Woody's Roundup

Okay,  you may think I am cutting and pasting too much here and I realize you may have already received this info in some other communiqué, but it never hurts to spread the word on DISCOUNTS.  It is one of my favorite words in fact.  I like deals.  You would not want to look in my garage and see all the stuff I have because it was a good deal.  I have plumbing fixtures for my next two houses, along with masonry drill bits for holes I have not conceived of even drilling (they were only a dollar each!!!!).   …So I may have a small problem, but that doesn’t mean you cannot benefit!

Sooooooo…

Just a quick reminder for all you partners out there that a need few more certifications to get that next competency or to complete an MCSE.

Skills Week is from March 9th through the 13th and you can save 40% on an exam!

Check out www.Certificationweek.com for all the details and use the code NAM40UP for the exam discount.

Okay everyone!  The last slide of the day at the TS2 event gave the details for how to get an exam voucher for 50% off an exam with the option of getting another if you redeem by April 1.  Here is how…

Just kidding! ;-)   I am sure that is how the image looked from the back of the room.  I also know the URLs were not friendly and I doubt you can recollect them from my reading them off rapidly.

The Details off the slide are as follows:

You have successfully completed a TS2 event and are now eligible to request a 50% discount exam voucher* good for any MCP exam and valid until June 30, 2009.

To request your voucher go to https://ms.kpcorp.com/NGCCampaigns/redirect.aspx

and enter the Campaign Code listed below.  Your voucher will be emailed to you within 48 hours.

Campaign Code: TS2ATTEND

Redeem** your voucher by April 1, 2009 and be eligible for a second 50% discount voucher.

Please contact ngc@kporp.com or psdcerts@microsoft.com if you experience any difficulty requesting your voucher.

For more information on Microsoft Certifications, please visit the Partner Certification webpage.

*Terms & Conditions

Offer is available to the first 1600 individuals who have attended an in-person TS2 event, who visit the URL above and submit the claim form. To be eligible you must be a legal resident of the 50 United States (including District of Columbia). Limit one voucher per, while supplies last. This offer is non-transferable, not redeemable for cash and begins February 16, 2009 and expires May 1, 2009. The voucher will be sent via email within 48 hours of requesting it and is valid for the exam listed above. Government employees: Microsoft is committed to complying with government gift and ethics rules, and therefore government employees are not eligible for this offer.

**A voucher has been redeemed when it is used as payment when scheduling an exam at a Prometric testing center. All individuals who have redeemed their voucher by this date will receive an email with a new Campaign Code to request a second voucher.

I hope this gives you the details you need!

Thanks and Regards,

Woody

Hey all,

I just opened my email this Saturday evening and noticed I had received an email from Dan Hanson, The Great Lakes Geek!  Dan attended my TS2 event in Cleveland and pulled me aside afterwards for a quick interview.   I had not had the opportunity of meeting Dan until then and it seems he is filling a void in the Northeast Ohio Area.

The Podcast is VERY basic in nature and basically discusses SaaS, S+S, Microsoft Online Services, Virtualization, and Hyper-V in a cursory way.  If anything else it is funny to hear me answer questions off the cuff while I am running a fever and trying not to cough.   …I pulled it off rather well if you ask me!

A little more on the Great Lakes Geek…

To use Dan’s own words:

The Great Lakes Geek website is intended to fill several needs in the business and technology community - primarily, but not exclusively, in Northeast Ohio.

First is the Great Lakes Geek show itself which features audio interviews and commentary. The show is informative, opinionated and sometimes irreverent. But it is always honest and will let you hear for yourself the thoughts and ideas of business and tech leaders in the region and beyond.

The second component of the site is a comprehensive calendar of business and technology events. Unlike the numerous partial calendars that are floating around, the Great Lakes Geek calendar will strive to be complete - without regard to who advertises with us or is flavor of the month.

Third is the Speaker's Bureau. Need a speaker on a certain topic for your event? Browse our listings and we can help you secure the perfect person to rock your event.

Fourth is the Geek News. Read, hear and see images from events and newsworthy items in the region

Fifth is Geek Tips. Everyday we offer free software to Great Lakes Geek visitors to download. We post the best tips - hardware, Microsoft Office, Windows and more to make your life easier and more efficient (and fun).

And speaking of fun... We offer a whole section of Geek Fun. Check it out.

