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Microsoft is making key changes to how it offers office virtualization: It’s great for companies, and here’s what to expect.

Virtualization has greatly benefited from falling costs and increased ease of use in the past year. That makes it a whole lot easier for providers to talk about virtualization as a solution to more common business problems, especially for midsize companies. And Microsoft, no surprise, has also been keeping an eye on this trend. The result is a long-awaited update to Windows virtualization that indicates changes in the market and a new paradigm for how Microsoft is approaching the virtualization trend. That may sound a little technical, but it’s actually very exciting. Here’s where Windows virtualization is heading, and why we like what we see.

Virtualization is growing more common via security and choice

Virtualization isn’t growing more common just because providers think it’s trendy and try to sell it; It also has answers for growing problems with data management. Take security, for example. Localization is growing increasingly dangerous for companies that are targets of hackers, and hackers are increasingly targeting smaller companies with less security. When you keep data on a local hard drive — especially a mobile hard drive on a phone or tablet — it becomes far less secure and far easier to steal. The security solutions for this problem are limited, but virtualization provides a better answer by allowing the information technology staff to group data on server hard drives and allow only limited access, as necessary, from other devices. Data is made available but becomes far more difficult to hack.

Another reason virtualization is a growing standard is “choice,” something that Microsoft is marketing heavily. Basically, this means that employees can work from any device they choose in pretty much any location as long as they can access their virtualized desktops. Providers can offer similar services no matter what machines a company likes to use, allowing for a lot more flexibility and compatibility.

The CSP will be offering usage rights — if partners want to offer them

Okay, onto the big news from Microsoft and the CSP or Cloud Solution Provider program, which is Microsoft’s fancy way of saying “online partners who sell our stuff.” The problem was that for years, Microsoft wasn’t quite sure how to sell virtualized services. It tried to package them in odd ways, and many companies were turned off by the high costs and limitations associated with virtualization programs — specifically, strange hardware requirements that didn’t make a lot of sense at the time and made even less as virtualization became more popular. Partners just weren’t on board.

So Microsoft has decided to turn this ship around by allowing partners to sell their own virtualization use rights for Windows 10 subscriptions. They will be able to host services either through Azure or through other third-party hosting partners. This allows for much greater freedom in creating virtualization packages and passing them successfully on to customizers. There will be various licenses for the new Windows 10 Enterprise and Microsoft 365 packages. Buy one of these packages and virtualization rights are basically included from the beginning, including for customers that don’t necessarily have per-user licensing or who don’t use a Windows client. Bottom line, this is Microsoft saying, “All right, everyone can virtualize services on our platform now.”

The new certification program

In addition to the new licensing options, Microsoft is also creating a new certification program for those third-party hosting partners that we briefly mentioned. If a third party wants to host Microsoft-ready virtualization, it will need to earn this certification. It’s Microsoft’s way of ensuring a bit of product and quality control. This was always going to happen, and it’s a good thing; setting some parameters on how to offer virtualization services is necessary to keep these new CSP subscriptions from going completely off the rails. Expect a lot of common virtual machine providers to immediately sign up for this certification process.

The rise of low-cost Windows machines

Microsoft’s change on virtualization wouldn’t be complete without talking about Windows 10 Cloud and other Microsoft plans for the future. It’s become pretty apparent via leaks and official statements that Microsoft wants to start offering a trimmed-down version of Windows 10 that operates primarily from the cloud, including machines specially designed to run Windows 10 Cloud.

This would be an interesting move for Microsoft, which probably has its eye on Chromebooks; the ultra-affordable, lightweight laptops running Chrome also depend on cloud software for most of their capabilities, and while they can’t do everything, they are very popular for a certain type of buyer or business looking to cut costs. Microsoft doesn’t like the idea of Google having a monopoly on this idea, so it’s stepping up with a cloud device of its own. What this will look like isn’t entirely certain yet, but virtualization is likely to be a big part of the plan. Even if you aren’t especially interested in virtualization, keep an eye out for these affordable Windows machines in the coming months.

Final note: cost scaling and complexity

Two final points about this big Microsoft change: First, cost scaling is still a little uncertain, especially for the end user. The new model is promising, but virtualization may still be a costly prospect. Prices are likely to be driven down over time, especially since Microsoft’s move encourages more competition, but don’t expect everything to be affordable right away.

Second, while virtualization has been simplified, we don’t want to promise anyone that it will be simple. With multiple providers and hosting companies offering competing ideas, it may even get more difficult to find out exactly what your company needs and what will save you the most money. If you are interested in virtualization, the first step is to sit down with your IT experts and start a thorough research project to find your options.

