Glo Networks Technical Blog (Glo Blog)

Microsoft have recently announced a new edition to their Office suites: Office 365. While there isn’t a great deal of information available it looks set to combine the elements of the Microsoft Online Services suite (Exchange Online,  Sharepoint Online and Lync Online) with the desktop Office suite (at least the Enterprise level product has the desktop suite, the Small Business only has the browser based Office Web Apps) .

The pricing structure is a monthly subscription/rental, reflecting the online ‘cloud’ based nature of the Online Services applications. While we can see the benefit for those who are already using or planning to use Microsoft Online Services (essentially a free licence for Office Professional Plus per user whilst they are subscribed) at present we cannot see any major attraction for new customers.

Whilst we still have many unanswered questions about Office 365 (primarily regards deployment in terminal server environments) what’s evident is Microsoft are trying to entice more customers to embrace their Online Services ‘cloud’ based solutions.

Posted by James in Applications, Servers, Small Business Software | 1 Comment »

We’ve recently started selling Microsoft Online Services. A great set of services that allows a business to offer email and file services without the need to worry about storing, backing up and maintanence. Yup that means no worrying out DR (Disaster Recovery) or servers in your building ! We particularly like the look of Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS). You can link it to your existing Active Directory using the Microsoft Online Services Directory Synchronization, great lets give it a go.

On setup I get a werid error ‘The Microsoft Online Services Directory Synchronization tool must be installed on a domain joined computer running Windows Server 2003 Serivce Pack 2 or greater.’. Hangon the server’s a Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise server and is a domain controler, so what’s the problem ? On digging around the MS site I find that it’s fine with Windows 2008 server but come accross this -

Installation on 64-bit environments not supported.

No way … surely not. Are we supposed to be using 64bit OSs now or not ? Exchange has been 64bit only for 2 versions or since early 2007 ! Even small hardware vendors are on the 64bit bandwagon.

Obviously now we know it’s not the end of the world but come on guys try to help us out just a little bit !

Posted by Chris in Applications, Operating Systems, Servers | 1 Comment »