Department uses cloud-based technologies to enable its ‘ICT as a service’ strategy

11th of September, 2014 / / No Comments

Customer Overview

The Department of State Development and Infrastructure Planning (DSDIP) plays a critical role in leading a state-wide, coordinated approach to infrastructure, planning and development whilst ensuring a sustainable future for Queensland communities.

The Department of Local Government, Community Recovery and Resilience (DLGCRR) is responsible for overseeing the legislative framework in which local governments operate and enhance community recovery and future resilience.

Business Situation

The Department of State Development and Infrastructure Planning was using an externally hosted Microsoft Exchange 2003 environment for their email.… [Keep reading] “Department uses cloud-based technologies to enable its ‘ICT as a service’ strategy”

Kloud Solutions — MAPA 2014 Winner

6th of September, 2014 / / No Comments

Kloud is thrilled to announce we will take home 2 gongs as part of the 2014 MAPA Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. We were named both Microsoft’s Cloud Solutions Partner of the Year as well as Collaboration and Content Partner of the Year. The awards, won in the face of tough competition, were awarded for a range of customer solutions, including the Coles intranet portal, mycoles and the Spotless mobility app, MyWork. Both innovative solutions empower workforces by enabling anytime, anywhere access and closely align to Microsoft’s mobile-first, cloud-first strategy.… [Keep reading] “Kloud Solutions — MAPA 2014 Winner”

Mobile platform increases productivity for integrated services company

25th of August, 2014 / / No Comments

Customer Overview
Spotless Group is an Australian owned, managed and operated provider of integrated facility management services. With operations across Australia and New Zealand, the Group’s 33,000 employees deliver millions of service hours a year across hundreds of specialist services to industry sectors including:

  • Health
  • Education
  • Leisure, Sport and Entertainment
  • Defence
  • Government
  • Resources
  • Business and Industry (AU) (NZ)
  • Laundries

Business Situation
Spotless service workers and supervisors (employees and sub-contractors) generally work at customer locations rather than offices.… [Keep reading] “Mobile platform increases productivity for integrated services company”

Purchasing Additional SharePoint Online Storage for Office 365

20th of August, 2014 / / 3 Comments

There are a number of different options for customers to purchase Office 365.  In the U.S.A. and the majority of markets, customers can purchase Office 365 directly from Microsoft via MOSP (Microsoft Online Subscription Program).  This is the most common way for small businesses to purchase Office 365.  Customers can purchase licenses using a credit card.  There is no minimum license quantity for MOSP.  Customers pay for Office 365 via an automatic monthly subscription.

In Australia, Telstra has a syndication agreement with Microsoft. … [Keep reading] “Purchasing Additional SharePoint Online Storage for Office 365”

Securing Emails Outside of Your Organization With Office 365 Message Encryption

3rd of August, 2014 / / 1 Comment

​For those of you who have been concerned about email security for a number of years, you may remember a solution from Microsoft called Exchange Hosted Encryption (EHE).  This was a cloud based service which allowed organizations to encrypt emails according to certain defined rules.  For example, you could encrypt emails where the intended recipient was outside of your organization and certain keywords or regular expressions where detected such as a credit card number.  This was a very useful service for protecting emails sent to ANY user, regardless of the relationship with the user’s company. … [Keep reading] “Securing Emails Outside of Your Organization With Office 365 Message Encryption”

Unable to Administer Office 365 Using PowerShell with Multi-Factor Authentication

3rd of August, 2014 / / 2 Comments

Back in February, Microsoft announced the release of multi-factor authentication.  This feature allows IT administrators to dramatically increase the security of Office 365 by requiring a second factor of authentication to access the service.  This feature is very simple to configure and use.  It is far simpler to configure multi-factor authentication for Office 365 than it is to enable an equivalent solution on premises.  To learn more about multi-factor authentication, I recommend the following blog post:

http://blog.kloud.com.au/2014/04/16/protect-your-identity-in-the-cloud-with-multi-factor-authentication/… [Keep reading] “Unable to Administer Office 365 Using PowerShell with Multi-Factor Authentication”

OneDrive for Business Redistributable Installer using the Office Deployment Tool for Click to Run

25th of July, 2014 / / 18 Comments

I’ve recently been working with a customer to deploy OneDrive for Business where Office 2010 is deployed in the SOE (OneDrive for Business is included as part of Office 2013). One of the issues that we faced is that unlike with the old SkyDrive Pro application, there is no offline or redistributable installer package for OneDrive for Business. When deploying to thousands of devices using a tool like SCCM, this is a problem.

There are two obvious ways to install OneDrive for Business:

  • “Click to Run” through Office 365
  • Upgrade the SOE Office version to Office 2013

While it is possible to scour the Internet and download what appears to be a deployable package, it is actually nothing more than a Click to Run stub loader that executes the Office 365 ProPlus installer.… [Keep reading] “OneDrive for Business Redistributable Installer using the Office Deployment Tool for Click to Run”

RDS and Shared Computer Support for Office 365 Pro Plus

15th of July, 2014 / / 1 Comment

There is no denying that the workplace is moving towards a multi-device world.  The majority of information workers (IWs) now have an average of 3 – 4 devices per user.  This can include a PC, notebook, tablet, and phone.  The problem is that Office Professional is licensed per device.  This means that organizations planning to deploy Office Professional have to purchase additional copies of Office to run on these different devices.  For most organizations, this is prohibitively expensive. … [Keep reading] “RDS and Shared Computer Support for Office 365 Pro Plus”

End User Access To Spam Quarantine in Office 365

13th of July, 2014 / / No Comments

One of the ​features of Office 365 which gets very little attention is Exchange Online Protection (EOP). EOP is a Microsoft cloud service which protects Exchange Online in Office 365 from spam and viruses. EOP is a built-in capability of Office 365. There is no additional license required to use it.

Emails which EOP detects as spam are trapped in a quarantine area. Users were notified that email was quarantined by an automatically generated email message from EOP.… [Keep reading] “End User Access To Spam Quarantine in Office 365”

Failure Upgrading DirSync with a Remote SQL Instance

10th of July, 2014 / / No Comments

I’ve just recently come across an issue when performing the upgrade procedure for the Microsoft Azure Directory Sync tool with a remote SQL database. The procedure seems simple enough at first glance and is documented here.

To break down the process it is only a few simple steps:

Install the new dirsync –

Dirsync.exe /fullsql

Click next on the upgrade wizard until complete

Run Powershell –

Import-Module DirSync

Run the following PowerShell cmdlet to update the backend database –

Install-OnlineCoexistenceTool -UseSQLServer –SqlServer <ServerName> -Upgrade -Verbose -ServiceCredential (Get-Credential)

The Issue

This particular issue will occur during the upgrade procedure on the PowerShell step Install-OnlineCoexistenceTool with the following error –

VERBOSE: Running InstallOnlineCoexistenceTool in Upgrade mode.… [Keep reading] “Failure Upgrading DirSync with a Remote SQL Instance”