My IT year 2015

Following a great example from my former colleague Bas van Kaam, today, December 31st 2015, seems like the ultimate day of the year to acknowledge this year’s accomplishments.

Looking back on the year I realize the list is longer than I firstly imagined, already gone to oblivion…. So let’s go.

  • I was invited by Microsoft Academy to create two sets of exam questions on Office 365 for their People Readiness Health Check program. So the good old Dutch Microsoft Office 365 and Learning communities still knew where to find me on Aruba!
  • Microsoft Trinidad (MS HQ for Caribbean) invited me to become one of their “P-Sellers”, P-Technical Sales Professional, quit an honor! Even got myself an @microsoft.com mail address J.
  • I founded the Caribbean Office 365 User Group @o365caribug together with Trinidad based Akinola McLean and Jamaica based Roland Lattery.
  • With the team of Inova Solutions, my current employer, we delivered my creation “The Office 365 Theatre Play” for the 4th time. Location: Courtleigh Auditorium, Kingston, Jamaica. Yah Man! Positive vibes!
  • Time to take on some newly released exams as Microsoft published the Azure Infrastructure exams “Implementing” and “Architecting” Azure Infrastructure Solutions. Pass on both occasions.
  • Maybe the highlight of the year was the organizing of the Trinidad TechDays 2015. Thanks you Inova Solutions for making it possible to do a 3-day event:
  • On the first day we did once again our “Office 365 Theatre Play”.
  • Followed by the first official meeting of the Caribbean Office365 User Group.
  • The second day was all about moving away from Windows Server 2003 as the product ended life on July 14th (R.I.P.). Thanks to Darren Mohammed, Stephen Agard and Akinola McLean for doing your sessions.
  • Global AZURE Bootcamp on Day 3! Actually the whole 3-day event came to life out of this worldwide event. We hosted one of the over 140 locations in world where people were doing a whole Saturday of Azure, Azure, Azure. Thanks Basil Sands (flew in from the Bahamas where we did a huge Azure Project together), Yanek, Daryl, Stephen, Akinola for doing your sessions.
  • Microsoft Ignite, Chicago. Although no role this year as MCT Ambassador of MCT Proctor, it was great to be there and meet all of you who I met there. Thanks for being there!
  • In my role as Microsoft P-TSP and as MCT I delivered MS Cloud Training for the Caribbean Partner Channel. Thanks Microsoft Trinidad for the opportunity.
  • Inova Solutions became Cloud Solution Provider in July 2015, thanks Inova Solutions (specifically Hans Kruithof, CEO) for enabling me to drive that with you. LSP bye bye, hello CSP!
  • With the Inova team we did a “Cloud…what else?” Roadshow on Antigua and St. Maarten. We chose to do only sessions from the user and business perspective and not technical. The audience had a ball, as if they were watching the best Fireworks show!
  • Took the beta-exam 70-697 Devices & Deployment. Great content with lots of Office 365, Intune, Azure, Onprem, Windows 10, Windows Phone, iOS stuff covered. Have it on your resume, I say.
  • Throughout the year I delivered the complete Server 2012 MCSA Track two times, on the British Virgin Islands and in Belize. A PowerShell training on Bonaire, an Azure Training and an Office365 Training on Curacao. A total of 10 trainings this year, all of them successful. Love being a MCT.

So, now this will be saved for the next generations, ha-ha! And, the only way is up so this is all very promising for 2016. I already know some cool stuff ahead of me but I’ll keep it up my sleeve for now. May your way be up as well, carve out your future, starting tomorrow, January 1st 2016!

Knowledge is Key – Learning is crucial

“You can’t do today’s job with yesterday’s methods and be in business tomorrow”.

 

 

When it comes to IT in Organizations something must shift, if not, it will be like the quote. In my opinion the main source lies with learning, or better said, the lack of learning. There is no organizational conversation on learning as an ongoing process. Best efforts get stuck at the level of “training as needed” and way too often even that gets stuck on the “no time” and/or “no budget” argument.

I pointed out in several other blogposts that the state of current IT is the biggest stop for leveraging modern technologies in organizations. And by that we create so called “shadow IT”, employees will find their own way of trying to do their job, with or without Company IT: Gmail, drop box, WhatsApp, Facebook, flash drives, byod. And, we can do nothing about it on the short term. But we know, lessons learned (?), what the source is. IT is not up to it. IT has barely the knowledge to keep yesterday’s systems running (as we were not learning 5 years ago either) so embracing new technologies while juggling with 7 old balls already? Right, I don’t think so. By the way, when I say “IT”, I do not specifically mean IT Department or IT People, I mean all people and processes that work with and through computers. Managers using a pocket calculator while working in Excel? C’mon!

