Happy Birthday Office 365

This week saw the first anniversary of Microsofts Office 365 and in that year Microsoft has seen many, many organisations adopt the collaboration platform across public and private sectors. And this is certainly a trend Equanet are seeing further enforced this week at our Microsoft Windows 8 and Cloud event.

A further announcement this week was the availability of Office365 for Education to officially replace Live@@EDU.

Office 365 for Education replaces Live@edu, which will remain available for 18 more months to give its customers -- about 10,000 educational institutions with about 22 million students in about 130 countries -- a window for planning and carrying out the migration.

Although Office 365 is a cloud-based suite, it can require upgrades to customers' desktops and infrastructure depending on the case.

The first thing to keep in mind is that while Live@edu and Office 365 for Education are conceptually designed to serve the same type of customer, they have several different components.

Live@edu, which is free, includes Outlook Live for email, Office Web Apps, Windows Live Messenger for instant messaging and Windows Live SkyDrive for 25GB of online data storage.

Office 365 for Education comes in a variety of packages. The free, standard one, called A2, includes Exchange Online, Lync Online, SharePoint Online and Office Web Apps.

The Office 365 Exchange Online component is basically the same as Live@edu's Outlook Live, so transferring from one to the other should be fairly straightforward.

Should you want to onboard The A2 plan, which includes the online versions of Office, Lync and SharePoint, or the fee-based and more sophisticated A3 and A4 plans, they must sign a new Microsoft Online Services agreement or a current Volume Licensing Agreement.

Live@edu users will be able to retain their SkyDrive accounts even after the suite is decommissioned .

The Office 365 for Education Plan A2 includes the online version of Office 2010, called Office Web Apps, instant messaging and conferencing via Lync Online, collaboration capabilities via SharePoint Online, email and calendar via Exchange Online, antivirus and anti-spam protection and individual storage.

Plan A3 costs £1.98per student per month, and £3.50 per faculty/staff per month, and includes everything in Plan A2 plus additional components, including the full-featured desktop version of Office 2010 Professional Plus and voicemail service.

Plan A4, at £2.38 per month per student and £4.75 per month per faculty/staff, adds voice communications.

So if you are a Live@EDU user and need help migrating your infrastructure to Office 365 you would be well placed to contact us to see how we can help.

One Pane of Glass Many Devices to Manage

As the noise of BYOD and Consumerisation continues to increase in volume and interest the number of tools to manage such a diverse range of devices typically increases too.  Hopefully the latest news from Airwatch is a trend that will continue.  Historically MDM providers have looked to offer support and governance to tablet style devices.  Airwatch has just announced announced its mobile security solution now supports devices running Mac OS X Lion.

With this new release, IT administrators can maintain security across both iOS and Mac OS X Lion operating systems to ensure consistent policies and profiles throughout their organisation. This new update also enables organisations to manage corporate liable, employee liable (BYOD) or shared Mac OS X Lion devices throughout the entire device lifecycle. As part of the company’s commitment to the Mac platforms, AirWatch plans to support the new features in Apple’s upcoming Mac OS X 10.8 release.

The initial OS X management release includes MDM capabilities for web-based enrolment; commands to remotely lock and wipe devices; and device and application list query. Support for profile management capabilities include:

1. Passcode and policy settings
2. Email (POP, IMAP, SMTP) and exchange settings
3. Wi-Fi and VPN configurations
4. Certificates and simple certificate enrollment protocol (SCEP)
5. Lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP), calendaring extensions to WebDAV (CalDAV) and contact extensions to WebDAV (CardDAV)
6. Webclips
7. Custom profiles 

Equanet has an end-to-end tablet capability from strategy definition through to implementation and support.  So if you are looking at BYOD using a cross platform of Mac devices we can help you design, implement and support it.

Contact us to learn more.

Welcome to Microsoft's Surface Tablet

So Microsoft has unveiled it's first foray in the physical tablet world with what it is calling Surface. This is a very smart move and will come in two operating system standards; WindowsRT and Windows 8 Pro.

Steve Ballmer was quoted as saying: “It was always clear that what our software could do would require us to push hardware, Much like Windows 1 needed the mouse, we wanted to give Windows 8 its own hardware.”

Surface is designed to work as both tablet and PC. The features are impressive too, the ones we are hearing about are:

• Very thin, (9.3mm for Windows RT and 13.5mm for the Pro version.)


• Both have two full size USB ports


• Micro SD port on the side of the RT version


• MicroSDXC port of the Pro version for adding data to the device


• Surface has a 10.6-inch 16:9 widescreen HD display screen.


