitment to education, we will make our "A2" service plan free to not only students, but also to faculty and staff. A2 includes the core capabilities of Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync and the Office Web Applications. Exchange Online and Lync Online are available today for academic institutions, and we'll launch the full Office 365 for education service starting this summer. You can get more information on our Office 365 for education offering here.

I want to thank all our customers and partners for making the last eight months a great start for Office 365.

SBS 2011 Essentials and Office 365 - Video 3

The third of 3 really good video showing how SBS 2011 Essentials and Office 365 link together

Videos in this series:

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

SBS 2011 Essentials and Office 365 - Video 2

The second of 3 really good video showing how SBS 2011 Essentials and Office 365 link together

Videos in this series:

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

SBS 2011 Essentials and Office 365 - Video 1

The first of 3 really good video showing how SBS 2011 Essentials and Office 365 link together



Videos in this series:
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3

Office 365 Price Calculator for the UK

Here is our UK Office 365 Price Calculator showing monthly and yearly costs of all services.  Just press "CLICK TO EDIT", type in the number of users that you need and the rest will look after itself.




Please get in contact if you are interested in going ahead with one of these services.

Or try the trial for free: Get your Office 365 Free trial

Office 365 Cost Calculator

Office 365 Cost Calculator 


 365 Cost Calculator / Price Calculator uk, office 365  ROI TCO total cost of ownership
 

Microsoft have released a really useful tool for calculating your monthly outgoings on the Office 365 platform. You can mix and match your requirements including different E Plans, Kiosk workers, Professional Plus/Exchange Online/Lync/Share-Point subscriptions and other additional services.

Take a look here: http://www.microsoft.com/business/office365tools/estimator/cost-estimator.aspx?culture=en-gb&data=gb

Don't forget that you can sign up to a free 30 day trial of the E3 plan here: 

https://portal.microsoftonline.com/partner/partnersignup.aspx?type=Trial&id=8b1ae17f-78a6-45c1-a8c3-02b2a7dae3fe&msppid=334708

SBS 2011 Essentials: What is required?

SBS 2011 Essentials: What is required?

As detailed in my previous post, SBS 2011 Essentials is a really cost effective way for small businesses (up to 25 users) to provide a comprehensive network solution when using Office 365, providing great solutions for remote working, file access, back-up, security, printing, etc.

Below I have highlighted the required hardware and approximate costs for implementing a solution of this type.

Potential solution

PowerEdge T110 Tower Server                                           £1,000.00

Intel Xeon X3430, Quad Core, 2.40GHz Processor

8GB Memory, (4x2GB)

RAID 1

2x 500GB, Hard Drive (Offering approx. 500Gb of disk space)

Microsoft SBS2011 Essentials (No user licenses required)

Dell 3 Year Basic Hardware Warranty

Firewall (SonicWALL TZ100)                                              £300.00

http://tinyurl.com/6kvfbxm

24 Port Switch                                                                       £190.00

http://tinyurl.com/5vw2faa

1500va UPS                                                                           £320.00

http://tinyurl.com/6y2kvsh

2x 500Gb USB Hard-disks for Back-up                              £100.00 (£50.00 each)

http://tinyurl.com/6zmjsxc

3 Year SSL Certificate for Secure Remote Access            £150.00 (£50.00 per year)

Blending Office 365 & SBS 2011 Essentials

Office 365 & SBS 2011 Essentials:

The perfect blend for small business

Although Office 365 provides a comprehensive set of features for all sizes of business, there are some IT issues which still need addressing.  Below I have listed some common concerns:

File Data:

Although SharePoint Online is a great tool for collaboration it is not ideal as a file server so:

·         If our file data is not stored in the cloud, where do we keep it?

·         If our file data is not stored in the cloud, how do we back-it up?

·         If our file data is not stored in the cloud, how do we access it remotely?

Network/Remote Access

·         How can I provide internet access and network connectivity for my internal staff?

·         How can I provide remote staff access to applications on their office computers?

·         How can we provide a secure, simple to use printing solution?

Applications

·         How can we ensure that our ‘line of business’ applications (Sage, etc) are available for all users? How can remote users access this?

·         How can we back-up the data for these line of business applications?

Security/Access

·         Can we increase our control over user security and access to our services?

Blending

For the majority of business, it is likely that at least one of these issues will mean that a local server of some sort is still essential. This is where a blended approach makes perfect sense.

If your company has 25 or less employees and you are interested in the benefits offed by Office 365 then SBS 2011 Essentials is the perfect solution. This will provide you with a low cost local server which is specifically designed to integrate with Office 365 and provide the functionality and guaranteed uptime of hosted services with the security, management and performance with an ‘on-premise’ solution.

SBS 2011 Essentials will provide all of the following

Integration; SBS 2011 essentials is designed to integrate with Office 365 seamlessly, allowing you to make local changes and for these to be replicated to the cloud automatically.  For example, if you delete a local user account the associated Office 365 account will also be removed.  It also provides ‘Single sign-on’ meaning that users only have to log in once, and will have access to all of their local and hosted services.

Active Directory; to help you to manage your user accounts, permissions, passwords, etc, linked seamlessly with Office 365. 

Files and Folders; can be stored, secured and backed-up locally or remotely  and linked directly to your SharePoint Online service for collaboration.

3^rd party Application Support; allows you to install your important business applications onto a fast, reliable and secure local infrastructure

Remote Access Services; allowing users to view files and folders remotely and access applications installed on the server

Cost Effective; there are no user licenses (CAL’s) required in SBS Essentials 2011, just the cost of the hardware and the server license.

In summary, if you have 25 users or less and are interested in moving to Office 365, you should definitely consider a blended approach using SBS 2011 essentials.

More information can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/products/servers/Pages/windows_sbs_2011_essentials_overview.aspx

Or email Office365UK@gmail.com