What will happen if we do nothing? Well, the probable almost certain future is that is stays like this. We came up to here and now like this, it will probably get us through the next 5 years as well (hopefully). So organizations will just keep throwing away money because, hey, hardware and software must be paid. And we’ll just keep on not using what we paid for. Now that’s fine economics, isn’t it? And the only reason that that might work out is that the competition is in exactly the same position. Having the tools while nobody knows how to use them because nobody told them.

Or, we can transform the conversations on the place of IT within the organization. The relevance of IT and how to finally get to the point where IT is a business enabler (Gartner). A good starting point for shifting that conversation is asking the question “What happens with our business when we unplug everything for 72 hours”? Suddenly everybody realizes the relevance of IT for the organization. Now the time has come to take that on seriously.

We’ll have to start creating learning plans. Long term learning plans in a way that ongoing learning will be the standard conversation. Long term learning plans, 3 to 5 years, get less specific as they sit further into the future, we do not know what the future beholds. But by making them nevertheless, time and budget can be allocated and more important, it’s all about transforming that conversation throughout the organization, all layers and all departments deeply involved.

Imagine what would be possible then. On collaboration, communication, productivity, total cost of ownership, return on investment, security, personal development, employee loyalty, customer service and efficiency. The list is endless. Put it in like specific measurable results and you’ll be sorry you did not think of this 10 years ago.

 

Happy learning!

Cloud Adoption, where to start: CEO

This is the third blog in a series on Cloud Adoption and Cloud Migration. Previously I wrote “The GAP between Cloud Migration and Cloud Adoption” and “Office 365 and Bandwidth – Adoption to Cloud Computing“. This one is on Ownership of Cloud Adoption and Ownership of Cloud Migration. As explained in previous mentioned posts Adoption and Migration are two totally different things.

IT Departments are responsible for Cloud Migration(s). It’s about the technical challenges of moving workloads to the Cloud. Ownership of Migration lies with the IT Department, somewhat automatically delegated by the Organization. Not much to discuss here.

Now Cloud Adoption, who has Ownership of that? I have seen a lot of Migrations not yielding the expected results, not because it was a bad Migration but because the Organization did not benefit from it, or even worse, continued “business as usual”. Didn’t even have to do with Cloud Migrations; could be Onprem Exchange, SharePoint, Desktop OS or Office migrations as well. A lot of Organizations run the latest versions of those but still live in the dark ages when it comes to using them. Because nobody in the Organization took Ownership of the Adoption. Mostly that was left to IT Managers. But who listens to IT Managers, not the Sales and Marketing Managers for sure. They are busy. And so any free 1996 Pegasus mail server and mail client could actually do the job. IT should not be owner of the Adoption of features made possible by the Migration. It should work the other way around. First there is a Feature Requirement list made by the Business. Out of that an IT Project/Migration may get started.

That being said, Adoption first, leaves the question of who must be the Owner if not IT. The answer to that is very simple: the CEO. If the CEO is not the Owner of Adoption every IT Manager will set himself up for failure when engaging in whatever Migration. Adoption touches the very heart and nature of the way people work and thus the Organization. If that is not endorsed, empowered and owned by the CEO, well, good luck. All will trickle down into the Organization from the highest management making sure all is in place when the stages of Migration arrive. I have very good experiences with Migrating higher Management first. Let them “Walk the Talk” and show that “all is well”.

Also, when progress stops because of CEO’s are not taking Ownership, Shadow-IT becomes a painful reality. Percentages of users finding their own way to do their job are rising, IT loses yet more control as will the Organization itself. Mobile Devices, Tablets, Notebooks, Drop Box, Skype, OneDrive, unmanaged devices, unmanaged storage, where is the corporate content going? That makes any’s Organizations fear of safety in the Cloud a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it?

To set up that CEO’s come back in control IT Management needs to have good connections with the higher Management. As a Consultant I can’t do much if I’m stuck on the level of IT. IT may understand what direction to go or not, but if higher management speaks a different language then IT is also stuck. This morning I had a one hour conversation on this with the IT Manager of one of my customers. He’s stuck in that exact situation. I could only listen to him and coach him on how to repair the damages of the past in those lines of communication in order for his CEO to get aligned again and put his fist on the table to move forward. I asked him to keep me posted on how that will go.