Don't miss the hardware, software and book reviews, opinions and information from the Team Geek Columnists and much more.

Here is a screen shot of page where my podcast with Dan ended up.  A picture of yours truly is there as well.

If you would like to listen to the podcast it can be found here.

To listen to other podcasts by the Great Lakes Geek or to find out more about Dan Hanson, check out his site at http://www.greatlakesgeek.com/

Until later,

Woody

For everyone who attended my TS2 Events in Grand Rapids, MI and Cleveland, OH I stated I would post a link to the slide deck for the event:

http://microsoftts2.com/contentDecks.aspx

Make sure you download the slide deck at the top of the list entitled:

BPOS_SBS_EBS_2008_Virtualization.pptx

See here:

MicrosoftTS2.com is the landing page for my team and you can always search for upcoming live events, download content, and find all sorts of resources such as virtual partner briefings and other webcasts to name a few!

I’ll post later tonight with answers to questions, etc!

Your ever humble and faithful servant,

Woody

This post will  be updated and more flushed out in a few days, but I wanted to share the few bits of information I have gleaned from the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit for Microsoft Online Services and a few other documents for online services.

First off, when discussing bandwidth considerations for email, know that the bandwidth needed can vary tremendously by worker, scenario, etc. So these are just guidelines and you may have to adjust where needed.

Below is a paste from the proposal document created by the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAPS).  I put in 100 mailboxes to migrate with  a total of 150 mailboxes within 3 years.  Average mailbox size of 1-2GB.  Here is what the proposal document stated:

SNIP\

Guidelines for internet bandwidth utilization for Exchange Online mailboxes are described in the following table:

Table 6. Typical Mailbox User Network Utilization

Mailbox migration will require incremental bandwidth calculated by multiplying the number of mailboxes being migrated by the average size of mailboxes in your organization.

Note that users working from home or other locations not on your corporate network will not impact your corporate bandwidth utilization as they are using their own internet connectivity.

Based on the above information, a guideline for the amount of data to be transferred during migration is 200 GB. The following tables provide a guideline for incremental Internet bandwidth requirements based on initial usage and projected usage in 3 years time:

Table 7. Initial Mailbox User Network Utilization

Table 8. Initial Mailbox User Network Utilization Guideline

Please note that the above calculations are only guidelines as e-mail activity can vary widely by user.

Migration Plan Report

Take these things into account when planning your migration:

Migration Scope

The purpose of this section is to summarize the information you entered in the Migration Planning section of the survey and to provide specific recommendations based on that information.

Table 9. Planned mailbox provisioning

Planned Migration Time

Microsoft provides the Microsoft Online Mailbox Migration Tool to move data from existing Microsoft Exchange and POP3/IMAP4 mail servers to the Exchange Online environment. The amount of time required to migrate e-mail and other data using this tool depends on three factors:

· How much e-mail is transferred

· How much bandwidth is available via your Internet connection

· How many instances of the Mailbox Migration Tool are run simultaneously

You indicated that your migration will include 100 mailboxes. You also indicated that the current average size of mailboxes in your organization is 250MB - 500MB. Therefore, your total migration size is 50 GB.

The maximum rate of migration per instance of the Mailbox Migration Tool is 2 GB per hour.

You should allocate a minimum of 25 hours for your migration if you plan to use a single instance of the Mailbox Migration tool. The actual time required will be dependent on the amount of Internet bandwidth available from the locations where your Exchange servers are located and by the number of instances of the Microsoft Online Mailbox Migration Tool that are utilized.

For more information about mailbox migration, please refer to the “Migrate to Microsoft Online” whitepaper at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=128821.

/END SNIP

I’ll elaborate more later.   The first thing that stands out to me is how much more bandwidth OWA requires than Outlook 2007 (anywhere – RDP over HTTPS).

-Woody

First off I want to apologize for the delay here.  I had mentioned last week I would get to this sooner, but work got in the way.  I know, I know, …it never happens to you, right???

