Random Links of Interest
I signed up for the beta of Google+ although it feels a bit similar to the process of signing up for Google Wave. Will anyone else I know also sign up?
This teacher hit $1M of net worth by 38 and only a few years later managed to break $2M. Having said that, he and his wife are both teachers and they include the value of their defined benefit pensions in their statement of net worth. Life lesson? Two teachers with defined benefit pensions do not need to worry about financial security — assuming good habits around the management of debt.
And another millionaire teacher. Goodness gracious. Is every teacher a millionaire in their 30s?
What vote was crucial to the whole world? This one according to Van Rompuy: “The [austerity] vote is crucial to the people of Greece, the eurozone and the whole world.”
You can breathe easier now as the crucial vote passed.
Microsoft finally launches a cloud-based email service. Expensive? Yes. Tied to Windows machines? For the most part, yes. Here is one perspective on Office 365.
Will the Bring Your Own Device to work mean the end of the IT department? Er, no. But it will make life more interesting for an IT department.
Richard, thanx for the mention 😉
Richard,
Office 365 is more than just mail. It’s Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Onenote), SharePoint, and Exchange (email) in the cloud.
Tied to Windows machines? Absolutely not. One of the main goals of Office 365 was web-based, full-fidelity productivity cross-browser, and standards-based.
Expensive? Well.. that’s relative.. If you look at what large organizations spend managing Exchange (people, hardware, outages, SAN, etc etc), it’s actually a bargain. Microsoft actually guarantees the uptime as well and refunds customers for outages.
For sensitive data, an organization can choose to use a mixed-model of on-prem and cloud. Both being fully AD integrated (so no separate security model).
Anyway, I sound like an ad 🙂
Hi Matthew,
As I posted, Office 365 is tied to Windows machines for the most part. From the Systems Requirements for Office 365 site:
“To get the full Office 365 experience, we recommend that customers meet our system prerequisites. Minimum requirements for Office 365 include Office 2007+, IE 7+, Windows XP SP3+”
In terms of costs, Microsoft still insists on offering an array of options and making it difficult to really get at the benefits. Bottom line, for most enterprises, it is still an expensive “cloud” offering.