Another Customer sits at the other side of this. His CEO is enrolled in Azure and they are really moving forward FAST now. The CEO knows nothing about Technology but he was informed in such a way he could endorse and empower the Organization to move in that direction.

Conclusion: Cloud Adoption starts at the CEO!

 

CEO’s, Happy Adopting!!! You really should!

Office 365 and Bandwidth – Adoption to Cloud Computing

Where I live, in The Caribbean, Office 365 is available in most countries, on most islands. However, customers have concerns about bandwidth. So this is my second Blog Post in the context of Adopting to Cloud Computing.

There are some really great options to reduce bandwidth usage but that touches strongly on end user behavior (not that I mind, I’m a huge advocate of serious end user training before moving to the cloud). Of course, working with Office 365 requires a decent Internet Connection at the workplace and maybe even decent 4G (LTE) coverage for the road warriors. You do not need huge speed to be able to do your work. Let’s have a look at what users can do to work effectively in the Cloud without consuming too much bandwidth.

Mail: the first thing people do when coming into the office is check their email (actually, it’s even worse, the first thing people do when they wake up is check their email on their Mobile device to see if there was someone who mailed in the middle of the night). Outlook Web App is so powerful nowadays, I tend to say “who needs Outlook”. There is even an “offline availability” feature. Outlook has the option to not cache emails on the local computer. In either case there is hardly any data flowing over the network. And of course all tips and tricks I wrote down in my Blog post “Mail Senders, Stop doing that” are valid to reduce bandwidth through email.

Lync: now that people are already pretty familiar with the possibility of Video Calls, in a lot of Business conversations the video bit has hardly any contribution. It’s really about awareness and education to make users understand how to use Lync/Skype wisely for conferencing. In Desktop or Application sharing beware what and how to share. It’s better to stage PowerPoint presentations, it is better if participants in the call use Office Online to be on the same page in any Office document during the call. Prepare a Lync meeting like you prepare a real meeting. IM and Presence do not require a great deal of bandwidth.

Yammer: when wisely used, Yammer can eliminate lots of email and even lots of Lync calls. It’s a perfect platform for discussion and information sharing.

SharePoint: for me, SharePoint is the equivalent of Office Online. Work in the browser whenever I can. Using Office Online means no data flows over the network. No downloading and uploading of Office files, they stay put on SharePoint. This is really something users need to get used to. We are all SO used to working in the local installed Office versions. Deadly for working effectively with SharePoint is the use of Windows Explorer: use the browser!!!

OneDrive for Business: of course it’s great we have unlimited storage in OneDrive for Business now but be very careful on Syncing all that content, you do not have unlimited storage on your NotebookJ. And of course Syncing uses Bandwidth…..and it uses Windows Explorer. Luckily in the very near future we can setup “selective syncing”. Personally, I sync nothing. I am always online, if I’m not, I don’t even bother to switch on my PC. I am a road warrior, I travel 50% of my time, spending a lot of time on airports and airplanes and even without syncing I can always do some work when offline. Just a matter of planning.

Office Online: use it! Office Online is THE best thing when it comes to reducing usage of bandwidth. Put your stuff in SharePoint Online and edit/view in Office Online. Brilliant!

 

All of this is no IT Pro Rocket science, it has nothing to do with Migrating to the Cloud. This is all about adoption of end users to use the rich features of The Online Collaboration Suite wisely. That takes time so organizations looking to moving to the Cloud should start at least the awareness process and start planning the necessary Training. Manage expectations when moving to the Cloud.

 

 

 

The GAP between Cloud Migration and Cloud Adoption

Everybody is starting or already on the way of migrating stuff to the Cloud. Business cases revolve around money. Direct cash back. However, Cloud Adoption is very different from Cloud Migration. And actually I believe we do it in the wrong order: we migrate and maybe someday, but not now, we (will try to) adopt.

Let me define Cloud Migration and Cloud Adoption. Cloud migration is about taking a workload currently running in the local network and move that workload to the Cloud. A Mailbox migration to Exchange Online is a perfect example of Cloud Migration. Cloud Adoption is about leveraging features of workloads running in the Cloud which are not available when those workloads run in the local network. Office 365 for example advertises with “Enterprise Grade Features” but moving a Mailbox does not imply those features will be used. And most often they will not be used. So having you mailbox in the Cloud does not mean you do Cloud computing.

Recently I commented on http://www.conceptsearching.com/wp/challenges-in-adopting-cloud/ and my only comment was that this is the consequence of BAD PreSales and BAD Management of Customer Expectations. When we do not put an effort in on Cloud Adoption, the results of Cloud Migration are disappointing and frustrating. Maybe that is the main reason for this report to come out with such statistics.