The Business Center apps available with an Office 365 Business Premium subscription can help to transform the way your small business does business.

If you own a business, you should never forget that although your business may be small, you still need to run it like any other business.

And that takes a lot of time.

Whether you work alone, with a partner or even employ a small team, I know that you probably don’t have any time to waste.

That is why I always share with my clients every time-saving software solution I come across which I think real value for the majority of small business owners.

The importance of business management software.

Listen. If you are trying to operate your small business without business management software, you are just wasting your time. Management software helps you run your business and prevents your business from running you. It will help you complete tasks quicker and easier while doing more business than you ever thought possible.

These days, one of my favorite business packages for small businesses is Microsoft’s Office 365 Business Premium. Office 365 Business Premium provides small businesses with everything they need to get work done better, faster, and from anywhere there is an internet connection. Office 365 Business Premium is an affordable online service giving subscribers access to Microsoft’s popular suite of business applications including Outlook, Word, Excel PowerPoint, and Access (on PCs only).

But the best feature of Office 365 Business Premium is not the unlimited access to the top business applications. It is is the ability to access the exclusive Business Center which is only available for Office 365 Business Premium subscribers.

What is the Business Center and why should I want it?

The Office 365 Business Center is an online hub where you are able to manage a collection of unique applications which give you the ability to build better relationships with your customers, close more sales with less effort. increase your online presence, and most importantly run your business quicker and easier than ever.

Which applications are available in the Business Center?

The Business Center offers several unique business applications to handle the needs of your business. These applications include:

• Listings. This application increases your company’s online presence by helping you to create and maintain your business’ listing information on popular social media platforms like Facebook, Google, Yelp, and Bing. Once you set up your basic information, Listings will walk you through the set-up procedures to make sure your customers can find you online. The great thing about Listings is that when your business’ information changes, you don’t have to change your information manually on every site. Instead, all you need to do is update your business’ information once at the Business Center, and then let Listings handle the rest.
• Invoicing. Do you want to get paid on time and in full? Of course, you do. That is why it is a great idea to use Invoicing to create, edit, and send professional-looking invoices for your customers which let them pay directly from their invoice through PayPal. Invoicing also allows you to keep track of which customers have already paid you, and which ones still need to pay. Make your bookkeeping as stress-free as possible by generating yearly and monthly reports and by importing payment records directly into QuickBooks Online.
• Bookings. Any small business which uses appointments will love Bookings. This application allows your customers to schedule an appointment without the need to speak with anyone from your company. This saves both time and money. You can place your booking page directly on Facebook or on your company’s website. Bookings is flexible enough to handle the needs of almost any business. You can edit operating hours, your list of services and their prices, and current availability. Bookings even provides business owners and their employees with a mobile app which will alert them to new appointments and provide customer information.
• Connections. Stay connected to your customers with Connections. Connections allows you to create a variety of marketing campaigns to build the loyalty of your current customers and to expand your business through the use of referrals. Offer customers valuable new offers and encourage them to refer their friends. It is easy to keep track of the success rate of each individual campaign by using the metrics which Connections provides. You

How to use the new applications to drive business.

You now have a better understanding of the power of the Business Center from Office 365 Business Premium. But you still want to know how you can use all of these applications to save time and make more money, right? No problem.

Imagine you own a local small-town barber shop. It is a classic, old-time kind of place complete with a straight-edge hot foam shave. A potential customer who has just seen an old movie which featured a straight-edge hot foam shave and is intrigued. Surely, no one offers such a shave now, especially in this small town, he thinks. Without expecting to find anything, the potential customer searches on Bing for “hot shaves near me”. Amazingly, there is one result. It is the one you placed on online using Listings. The potential customer clicks on your business’ listing and he winds up at your Bookings form. He schedules an appointment for the next day. After getting an amazing shave, he takes a photo and posts it on Yelp along with a five-star review. Then he refers all his friends to you through Connections.

Now, your customer is happy, his friends are happy, and most importantly you are happy.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is rapidly moving into new industries and sectors of business: Is Microsoft’s management software right for you?  

It’s time for even more Inspire conference news: Microsoft unleashed a bunch of new programs and plans for its partners, which means that customers can also expect some big changes down the road. One of the most interesting updates for end users was the announcement of new Microsoft Dynamics 365 features.

