SharePoint, Office 365 Groups, and Teams – it is a convergence of worlds! It’s no secret that Microsoft is releasing updates to Office 365 at a rapid rate. Office 365 Groups were announced at Ignite 2015 and since their release the rest of us have been asking, “when do you use a Group vs. a Team Site?” 

More and more organizations are moving their on-premises infrastructure and applications to Microsoft cloud. An option that is not yet widely explored is the use of Office 365 for telephony workloads. Microsoft Office 365 provides a Cloud-only PBX solution which covers the basic calling scenarios, and which can be used along with your familiar Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams client.

I am grateful for the opportunity to attend Build this year and I am excited to highlight some of the Azure & Office 365 announcements gathered from keynotes and various sessions in Seattle. 

When I interview users on client engagements, I often hear the statement “there has to be a better way… .” Often, these users are referring to a business process that is completely manual.   Either there is physical paper being circulated between people in the office for sign-off, or there are numerous emails with attachments being sent back and forth between various teams that are part of that manual process.  

Are you currently in an on-premise environment and considering a move to the cloud?  Organizations are making the decision to move to Office 365 every day, is it time for you to make this transition as well?  In most cases the answer is probably yes, unless regulatory or other requirements make moving to the cloud too challenging.  By making this decision, you will be simplifying management of your infrastructure, reducing costs, and greatly improving mobile access to information.  In addition, you will continuously have access to the latest features Office 365 has available instead of waiting months for the next service pack to be released.