Mea culpa. Me too, I have been focusing too much on the technical challenges of Migrating workloads to the Cloud. Although, together with that, I have always been evangelizing the powers of the Collaboration Suite; Exchange, Lync, SharePoint, Office, Devices. Then we talk Adoption. To get the full benefits of Cloud, Adoption should be the context and Migration is just content. Migration is only the execution of part of the adoption.

Now that Cloud Migration is no longer “rocket science” and now that the dust has settled, we can redefine Cloud Adoption as a Strategy whereas Cloud Migration was a tactical operation. For Organizations this is GREAT news. It means a huge step in getting IT as a “Business Enabler” instead of a “Cost Center. And for IT Companies and Consultants that is GREAT news too. It means we can engage in longer projects with our Customers! Adopting them to the Cloud and contribute to our Customers in moving their IT forward. Less technical and tactical, more engaging and strategic.

Happy Adopting!!!

Accounts, Identities and mail addresses

Users want to access applications and data that run anywhere, and, they want to run them from anywhere. There is only a very thin line left distinguishing business apps from non-business apps and they all need to be accessible anytime, anyplace, anywhere. That calls for Identity Management which can be very confusing for users. So here is a little explanation on the why, the what and the how.

In the old days we used to logon to our computer using this format:

  • Domain\user
  • Computer\user

Or maybe even without the domain\ or computer\:

  • User (domain user)
  • User (local computer user)

As long as the applications and their data sat on that local computer or in that local Active Directory domain, a logon like this worked perfectly. (Really? No. It uses NetBIOS and that protocol is soooo 1987, but that discussion is out of scope for this article)

The logon identity for a user must now be valid outside of the local computer and the local Active Directory as well. It must identify the user as a unique identity across multiple platforms, preferably: local computer, Active Directory, cloud applications like Office365 and personal applications like Facebook, Gmail, Twitter and the rest of it all.

The format to logon is called User Principal Name and a UPN looks like an email address and that can be very confusing for some users, for example:

NOTE: this is NOT necessarily a mail address! A mail address for this user could be, for example:

If your computer is running Windows 8 (or above) you can logon using a Microsoft Account (a.k.a. LiveID or Hotmail.com or outlook.com account). The format of such an account is always the UPN format and it may or may not correspond to your private email account.

If you use multiple devices like PC, laptop, tablet, Windows Phone, the Microsoft Account synchronizes a lot of settings between your devices (like recent documents, desktop wallpaper, etc.) so that the user experiences a unified work environment, on whatever device.

Next to having a Microsoft Account (private, individual) you can have an Active Directory account to access corporate resources in your corporate network, maybe even remotely. Active Directory can (and should) have UPN as logon format instead of the NetBIOS domain\user.

When using Microsoft Online services like Office365, Microsoft Intune or Microsoft Azure you may have a so called Organizational Account, always in the format of a UPN. It can be synchronized from your Active Directory account, even with synchronization of your password. But beware, unless a thing called Federated Identities is enabled by your administrators, it still is 2 separate identities; you logon to separate authentication providers, your local Active Directory and a Cloud Authentication provider like Azure Active Directory.

So until now, this is all on accounts, the mechanism with which you authenticate yourself. Now we get to email addresses.

An email address always comes in the format of UPN (actually UPN’s were there first and email addresses were derived from the UPN). As noted above, the account does not necessarily have to match an email address. It can but it is not a requirement.

And that is exactly what can make it very confusing for users if they do not distinguish the difference between accounts (UPN, identity) and email addresses. THEY ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS! A user can sign with one UPN and have access through that to multiple mail addresses (aliases) even in different domains.

Some organizations and users try to match the account UPN to the email address, making it simple for users: who you are (account UPN) is your mail address. It gets confusing when you have multiple accounts AND multiple email addresses. In order to get it straightened out for yourselves you can create a little table like this and fill out the appropriate UPN’s:

Access to

Microsoft Account

Active Directory Account

Organizational Account

Devices

      

Active Directory

      

Online Services

      

Office ProPlus

      

Work email

      

Private email

      

 

Happy logging on!

 

 

 

 

 

Office 365 – Office Pro Plus Deployment Tool – An example

When you browse the Internet for use of the Office Deployment Tool for Click-to-Run for Office products you may find yourself lost in a myriad of websites referring to other websites and send you into several complete circles. There just too much out there if you just need to do a rollout for 5 or 10 PC’s. I thought I just make an example for the whole process.

