WebProNews

Tag: IT Management

  • Microsoft Office 2016 Gets Official Release Date

    Microsoft announced that Office 2016 will become broadly available starting on September 22, which is just around the corner. Those with volume licensing agreements in place can download it from Microsoft’s Volume Licensing Center starting October 1.

    The company released the IT Pro and Developer Preview in March, and has since been refining the experience for Windows, which includes IT management enhancements including improvements to the upgrade and installation experience. Office 365 users will see changes to how the apps are updated in the future.

    Office 365 ProPlus subscribers will still get monthly feature and security updates, but Microsoft is now referring to this as “Current Branch,” with subscribers always having the most current Office apps and capabilities available. The next Current Branch release is also September 22. It will have all the new app updates included. There’s also a new option called Current Branch for Business, which delivers three feature updates per year in addition to the monthly security updates. The first Current Branch for Business build will drop in February. That will include the same feature set as the September 22 release plus four extra months of security updates.

    “We’ve also addressed a number of the other top IT requests in Office 365 ProPlus, including deployment support for Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) to help control network traffic when deploying updates and new reports on Office activation and usage available in the Office 365 admin portal,” says Microsoft’s Julia White. “Beyond the new deployment and management options, the new Office also adds support for Data Loss Prevention across the Office 2016 apps, Multi-factor Authentication and other mission critical control capabilities.”

    “Also, back in March we pledged our commitment to compatibility with your existing Office customization by not making changes to the extensibility model for macros or add-ins,” she adds. “If you’ve been evaluating the preview, you would have seen that most of the tools and processes for managing and deploying Office 365 ProPlus (15.x) versions are very consistent with Office 2016. In August, we published guidance for updating Office 365 ProPlus to the Office 2016 version and kicked off the Office IT Pro Deployment Script project.”

    Microsoft will launch a new IT and developer-focused event series called the Microsoft Cloud Roadshow. At these events, the company will provide free, two-day technical training in 12 cities for Office, Azure, and Windows.

    Image via YouTube

  • Dropbox For Business Makes Life Easier For IT Teams

    Dropbox announced some updates to Dropbox for Business, which should make things a little easier for IT teams in the administration, security, and integration areas.

    For one, they’ve added tiered admin roles. There are three tiers: Team admin, User management admin, and support admin. The idea is that day-to-day responsibilities can be delegated by having different roles assigned to each admin.

    Team admins have the ability to set team-wide security and sharing permissions as well as create admins and manage members. They have all available admin permissions. This is the only tier that can set admins or change roles. There has to be at least one Team Admin on an account.

    User management admins can add and remove team members, manage groups, and view a team’s activity feed. Support admins can manage passwords and basic account security as well as create a team member activity log. They can also contact Dropbox support about restoring deleted files, helping team members locked out of two-step authentication, etc.

    You can get a deeper look at all of this here.

    Also new is an enterprise installer, which lets admins automate Dropbox for Business deployment remotely to any Windows desktop machine. You can learn more about running this here.

    Regarding security and API improvements, a post by Rob Baesman on the Dropbox for Business blog says:

    Security is always top of mind for us and our customers. Two of our newest additions continue to put the security of your company’s data at the forefront. Our recent ISO 27018 certification makes us one of the first cloud service providers to achieve the emerging global standard for user privacy and data protection. And admins can now more easily require two-step verification to better protect account access.

    To integrate Dropbox with your existing systems even further, we’re extending the Dropbox for Business API with new capabilities for shared folders. Several industry-leading data migration and DLP providers — including Adallom, CloudLock, Elastica, Mover, Netskope, and SkySync — have begun building integrations to help admins take advantage of this new functionality. “As organizations continue migrating to cloud apps like Dropbox to enable greater employee agility and productivity, IT needs to have visibility and control over content stored in the cloud to ensure the security of sensitive business data,” said Rick Holden, VP of business development and alliances, Netskope. “The new Dropbox shared folder API allows us to better integrate our two services, giving IT peace of mind and affording employees greater flexibility in how they do their jobs.”

    In addition to all of this, Dropbox announced the integration of Dropbox for Business with Active Directory with a new Active Directory Connector, which has been released in beta to select customers. We should be hearing more about that in the near future.

    Image via Dropbox

  • Dell Officially Acquires Quest Software

    Dell Officially Acquires Quest Software

    Like HP and other PC manufacturers in the post-iPhone tech era, Dell is hedging its bets by investing in software and security services.

    Today Dell announced its acquisition of Quest Software has been completed. Quest is an IT management software provider that offers systems, security, applications, and business intelligence services. Dell states that Quest offers “next-generation” virtualized and cloud environments that will be “highly complementary” to Dell’s scalable mid-market design approach.

    “The close of the Quest acquisition is a tremendous milestone in Dell’s journey to strengthen our end-to-end IT capabilities, empowering our customers to unlock greater value in their Dell technology investments, as well as their overall IT environments,” said John Swainson, president of Dell Software. “We are addressing key needs for our customers, helping them leverage the cloud, support ‘bring-your-own-device’ in their enterprise, and deploy mobile applications and virtualization to drive improved business results. The addition of Quest Software into Dell’s software portfolio will extend our industry-leading suite of solutions to a broader range of customers and partners, while simplifying operations, maximizing workforce productivity and delivering faster results.”

    The $2.4 billion acquisition was approved by Dell stockholders at a meeting on September 25. Dell estimated a 2 to 3 cent dilutive impact on earnings per share in fiscal 2013 due to the purchase, and 4 to 5 cents in fiscal 2014.

    Dell estimates that the acquisition of Quest brings Dell 100,000 customers, 5,000 channel partners, and a “$1 billion-plus” annual software business. In addition, the company brings with it 1,500 sales and marketing employees, as well as 1,300 software developers.