• Made of Gorilla Glass -– an ultra-strong glass.


• A built-in kickstand on the rear of the tablet to keep it upright


• A Touch Cover for the device protects the screen, and is connected via magnets


• The inside of the 3mm cover doubles as a fully functional keyboard with a built-in trackpad


• Surface running Windows RT comes with 32 GB and 64GB sizes


• Surface running Windows 8 Pro will be available in 64 GB and 128 GB sizes.

Pretty good start if you ask us, oh and don't forget you can also have access to a full native local desktop. Something your users will be happy to see.

The video below is the introduction to the Surface Tablet, enjoy.

Not long now until Microsoft's announcement

So, the location is now known in LA (Milk Studios).  We just need to know the announcements to be made. There are plenty of rumours doing the round one of which is a Windows 8 Based Tablet with the newly announced SmartGlass technology.

Today's event almost certainly includes some sort of tablet device whether it's an iPad compete, a glorified e-reader, a sub-$500 device or something else entirely different.  It's fairly safe to assume that whatever device it is will be running some version of Windows 8, likely Windows RT.  Still, it also seems likely that the implementation will be different than the plans for third-party licensing partners.  Smartglass certainly would be a big announcement on a tablet device.

This is why many expect Microsoft to announce an Xbox SmartGlass enabled tablet, designed to interface seamlessly with the Xbox 360 as well as other Windows 8 devices.  A tablet designed to integrate seamlessly with Xbox Live. It would look similar to the iPad, but connect seamlessly to the new Xbox Music and access video from various Xbox Entertainment apps.  If you combine that with web browsing and web chat that becomes a very interesting consumption device to enter into the market.

And it might just look like this:

Anyway only a couple of hours to wait and see what Microsoft has up its sleeve!

Long Awaited VMware Thinapp Factory is now available

For those of you familiar with VMware EUC strategies you will no doubt be aware of a concept called ThinApp Factory that makes the creation of ThinApp applications easier. VMware last week have now announced this virtual appliance is now available.

The virtual appliance brings centralised administration and automation to the process of creating virtualised Windows applications. ThinApp Factory uses vSphere API's to create workloads that automatically convert fileshares of application installers into ThinApp application containers.

These workloads can be run in parallel to maximize throughput and increase ROI for virtualisation projects.

The IT department can leverage 'Recipes' during the packaging process. Recipes are simply small JSON files, which contain a redistributable blueprint of the customisations and optimisations necessary for packaging complex applications.

These recipes can be created and now exchanged freely with other customers via the ThinApp Packaging Community site.

In essence ThinApp factory allows you with a few mouse clicks to create ThinApp packages from a directory full of MSI's, which really improves the time to market of your project.

The integration with Horizon Application Manager also provides an quicker path to Horizon enable your applications and populate the Horizon Application Catalog.

Key Features:

Automates packaging of application installers into virtualised Windows applications

Leverages vSphere,vCenter for automation of workloads to efficiently package applications

Provides and utilises ‘Recipes’ as redistributable blueprints for application packaging

Provides a lightweight web UI with a dashboard for administrators to use for the entire workflow of packaging to distribution

Enables administrators to import and edit existing ThinApp projects and modify package.ini, registry, and file settings through the web UI

Integration with Horizon Application Manager application catalog for automated population of application metadata and deployment

Want to know more about it contact us

VMware looks to Big Data with Hadoop

Big data is one of the key tech trends that is now making lots of noise across those businesses with significant volumes of data (PB+).  Hadoop is one of the core architectures based upon the Apache v2 license that many organisations are looking to for big data analytics.  Facebook are one of the biggest uses of this technology.  Historically the deployment of Hadoop has gone against the grain of common practice data centre technology and is targeted at physical Hadoop multinode clusters.  Hadoop represents how data centers were deployed 10 years ago before virtualisation was mainstream."

VMware  has announced an open source project - Serengeti that lets companies easily deploy and manage Hadoop distributions in virtual and cloud environments. 

VMware clearly see the sie and value in Hadoop and want to become the defacto technology  for virtual Hadoop deployments.  VMware is aspiring to cash in on big data, a point made clear when the company acquired big data analytics startup Cetas earlier this year. VMware and Spring make it easier for businesses to create big data applications, which IT can more easily deploy via Serengeti onto a distributed cloud infrastructure.