Some background on my example. I have to do a rollout on 4 PC’s, last time I visited that location the Internet connection was terrible. And, I found out that users do not have a dedicated PC in the small Office. That gives me 2 good reasons to prepare the rollout using the Office Deployment Tool at home: no slow downloads on 4 PC’s and I can configure the shared computer activation.

On my Surface Pro3 I created a directory C:\o365 and Shared it with Everyone (Read Permissions) as \\jk-proi7\o365 .

In that directory I downloaded the Office Deployment Tool for Click-to-Run, you can find it here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36778 . Run “officedeploymenttool.exe” which creates only 2 files, so I’m left with 3 files in that directory:

Now I need to download the binaries of the Office Pro Plus in the language(s) I need and the versions (32 bits – 64 bits) I need. In my situation I only need the English 32 bits version so I edit, in Notepad, the “configuration.xml” file:

<Configuration>

<Add SourcePath=”\\jk-proi7\o365\” OfficeClientEdition=”32″ >

<Product ID=”O365ProPlusRetail”>

<Language ID=”en-us” />

</Product>

</Add>

</Configuration>

And I saved the file as “downloadus.xml” in that same directory, keeping everything together.

I’m ready to download now so I click Run and enter the following command:

\\jk-proi7\o365\setup.exe /download \\jk-proi7\o365\downloadus.xml

I accept the UAC warning and a CMD Prompt Window opens with just a blinking cursor. That is bit annoying, no progress bar or what so ever. But in my directory I see files added and in Task Manager I can see my network is downloading at full speed. So stuff is happening, just wait until the CMD Prompt Window closes.

My o365 Directory now contains a folder “Office” which is just over 1 GB in size; the Office Pro Plus binaries!

For deploying Office Pro Plus I need to edit the “configuration.xml” once again and this time I save as “installus.xml”:

<Configuration>

<Add SourcePath=”\\jk-proi7\o365\” OfficeClientEdition=”32″ >

<Product ID=”O365ProPlusRetail”>

<Language ID=”en-us” />

</Product>

</Add>

<Display Level=”None” AcceptEULA=”TRUE” />

<Property Name=”SharedComputerLicensing” Value=”1″ />

</Configuration>

Notice I used the Property Name to make sure that multiple users can run Office Apps on the machine after deployment. More on Shared Activation can be found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn782860(v=office.15).aspx

To install Office Pro Plus with these configuration settings I run the following command (with elevated privileges) on each machine:

\\jk-proi7\o365\setup.exe /configure \\jk-proi7\o365\installus.xml

Once again the nagging Command Prompt Window with no information. But look at Task Manager and folders being created, there is stuff happening on the PC.

Now all different users can logon to the PC and individually activate their Office Pro Plus.

 

A good starting point to read more on the whole process: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219422(v=office.15).aspx

Azure in Plain Words

Microsoft Azure is BOOMING. The platform is getting new features and feature updates on a daily basis and for most people it’s hard to keep up with that. Some may even give up on it, being overwhelmed by the possibilities on Azure. In this blogpost I will try to write in plain words on 8 features that I like most. No technical deep dives, just the functionalities and the benefits of having those functionalities running on Azure. Basically all sits in the cloud, meaning no local resources: Storage, CPU, RAM, and Networking. And you pay per use.

  1. Azure Websites. Whatever website you want to run, a basis (static) public facing company website, a web application, a web shop, Azure offers the platform. This blog sits on Azure as simple Azure Website + WordPress template deployed on it. Takes about 10 minutes to set that up and have it running. For more complex web applications, with stuff running in a backend database, transaction processing we can deploy websites as Cloud Service. And finally, to have total control, we can create Virtual Machines running the web applications. All 3 options are scalable depending on demand and of course all 3 flavors come with their own set of benefits/drawbacks.
  2. Azure Virtual Machines. Within minutes we can spin on a Server and manage it as if it is spinning locally or we can upload Virtual Machines that are already running locally. Scale up the servers (add RAM and CPU) as needed or scale out (add servers) as needed. During the day time 6 servers could be running, at night there will be just one server running. Any Server Role can run on an Azure Virtual Machine. You could start with deploying a test & development environment in Azure. In the template Gallery there are plenty of pre-loaded templates available:
  3. Azure Virtual Networks. For those Virtual Machines to function they need to be placed in a network. We can create Virtual Networks on Azure to connect to those Virtual Machines and to connect the Virtual Machines to whatever they need to connect to. We can extend our local networks to Azure and spin on Servers and Services as needed.
  4. Azure Service Bus. More and more applications tend to communicate with each other. In order to do that there must be some kind of communication infrastructure in place. Through Azure Service Bus applications can talk to each other wherever the application runs. Some applications just talk while others only listen and some may do both, so that those distributed applications can complete the tasks they are set up to do.
  5. Azure Remote App. Azure Remote App became General Available just a week ago and enables organizations to publish just about any application to end users wherever they are. Scalable, resilient, redundant and connected to any backend required. Remote App has been available running on onprem servers for a couple of years, this takes it to the cloud!