Dynamics 365, for those who haven’t heard the term, is Microsoft’s branding of its latest CRM tools. These tools are designed to share data across multiple aspects of business operations like sales, customer services, financial designs and more. It also adds in a healthy dose of automation to make sure forms are populated and analysis is enabled as quickly as possible. It’s a very smooth solution for growing businesses, and so partners have been interested in seeing just what’s up with Dynamics features and where the service is heading. The Inspire-connected July update answered these concerns with a host of new updates. To help out, we’re going to offer a quick guide on what’s new with Dynamics 365 and why it’s worth paying attention.

Partnership with LinkedIn

One of Microsoft’s biggest Dynamics announcements concerns a new partnership with LinkedIn to further the development of the Microsoft Relationship Sales app (part of the Dynamics suite). The Relationship Sales solution now taps into the LinkedIn Sales Navigator to help connect with a variety of buyers more easily, and analyze buyer data for better lead management. Basically, if you like using Sales Navigator or what it offers, you can access that data via Dynamics to gain the same benefits plus the other Dynamics features that you may want.

Why is this exciting? Well, Microsoft has indicated that LinkedIn is just the start. It would love to partner with other companies to provide additional social network data to help fuel Dynamics tools and make them easier to use, rather than having end users skip around from tool to tool to get all the information they want. Microsoft also makes the claim that this LinkedIn partnership offers a service that is about half the cost of similar competitive solutions on the market – a bold but very impressive claim if it holds up.

Dynamics 365 for Retail

Dynamics 365 already has a “For Sales” and “For Customer Service” section, among others, but Microsoft is adding a couple new sections to address farther-reaching needs among companies, especially B2C companies who may be looking for tools more in sync with their industries. The first is Dynamics 365 for Retail: Retail is made for managing store, employee, customer, inventory and financial document data. It focuses on POS activities that bring customer data to improve each transaction and helps managers analyze what sales trends really mean for customer engagement.

Once again Microsoft’s AI features are taken out and used to help automate as much data as possible so you don’t spend too long looking for everything you need. This also extends to shift schedules, shift assignments, and absence requests.

This is a very competitive field with a lot of excellent solutions aimed at small to mid-sized companies, so it will be interesting to see how Microsoft does here. Would you be interested in switching your Retail system if that promised compatibility with the Windows platform?

Dynamics 365 for Talent

Following up the Retail option, Microsoft is also offering a Dynamics solution for talent acquisition. Here the benefits of partnering with LinkedIn become especially obvious: Microsoft is able to use the LinkedIn Recruiter data to fuel “dynamic candidate profiles” which basically means you won’t need to keep visiting LinkedIn to find the necessary information about the latest batch of recruits – it will all be ported right to Talent.

Talent will also help with onboarding by providing important resources and training steps as needed for those just joining the company – a sort of introductory tool to ease them through the process. Microsoft also promises a consolidated HR profile for each employee that will take data from multiple sources to provide a full view of each worker, their current tasks, and their productivity.

Both Retail and Talent will be available summer 2017 for those interested in adopting Dynamics 365 solutions.

Application Update Summary

Along with new Dynamics solutions, Microsoft announced several updates to existing applications that the company thought were particularly worth noting.

First, Microsoft is expanding Dynamics into new geographical areas, updating its offerings for the UK and Canada, which is good news for clients and partners who may be waiting for a full rollout. This also includes new data centers in places like the UK and Germany, which sets Microsoft up to expand its services further in time.

Second, Microsoft has introduced a local business solution that allows companies to run Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations in their own data centers, without the need to contact a provider. This is great for companies that have already invested in their own server setups but still want to use D365 for as much as possible.

Third, Microsoft is adding new prospect-to-cash integration, which is their way of saying that Dynamics can now share information between financial and sales departments. If those two parts of your company have had trouble communicating in the past, they may find it easier with D365.

Lots of Quality of Life Changes

One of the nice things about Dynamics is that Microsoft posts a list of current changes that are in development and changes that are likely to come to Dynamics in the future. Here, you can see that Microsoft has updated the software with significant amounts of integration and new forms to help out different kinds of companies. That includes expense management reports, Cortana compatibility, new forms for employee benefits, more YouTube compatibility…you get the idea. It’s tough to list all these updates, but it’s a good idea to check up on the list on occasion and see if any important features are included.

Do you have any further questions about Dynamics 365, or if could be of benefit to your organization? Why not ask someone with experience? InfiNet Solutions can help your Omaha business find the right services for your unique situation. Contact us at [email protected] or call us at (402) 895--5777.

Living in rural American often means lack of Internet access. Is it possible to get broadband in the country? What’s happening to fix the rural-urban digital divide?  