I WILL BELEIVE THAT AS SOON AS I THINK POLITICIANS ARE HONEST AND LOOKING OUT FOR OUR WELL BEING!! ;-)

Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite Internal Use Rights Benefits for Partners

Eligibility:

MSPP Partners who are…

1.) Gold Certified

2.) Certified

3.) Registered - and are enrolled in QuickStart, MAPS, or Empower Program

Currently available to US Partners only

Active partners who meet the above eligibility criteria will be eligible to buy Business Productivity Online Suite at a discounted price of $7.50/USL/month based on their level*:

Benefits Ordering Process for Partners

Ensure active MSPP membership along with enrollment in the relevant eligible programs Order Business Productivity Online Suite at https://mocp.microsoftonline.com for 100, 25, or 10 seats as appropriate for your level Send an email requesting a pricing credit to the Customer and Partner Care team through MOCP support at https://mocp.microsoftonline.com/site/support.aspx including Partner ID, Live ID, and Order Number in the email Your credit will be reflected in your next invoice

-Woody

Hope you all have had a good weekend like me.  I spent Saturday and Sunday cleaning one of our two houses getting it ready for sale.  “Cleaning” constituted de-bachelorizing the living room (READ junk & storage room) of my Queen Ann Victorian farm house.  Very time consuming.  Once clean I pulled the carpet.  …must have been the first year wall to wall came out. The backing was like REAL Burlap.  Crazy! Pulled the carpet expecting the worst only to find a hard wood floor in much better condition than I expected!  More work ahead, but a nice reward for a few days of elbow grease.   …Oh I forgot to mention I also found a Sound Blaster AWE 64!!! A little dusty, but still serviceable I’m sure!!!

[THIS IS A PICTURE OF MY HOUSE RIGHT AFTER A TORNADO DROPPED A TREE ON TO IT!!!]

The reason for my story is that I had to go to a lot of work to “see” the floor underneath.  A lot of people have trouble visualizing the end result of projects they are considering, and therefore either never go to the effort at all, or stall for a long while.  …The same is true in the IT world or working with customers; you need to help them visualize!

HELP THEM VISUALIZE AND THEY WILL COME, RAY!

SO WITHOUT FURTHER A DUE, THE BPOS DEMONSTRATION SIMULATOR!!!!

Here is a screen shot of the index page:

From the index page you can launch into any of nine separate demonstrations on the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) and its constituent services.

The Demonstrations include:

1.) HOW TO BUY

2.) HOW TO CREATE USERS AND ASSIGN LICENSES

3.) HOW TO SYNCHRONIZE THE USER LIST WITH LOCAL ACTIVE DIRECTORY

4.) HOW TO MANAGE EXCHANGE ONLINE

5.) HOW TO MIGRATE TO EXCHANGE ONLINE

6.) HOW TO MANAGE SHAREPOINT ONLINE

7.) HOW TO SUBMIT A SUPPORT TICKET

8.) HOW TO USE THE SIGN-IN TOOL

9.) HOW TO USE MY COMPANY PORTAL

I realize that you have other means at your disposal to demonstrate BPOS to your clients, like by using your very own demo account (see my blog entry here on how to get a free demo account), but this tool overcomes some hurdles you may face on occasion.

PROs:

1.) It doesn’t require an internet connection.

2.) You cannot forget the log in information and it will not expire. ( Ever happen to you, it has to me!)

3.) It has a very small footprint (67MB).

4.) The Controls let you click through as with a mouse OR advance as though it were a PowerPoint presentation.

5.) It demonstrates Exchange mailbox migration and Active Directory Sync without needing Virtual machines and tool installation. i-saves a ton of setup time.

6.) It allows for showing the process of showing submittal of a support ticket without actually sending one.

7.) You can walk your customer COMPLETELY through the purchase experience without setting up a trial.

8.) Includes excellent instructions.

9.) Includes Speaker notes for each demo screen.

CONS:

1.) You cannot diverge from the demonstration script.

2.) Some of the Silverlight auto build outs happen too fast IMHO.

3.) It has yet to land on  www.quickstartonlineservices.com/discover. –I’ll Let you know as soon as I know!!!

So lets take a quick look at some points of note:

Instructions are provided at the beginning of each demo.  It takes seconds to learn how to proceed.

Above we have a screenshot of the Partner Information Page from the “HOW TO BUY” Demo.  This shows the final page after the customer has chosen the partner of record.  Notice the Instruction steps on the right – Both Speaker notes and instructions provided.  I should point out that you can hide the instructions should you wish to do so.