VMware's case for decoupling Hadoop nodes from physical infrastructures is that organisations can benefit from faster deployment, higher availability, higher elasticity, and more secure multitenancy.

VMware has also announced it's adding new code to Hadoop specifically the HDFS and MapReduce projects to make them virtualisation aware. 

Microsoft to build its own tablet?

There have been many rumours going around this week about Microsoft, from them looking to acquire Yammer for ESN capabilities to more recently about them building their own tablet. This would make perfect sense and is something that we at Equanet have long believed should happen. After all they clearly know how to build hardware, just look at the Xbox.

What makes this speculation (and it is pure speculation) even more realistic is the surprise press conference they are holding on Monday; speculation has increased that Microsoft is making a major shift and unveiling its own branded and designed tablet to compete with the iPad.

The invitation, which touted a "major Microsoft announcement," provided no details of what the announcement will be about.

In the meantime, reports have surfaced, including in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal's and others that Microsoft is expected to unveil its own tablet running either Windows 8 or Windows RT.

Microsoft has always required the support of its hardware partners -- HP, Dell, Samsung, for example -- to create the PCs, laptops and tablets running its Windows software.

Microsoft might have given an indication that it was thinking about producing its own ARM-based devices two years ago when it signed a licensing agreement enabling it to build processors based on ARM architecture.

The interest that Equanet is seeing already around Windows 8 tablets is impressive and clearly building their own tablets would allow for consistency of experience and performance. Equanet has been fortunate to be running Windows 8 on a number of devices which has showed the operating system is perfectly aligned to the tablet world.

So I guess we will just have to wait and see what Monday brings and if the rumours are true.

Microsoft Windows 8 Encryption Beta Tool made available

Microsoft is making available new test versions of a number of its tools for Windows business users that are meant to complement Windows 8. 

The 2.0 version of the Microsoft Bitlocker Administration and Monitoring tool (MBAM) is now available. Microsoft has also released a new beta of Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management and has also commitmented to a second beta of  User Experience Virtualisation (UE-V) (due by the end of this month), as well as a release candidate for its Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) 8, today, as well. 

These tools are all part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack (MDOP). MDOP includes Microsoft Application Virtualisation (App-V), Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualisation (MED-V), Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM), Asset Inventory Service (AIS), Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM),  Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM) and Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM).

MBAM 2.0, when used with Windows 8, will reduce the time it takes to provision BitLocker to devices. It also enables self-servicing of key provision. 

There are a few ways in which your organisation can get the benefits of these technologies, if you are interested to learn more please contact us here.

Microsoft confirm the July price increase - it's not as bad as predicted

Equanet reported here that Microsoft were to increase their Volume Licensing agreements in the UK by 29% on average as of 1st July.  Due to the fluctuation of the Euro the rise is not as high as expected.  Initially it was expected the increase would vary from between 7.5% and 33.5%.

The price ranges are less than expected and are between 1.7% and 25.9% based upon current exchange rates.  Naturally the diverse nature of the license agreements means that increase will vary.  Academic, boxed product and OEM remains static.

The table below identifies the price increases but bear in mind that these are average prices aligned to SKU, so you need to contact us for accuracy and ensuring that the right advice on reducing your financial exposure.

Volume License Program                                                Average Final Price Increase

Open License Commercial                                                             1.7%

Office 365 (MOSP)                                                                         Up to 15%

Open Value/Open Value Subscription                                             25.9%

SPLA                                                                                            25.9%

ISVR                                                                                             25.9%

Government Open Value/Subscription                                            25.9%

Government Open License Programme                                           25.9%

Select/Plus                                                                                  17.7%

Enterprise Agreement/Enterprise Agreement Subscription               18.7%

Depending on how you procure your licensing will depend on the affect this will have on your business.  It may be worthwhile for some organisations to bring forward their Microsoft projects or look to alternative volume licensing agreements to fix the pre-July increase for the next 3 years.

So, although not ideal it's not as bad as first thought.  We suggest that you call our software team to work out your options, your exposure and how this can be minimised.  After all your Microsoft technologies support your IT Strategy so assessing where you are in your strategy would be prudent to establish the best route for your licensing.

Windows Server 2012 RDS Improvements

Microsoft has always had success with RDS from the days of terminal services on Windows NT through to RDS on Server 2012 often supported with Citrix XenApp for Enterprise deployments.