Currently, 34 million Americans don’t have access to broadband. If you’re used to lightning-fast speeds and quick downloads, it may be impossible to even imagine living without broadband or fiber optics, but for more than 10 percent of Americans, it’s their daily reality.

The majority of people without broadband live in rural areas. There, the lack of access directly hampers their ability to take advantage of the educational and entrepreneurial opportunities available online. Fortunately, there is hope for change, and many entities are working together to increase access in these areas.

In the meantime, however, there are effective ways to live, work and prosper in these areas, even without broadband access.

The Rural-Urban Digital Divide

In rural areas, 39 percent of residents can’t get broadband, but in urban areas, that issue only affects 4 percent of people. The digital divide doesn’t just mean that you can’t watch funny goat videos in the country, and if that was the only issue, who would care? It’s easy to get your own goat and watch his antics in person if you live out in the country.

The problem goes far beyond that. It’s not just entertainment that suffers. Education and business suffer as well. Even businesses not located in rural areas suffer—the lack of access means fewer online shoppers. Remember, these shoppers don’t have a lot of stores nearby, and as a result, they may need e-commerce even more than people in urban areas.

Problems With Lack of Access

Rural schools tend to have low-speed Internet connections and very high Internet costs. This means these students can’t tap into all the learning that happens online. From free online college classes to online college prep testing, these students are being left in the cold, and their schools (often already struggling with reduced funding due to comparatively low property taxes) are cutting into their budgets to afford the cost of a weak connection.

The problem affects businesses as well. New businesses are less likely to set up shop in these areas, even if all the other logistical factors are in place. Also, when entrepreneurs try to run a business in an area without Internet, they have to deal with a range of issues. Even something like increased downtime makes it challenging to have meetings online, download documents, use collaborative project-management software or do something as simple as run credit cards for payments.

The Internet in Rural America

Without access to broadband, rural users rely on slower, less reliable Internet options. Many areas have DSL, but when running over phone lines that are generations old, top speeds tend to be slower than 10 Mbps, and actual speeds tend to be a lot lower. Satellite Internet is an option in many rural areas, but access varies widely from place to place, and storms and clouds can reduce service.

Barriers to Entry

With millions of people, businesses, schools, nonprofits and others eager for rural Internet, it seems like Internet service providers would be rushing in to fill the gap. Why is that not happening? To put it simply, the cost is the main reason ISPs aren’t jumping into these areas.

To get started in rural areas, ISPs have to lay down cables. That creates huge upfront costs. In a densely populated area, those costs are defrayed by huge numbers of people signing up for service. Rural areas simply don’t have the numbers. Even if every single person and business in these areas signed up for service, there would not be enough subscribers to offset the cost of laying cable and entering the market.

Solutions to Lack of Broadband Access in Rural Areas

To improve access, private and public sectors are joining together to expand broadband into rural areas. Microsoft has pledged its support for the project, and in particular, the company’s Rural Airband Initiative seeks to work with telecom companies to bring access to 2 million rural residents by 2022. Microsoft also plans to stimulate investment through licensing, and spearhead digital training so rural residents know how to make the most of the Internet.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) also has plans to help expand access. The FCC has long been a critical driver for communication reform in rural areas, with the Universal Service Fund (USF) at the heart of those activities. Now, the FCC wants to expand the objectives of the USF to include broadband as part of the focus. The FCC wants to offset the costs of setting up cable and infrastructure for ISPs with the new Connect America Fund.

Thriving in Areas Without Broadband

If you run a nonprofit, work as a school administrator, oversee a library or engage with rural Internet as a consumer, the options can feel bleak, but there are things you can do. This advice also applies to freelancers and small businesses in these areas. First, for the sake of your organization, it’s critical to find out what’s available.

Provided you can hook up a landline, you can almost certainly get Internet over a digital subscriber line (DSL). Satellite may be faster, but that can vary from property to property based on trees and other obstructions. Expect to spend time investigating and trying out available options before you hone in on what works.

Once you’ve found an ISP, even if it’s not broadband, you need to take all possible steps to boost your speed. That can mean hard-wiring devices to your modem rather than using wifi, positioning the modem in an advantageous spot, or placing your satellite in the most optimal spot.

On top of that, consider getting involved. Find out about programs and grants that can help bring broadband access to your area. Advocate for those programs to take place in your area.

If you’re thinking about relocating to a rural area or if you’re currently dealing with the challenges of rural Internet, InfiNet Solutions can help. We serve residents throughout the Omaha area and beyond. Call (402) 895--5777 or contact us at [email protected] for more information today.