  1. Azure Storage. Of course Services we run on Azure require storage. Fast storage, high available storage, cheap storage. One of the use cases for Azure Storage is backup of local servers. We all know that backups should be kept off premises, well, this is a nice way of having that in place.
  2. Azure SQL Database. A lot of applications need a SQL Database to store, query and retrieve data. And sometimes it’s a bit over the top to go to a full-featured SQL Server. Azure SQL Databases offers SQL Database services without the need of deploying a Virtual Server and install SQL Server on it.
  3. Azure Active Directory. Authentication and Authorization mechanisms need to be out there in order to allow users to access the resources in Azure. We can integrate that with our local Active Directory but also with “industry authentication providers” like Google and Facebook through Azure Access Control Services.

Microsoft Azure offers more than mentioned in this blogpost, please visit http://azure.microsoft.com/ for more information.

The Office 365 Theatre Play

I happen to know a lot on Office 365, working with it as a Consultant and Trainer ever since the BPOS Era. And I happen to have some Marketing colleagues around me who are really done with Events and Sessions and Demos. But in the region where we work, The Caribbean, a lot of marketing needs to be done to create awareness and business on Microsoft’s “Cloud First – Mobility First”. For an already planned Event we needed to be creative.

When I heard about the location, the Luna Blou Theatre on Curacao, I immediately thought of writing a play, a theatre play. It took us a couple of conversations on what it should look like and then I started thinking and drawing and writing. The story should encompass the whole process a Business will go through before they actually work in the Cloud. Just as in a real play I created several scenes. As the talks in the scenes proceed so do PowerPoint slides in the background.

Scene 1. In the first scene my colleague Mark plays a Business Owner who heard something about Office 365. I play the Consultant explaining him what it is. In the following conversation we hit topics on security, availability, education, pricing and how to get there.

Scene 2. The second scene is all about Training. Colleague Mark is still the Business owner and Daimaline plays her role of Training Coordinator. She goes over the different options we have available for end user Trainer like Online Live (in cooperation with New Horizons), Instructor Led, and Instructor Led 8 x 3 hours, etc. And of course also the Training options we have for the IT Pro’s, the people that will have to manage the new platforms.

Scene 3. Ronald as the IT Manager of Mark’s business has done the 5 day Training on Office 365 and discusses the options he’d prefer with me as the Consultant. So we have the conversation on Identities, Migration options (including our Partner BitTitan’s MigrationWiz).

Ronald and me in Scene 3. In the background a bulleted list of our topics

Scene 4. In the final scene we put it all together and use a “Microsoft Customer Immersion Experience” demo-environment and play as if Mark’s Business has made the transition. We use a multiple Beamer/Projector setup to showcase OneNote, co-authoring, collaborating without the use of email, Yammer, CRM integration. We even throw in some preconfigured devices into the audience so they can also participate in the CIE to experience the look and feel of Office 365.

Me giving someone in the Audience a Windows Phone

All attendees thought it was very new and refreshing way of giving a comprehensive overview on Office 365. We had very good criticsJ:

Our Partner Account Manager, Suresh Dookeran from Microsoft: “Again, congrats on the request for the encore performance and special thanks to the Director of production for thinking outside the box. This concept has been tossed around for so long and it’s so refreshing to have a brave enough team willing to execute!”

Inova’s CEO Hans Kruithof: “Be sure that for Curacao the other actors are ready and prepared for this great re-run of this already classic epic play.”

Office 365 MVP Jethro Seghers, Program Manager at BitTitan: “Sooo cool. Do you mind if we send this internally?”

We have been invited by the Central Bank of Curacao and Saint Maarten to do a re-run during their “Information Technology Service Management Seminar”. In the first week of December we’ll be performing the show in Jamaica and other countries are lining up.

I think we should end up on Broadway and win some Awards! Thanks to the whole crew of Inova Solutions and NetPro!