Here we have a shot of the Microsoft Online Services Directory Synchronization Wizard completing in the “HOW TO SYNCHRONIZE THE USER LIST WITH LOCAL ACTIVE DIRECTORY” demo.  No messy VMs to deal with here!  Do keep in mind that you will certainly want to test a real sync of a customer’s directory before you do it for money, but at least you can get across the point.  Also great for training new techs!

Above are a couple of shots from the “HOW TO USE THE SIGN-IN TOOL” demo.  See the instructions and BTW-  this did not require you to install the sign-in tool! ;-)

The shot above from the “HOW TO MIGRATE TO EXCHANGE ONLINE” demo shows the Migration wizard for Exchange Online.  The demo shows all aspects of the migration from planning, installing and using the tools, mailbox migration, etc.

Although first a tool for our partner account managers and evangelists to show partners BPOS, soon the “Microsoft Online Services - BPOS Demonstration Simulator” will be in your tool bag.  It may no be the “be all end all” for demonstrating BPOS, but it certainly has made its mark internally at Microsoft, as I am sure it will with you too.

I could not exit without giving credit where credit is due.  The gentleman at Microsoft responsible for pulling the tool together was John Shinner, a Senior Product Manager in our Business Online Services Marketing Group.  Thanks John! - from both the Microsoft field and partners alike!!!

I plan on posting a screencast of the demo simulator later this week.  Stay tuned!!

Your ever humble and faithful Servant,

Woody

If you are already on board with, enrolled, and activated in the Quickstart Program this may be old news to you, but if you are just now investigating Microsoft Online Services as a possible addition to the solutions you offer to customers this bears bringing up.

How do you become familiar with these solutions?  You are a partner and you get kits of software if you are certified or gold certified, and you can subscribe to the Microsoft Action Pack if you are a registered member level partner.  Problem is, none of these boxes contain Microsoft Online Services or the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS)!  Of course the name gives us a clue right! ONLINE.  Ah-ha!  BUT WHERE???  Hmmm…  let me see.  If I need to find that one thing that is top of mind and relates to Microsoft or Microsoft Partners I am always certain to find it right away on the partner portal or Microsoft.com.  Easy as 1, 2, 3.

I wish!!! 

You know the drill.  Needle. Haystack. Dig, dig, dig.  Hours pass.

I’ll cut to the chase.  Below is the PRECISE PROCESS for getting a Demo Account set up for BPOS, which Includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, LiveMeeting, and Office Communications Online (April).  One account allows you to demonstrate all these Services.

***THIS INFORMATION IS FOR U.S. Partners Only!!!!***

For a New Demo Account

1.Sign Partner Agreement and complete the assessment by visiting the Microsoft Online Services Partner Resource Center at www.quickstartonlineservices.com/discover

2.Go to https://mocp.microsoftonline.com and complete registration for a trial account

3. Activate your account and begin customizing your domain

4.Contact Microsoft Online Services Support through MOCP -https://mocp.microsoftonline.com/site/support.aspx to request a one-year extension of your existing account including Partner ID, Live ID, and Order Number in the email.  This is critical as it is the only thing that differentiates your account from a normal trial!!!!

To Extend an Existing Demo Account

1.Contact Microsoft Online Services Support through MOCP https://mocp.microsoftonline.com/site/support.aspx to request a one-year extension of your existing account including Partner ID, Live ID, and Order Number in the email

So if you do not have an account already, the new account will provide you:

-20 seat licenses (default)

-Customizable environment

-A Perpetual environment

Fine Print Below ;-)

IMPORTANT DETAILS!!!!

APPROVED USAGE FOR THIS ACCOUNT

1.) Providing a demo to customers

2.) Testing of features/functionality

NOT APPROVED USAGE

1.) Personal accounts for home/family use*

2.) Multiple accounts per employee

* I will post tomorrow on Internal Use Rights for BPOS and how you go about getting them!!  So don’t use this demo account as a production environment for your company!

This benefit is only available to Active partners who meet the eligibility criteria. They will be eligible to get demo accounts of Business Productivity Online Suite.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

- MSPP Partners who are also enrolled in the QuickStart program

- Demo accounts currently available to US Partners only

EVERY ONE OF YOU SHOULD HAVE A DEMO ACCOUNT.  All the kids on the block are getting them so you don’t want to be left out!  This also allows you to compare it to Google Apps (a story for another time).  I have a special name for Google Apps.  I affectionately call it Google Corpus Vile

Until Next time,

- Woody