In the latest edition of Windows Server 2012 Microsoft has added a raft of updates that are sure to make your deployments even easier. This post will highlight some of those advancements:

Windows Server 2012 has improved RemoteFX over a WAN as well as balancing between scale and reduced bandwidth. Specific improvements include:

Adaptive Graphics

Microsoft support a mix and match approach, determining and using the right codec for the right content instead of one size fits all. Progressive rendering allows RemoteFX to provide a responsive experience over a highly constrained network.

Intelligent Transport

Microsoft support UDP as well as TCP. UDP provides a better experience over a lossy WAN network but, is not always possible dependent on the routers, and firewalls involved. RDP will automatically use TCP when UDP cannot be used to ensure connectivity and the best possible experience.

Optimised Media Streaming

Microsoft have a new codec to reduce bandwidth consumption for media content

Adaptive Network Auto Detect

In this release, the end user no longer has to set the network in the Remote Desktop Connection client: the client auto-detects the network type and, also adapts as the network changes.

Single Sign-On

In Windows Server 2012 Microsoft has simplified this by eliminating the need to use multiple certificates. Microsoft has also made it possible to use locally logged on domain credentials so that users connecting from managed devices can connect seamlessly without any credential prompts.

Metro-style Remote Desktop


In the app store Microsoft has added a new Metro-style application to provide a simple touch-first remoting experience. Discovering of remote resources, touch optimisation, easy reconnect to your favourites, are just some of the specific features added.

Email and web discovery of Remote Applications and desktops

Users now can find the correct remote workspace to connect to by just providing their email address. This removes the requirement to remember a long website URL. In addition, Remote Desktop Web Access now supports other browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

Multi Touch

Microsoft support full remoting of gestures (e.g. pinch and zoom) between the client and host with up to 256 touch points. This provides for a consistent experience when using a touch enabled device locally or, over RemoteFX.

Robust Pooled Virtual Desktop Collection model

Virtual machines can be created in batch from a virtual desktop template, patched by only modifying that virtual desktop template, and recreated/refreshed automatically by the RD Connection Broker. This reduces the cost and complexity of supporting a large number of users.

User Profile Disk

A major blocker for the “pooled virtual desktop collection” model has been lack of personalisation: Since the pooled virtual desktop collection is based on a common virtual desktop template, the user’s personal documents, settings, and configurations would normally not be present. User Profile Disk was added to solve this problem for either virtual machine-based or session based desktop deployments. As the user logs on to different virtual machines within the pool or different RD Session Hosts within the session collection, his/her User Profile Disk gets mounted, providing access to the user’s complete profile. Since User Profile Disk operates at a lower layer, it works seamlessly with existing user state technologies such as Roaming User Profiles and Folder Redirection.

Fair share of resources in RD Session Host

In Windows Server 2012, RD Session Host server allocates CPU, Disk I/O, and Network I/O such that a single user cannot consume resources that would negatively impact other users on the same host. Each user will get a “fair share”. This is done with minimum overhead so the CPU, disk, and network resources are used to maximum capacity.

RDS Management Interface integrated into Server Manager

RDS now includes a single management interface through which you can deploy RDS end to end, monitor the deployment, configure options, and manage all your RDS components and servers. This management interface is built into the new Server Manager, taking advantage of many new Windows Server 2012 management capabilities such as multi-server deployments, remote configuration, and orchestrated configuration workflows.

Scenario-Focused Deployment

The new Server Manager provides a scenario-focused wizard that dramatically simplifies the task of bringing up a complete RDS deployment. This wizard sets up all the roles needed for an RDS deployment, configures each server role correctly to communicate with the other roles:

Quick Start is optimised for deploying Remote Desktop Services on one server, and creates a collection and publishes RemoteApp programs.

Standard Deployment allows you to deploy Remote Desktop Services across multiple servers, allowing for a more customised deployment.

Active/Active RD Connection Broker

In previous releases the RD Connection Broker role service has supported an active/passive clustering model. This provided high availability in the case of component failure, but it did not address high scale requirements. In this release, Microsoft have eliminated the need for clustering and switched to an active/active model. With this model, two or more RD Connection Brokers can be combined as a farm to provide both fault tolerance and load balancing. This prevents the broker from being a single point of failure and also allows ‘scale out’ as load demands.

We think that this is a great set of capabilities for users reliant on session based virtualisation. VDI is a great concept and has relevance in many organisations but for costs alone we typically see a hybrid of the two and the set of features added by Microsoft provide a great hybrid approach.

Looking to Windows 2012, Windows 8 and RDS? Then contact us to see how it works in our innovation centre.  Want to see and hear the technology first hand then register for this in person event.