TechNet Flash, Volume 14, Issue 18 - August 15, 2012
TechNet Flash Editor's Note from Mitch Irsfeld

With the New Office, Everyone Is More Productive

Following the preview of the new Office programs, and the more recent previews of Outlook.com and Exchange Online, it's perhaps time to start thinking about these cloud-based applications in terms of added productivity - both yours and your users'.

Concepts such as productivity on demand are fairly easy to grasp when you understand the power of streaming a full-featured version of Office on any PC connected to the internet. But how do these applications make you more productive? That's explained in the concept we call "the cloud on your terms," which enables the use of existing IT tools like Group Policy and processes for delivering and configuring Office.

With new Office Telemetry tools, you can inspect file and application compatibility.  Optimized provisioning allows you to quickly deploy broadly without uninstalling existing Office applications.

For regulatory compliance, the new eDiscovery Center allows you to identify, hold, and analyze your organization's data from Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync. The data always remains in place so you don't need to manage a separate data store.

Office 365 continues to improve the ease of management from a web-based portal, provides powerful scripting access via PowerShell, and continues to invest in the infrastructure with data backup, disaster recovery, and globally redundant data centers. In addition, the new service health dashboard provides customizable reports that help you get insights into your service.

For your users, the productivity picture is changing dramatically. For instance, read Inside SkyDrive, Hotmail, and Messenger to see how your employees can use SkyDrive for work documents, while you get the management and compliance features you need.

The Outlook Web App (OWA) has evolved to reach not only laptop or desktop computers, but also tablets and phones. And you can try our latest release by signing up for the Office 365 Customer Preview Small Business Premium or Enterprise plans.

With the new Outlook.com, Microsoft saw an opportunity to make email better by using your connections on social networks to enrich your email experience. And so with the Outlook.com preview, we are giving you the first email service that is connected to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, and soon, Skype, to bring relevant context and communications to your email.

For a rundown of what's new with all the Office 2013 Web applications, check out this Channel 9 video.

And finally, all these productivity enhancements will soon be backed up with great new hardware, designed for new mobile experiences and Windows 8.

Thanks for reading,

Mitch Irsfeld
Editor, TechNet Flash

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