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Tag: Microsoft Office 365

  • DOD Temporarily Adopts Microsoft Teams For Remote Work

    DOD Temporarily Adopts Microsoft Teams For Remote Work

    The Deparment of Defense (DOD) has announced it is adopting Microsoft Teams to temporarily help it cope with the increase in remote workers.

    As the coronavirus pandemic continues to take a toll on organizations around the world, tech solutions that provide a way for individuals to continue working remotely are in high demand. Few companies have benefited from that reality more than Microsoft, whose Teams software has become a staple of many companies and organizations.

    The DOD is not immune to these trends, and established the “Commercial Virtual Remote (CVR) Environment to support the Department’s move towards a large-scale telework posture in response to the COVID–19 national emergency. This new tool will provide DoD with enhanced collaboration capabilities for DoD teleworkers to facilitate continuity of operations throughout the duration of the emergency.”

    Microsoft Teams will evidently play a big, not to mention unusual, role in the CVR Environment. According to Computerworld, “DoD employees will be able to access the CVR Teams environment via Microsoft Office 365 in the Government Commercial Cloud for chat, video and document collaboration. Unlike existing deployments of Teams in the DoD, the CVR Teams environment will be available on personal and mobile devices and on commercial networks, though the department has restricted what information can be shared.”

    This move is an indication of the ongoing challenges organizations are facing, and the measures being taken to maintain productivity in the face of unprecedented circumstances.

  • Microsoft Announces Office 365 For Government

    All the tech companies pretty much just compete with each other these days with the same products with one coming out later than the other. Microsoft has been on the backburner for a while now releasing their own versions of consumer and professional services while trying to keep up with Google. Their latest release helps the company stay current with other cloud-based technologies.

    Microsoft announced today the availability of Office 365 for Government, their latest cloud offering to governments. If you’re unfamiliar with Office 365, nobody would blame you for it. It’s essentially a cloud-based storage solution that offers users access to all the features of Microsoft Office without having to actually have them installed or hosted on a personal server.

    Google has been in this business for a while with their Google Apps for Government program. It already has the support of major parties like Orlando, Florida and Los Angeles. More recently, the non-government version of Google Apps was picked up by the city of Edmonton, Alberta.

    A head start doesn’t mean anything to Microsoft though. The company is moving head on by offering all sorts of software to government workers to hopefully make their lives easier. The current software on offer with Office 365 for Government include Exchange Online, Lync Online, SharePoint Online and Office Professional Plus. Compare that to Google Apps for Government which offers Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites and video and you can see that both are about evenly matched.

    The real concern is, of course, the security put in place with these services. As we move towards the cloud, governments are going to have to rely more and more on secure servers to keep their documents away from prying eyes. With the release of Office 365 for Government today, Microsoft claims to support global standards in security like ISO 27001 and the US Federal Information Security Management Act. They also hope to support IPv6 by September of this year to keep up with the latest evolution of the Internet.

    While the announcement says that Office 365 is targeted towards U.S. government organizations, it also says that it supports privacy and security standards in the EU. It remains to be seen if Microsoft will be offering Office 365 to Europe or Canada in the near future. We’ve contacted Microsoft to clarify and will update this story if we hear back.

    Microsoft has been pushing Office 365 pretty aggressively these past few months after moving out of beta last year. Just recently, Microsoft announced a partnership with the Catholic International Education Office to bring Office 365 to 200,000 Catholic schools around the world.

    Microsoft has the name brand recognition of Office to do well in this space. As we all move towards the cloud, it’s going to be Google and Microsoft going head-to-head over lucrative government contracts.

    UPDATE:

    As previously mentioned, we reached out to Microsoft in regards to Office 365 for Government making the move to governments outside of the U.S. A Microsoft spokesperson just got back to us with a response:

    Office 365 for Government is for U.S based government, you are correct. For government outside the United States, Office 365 for enterprises works well for most national, regional and municipal governments. For those with more specialized needs, Microsoft provides additional options such as dedicated infrastructure and local in-country hosting partners.

    Essentially, Office 365 for enterprises & Office for Government offer the same level of functionality: both offer a FISMA package and have best-in-class security, transparency, and compliance features. The difference is that Office 365 for Government has a segregated infrastructure for US government customers. If the customer has no special need to be in a tenant community that only has other US Government tenants, then we recommend staying in our Enterprise cloud. If the customer has a special regulatory need to migrate, we will help them do so.

    As government cloud requirements evolve, Microsoft’s portfolio will evolve to meet those needs.

  • Catholic Students To Receive Microsoft Office 365

    The Catholic International Education Office (OIEC) announced today that they, in partnership with Microsoft, will bring Office 365 and other resources to more than 200,000 Catholic schools all over the world with the potential to reach 43 million students.

    Microsoft Office 365 for education is a free tool for teachers and students. The software will allow teachers and students to do a number of things, including working together on class projects and documents, have virtual meetings, and participate in instant messaging and video conferencing from anywhere in the world. They’ll also be able to create and maintain websites with an easy edit tool, and access a new “Social Network of Catholic Education,” designed by Microsoft.

    The Catholic church is being very progressive for once in doing this to help their students get the technological skills needed for a 21st century world.

    Anthony Salcito, Vice President of Worldwide Education at Microsoft had this to say:

    “We need to continue to get creative about the ways technology can make a real impact in the lives of students and prepare them for the jobs of the future. Through this partnership, we will do just that. I am proud the leadership of the Catholic International Education Office has chosen to partner with Microsoft to deliver on their commitment to educators and students to modernize its schools and further its mission to promote education for all. Together, we can make a real impact in the classroom for both students and educators, and look forward to taking this journey with the Catholic community around the world.”

    Research indicates that in the next decade, 77 percent of all jobs will require technical skills of some sort, so when OIEC make announcement like this one to integrate Office 365, It shows how dynamic the Catholic church can be.