CloudCaseStudies: Only In America
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
