Only
In America Proves the value of Office 365 to any endeavor
ONLY IN AMERCA is a group of boaters who are setting out to prove that The American Spirit of friendship and cooperation is alive and well by taking a small boat on a long voyage up the east coast of the US. When the crew of Spirit 7 was putting together the trip from Norfolk, VA to Boston, MA in a 19' Boston Whaler they had some rather sophisticated needs. They had a lot of groups they were working with and needed to both plan an 1100 mile voyage and then share it with the world while underway. The contingent groups consisted of sponsors, crew members, marinas, supporters and partners from Hawaii to Indiana to Boston. Office 365 was an obvious choice to manage their communications, documentation, scheduling and web hosting needs.
Microsoft got involved and selected CloudStrategies to configure the Office 365 environment and work with the crew to ensure they could make full use of all the needed capabilities. We set up all the users, created a document repository, calendar and provisioned the external web site in just a few hours. Then we held web based training for the crew so they could get their laptops configured and become familiar with the tools. This worked very well as we were able to train the whole team at once and work out how they would use the tools together without making everyone fly to one location. We also brought in Piquant Software Solutions to develop the external web which would give all their sponsors and supporters the ability to follow along on the trip with blogs, a web cam and pictures from the ports of call.
Here are a few of the things that Office 365 has made possible for
ONLY IN AMERCA:
· SharePoint Team Calendars to manage events, flights, ports and other activities
· Exchange e-mail, calendaring and contacts
· Team calendars and document stores from SharePoint available offline in Outlook
· Outlook configured to send bulk e-mail through external SMTP provider
· Windows Phone 7 integration to manage calendars, contacts and e-mail as well as post pictures anywhere
· Document repository for sponsor logos, itineraries and other information
· Lync meetings with sponsors from the boat at historic locations along the way
· Intune managing their laptops and providing remote assistance on the voyage
· SharePoint External Web for ONLY IN AMERCA web presence
While all of these are important for ONLY IN AMERCA, two have been especially valuable to us. First, our SharePoint External Web (www.onlyinamerica.biz) has proven to be a tremendous platform for our public web presence. It has all the power of SharePoint 2010, was easy to set up with SharePoint Designer and has been a joy to maintain. Being able to update the site from any browser has proven to be invaluable. On a daily basis we are posting news articles, pictures, blogs and other content in a matter of seconds. Second, Lync has also been invaluable to us both in getting everyone trained on the tools using screen sharing and now in communicating between ourselves and showcasing sponsor's products in video calls from the boat.
All said, the technology in Office 365 has proven to be flexible and relevant to ONLY IN AMERCA and ONLY IN AMERCA continues to prove the value of Office 365 to any kind of business endeavor.
Please come by and enjoy the view along the way at www.onlyinamerica.biz
Mark Gordon
Senior Solutions Architect
CloudStrategies.net
CloudStrategies Lives & Works on Microsoft Office 365
"We were the first and probably still one of the only Microsoft
Cloud Champions to put our full production activity on Microsoft
Office 365," explains CloudStrategies' CEO Pete Zarras.
"
With a growing team of professionals spread out across the nation, and a business that completely depends upon making sure that everyone always has the latest information about developments in the rapidly-changing cloud computing market, CloudStrategies needed a way to keep everyone on the team in touch with each other at all times. What better way to solve that problem than with the key product at the core of CloudStrategie's mission-Microsoft Office 365.
Making Meetings More Personal
Like most companies, CloudStrategies consists of multiple teams, one focused on marketing activities, another on customer sales, yet another on delivering consultative and engineering services and a support organization.
"Each of these teams must meet regularly to keep each other updated on project status, share observations on software delivery and best practices, and support each other in a myriad of ways," explains Zarras. "By using Lync everyone can always glance at their screen to see who's available, instant message them with a quick question, and I can't tell you how many times we've been able to keep ahead of customer issues by pulling together ad hoc meetings and sharing our screens."
Zarras is referring to the Lync communications service, which allows his team to quickly and informally point, click, and drag participants into a quick conversation. Everyone sees the video image of whoever is speaking, and anyone can click to share their computer screen with other participants at any time, making it easy to show each other documents, diagrams, websites, or other critical information.
The Hunt is Off
Many members of the team joke about their experience at previous
companies hunting for documents that they had created and wanted to
use again. "It was
always a joke," explains John Alumbaugh, CloudStrategies' Director
of Consulting Services. "Here we 
were working for this big technology company and we
couldn't find where we had put our files. SharePoint Online changes
all of that."
CloudStrategies uses the SharePoint Online feature of Office 365 to store all documents, photographs, videos, and other materials where everyone can always get at them easily. "Not only that," adds Senior Solutions Architect Mark Gordon, "but when Microsoft asked us to support their recent "Only in America" marketing campaign we were able to quickly put up a terrific website so customers could track the progress of this Boston Whaler as it sailed from Norfolk VA to Boston MA demonstrating how Office 365 could be used on board their boat to manage the trip and keep them in constant contact with everyone. These sailors with very little technical experience were able to update their own website."
Working Together When Everything Works Together
"Our company is barely two years old," observes Pete Zarras. "Thanks to Microsoft Online Services we have been able to build an environment in which everyone works well together in part because our tools all work so well together. We track customer information using Microsoft CRM Online, we all build our presentations and documents with Word, PowerPoint, and the other Microsoft Office tools, we all keep in touch using email powered by Microsoft Exchange and messaging and collaboration powered by Lync and SharePoint. I don't believe we could have come half this far half this fast without these tools. It's great to be able to offer customers something we truly believe in."