Custom Development: The Evolution to Agile and DevOps
The word “custom” sounds expensive—custom cabinets, custom-built homes, custom closets. That reputation is in part deserved, especially if you don’t do your homework up front to know who you were working with and how the project will be managed to ensure there are no “surprises.” It’s really not too different in the world of custom […]
Unlock the Power of Office 365 with Strategic Planning
It’s not uncommon for organizations to use Microsoft’s Office 365 for just email and SharePoint for document storage and/or their intranet. Yet, Office 365 has a whole suite of powerful collaboration and teamwork solutions and tools too – including SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Microsoft Teams, and Yammer. But rolling out the tools without a […]
What Forrester and Customers Say About Cloud Cost Optimization and Management
This is Part 3 of our 3-Part series on Best Practices for Cloud Management. For those of you who aren’t familiar, the Forrester Wave is a rigorous vendor evaluation conducted over several months by the Forrester Research team. It’s meant to help enterprises put together a short list of vendors for them to evaluate. In […]
Best Practices for Optimizing Cloud Usage and Costs: Part 2
This is Part 2 of our 3-Part series on Best Practices for Cloud Management. Our last blog post provided detailed insight on five tips for reducing your overall Azure spend. What’s clear is that gaining visibility across your entire organization’s cloud spend is imperative to making sure you get the most out of your cloud […]
Best Practices for Optimizing Cloud Usage and Costs: Part I
This is Part 1 of our 3-Part series on Best Practices for Cloud Management. The funny thing about developers is that once they get ahold of fancy new toys, there can be a tendency to play with them as much as possible. This may sound familiar if you are using Microsoft Azure or another public […]
[Infographic] 10 Ways to Reduce Your Azure Spend
Microsoft Azure adoption is on the rise. But many organizations have learned the hard way that moving to the public cloud doesn’t always guarantee cost savings. In fact, many have noticed cloud bills that are two to three times higher than expectations. Luckily, that doesn’t have to be the case. The first step to combatting […]
Azure Automation: Infrastructure as Code
Automation is Key to Getting the Most Out of the Cloud The cloud offers many benefits to companies that move their infrastructure there or develop applications using cloud native services, but automation is the key to making the cloud efficient and cost-effective. We have to get into the “way back” machine for a second to […]
Roundup of Key Microsoft Team Features Announced at Microsoft Ignite
At the Ignite 2018 conference last week, Microsoft revealed that Microsoft Teams is now the fastest growing business app in Microsoft’s history and announced several powerful new capabilities to foster teamwork and collaboration. As we help more of our clients strategically rollout and adopt Microsoft Teams, it is exciting to learn that many of the […]
New Microsoft Teams Features for Meetings
Microsoft Ignite 2018 is underway! There are loads of announcements coming out each day about new capabilities and features in Office 365, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Azure, and more. Our team is currently gathering top takeaways – stay tuned for upcoming blog posts! In the meantime, here are two of my favorite features now available in Microsoft […]
Six Myths About Moving to the Cloud: What You Really Need to Know About Moving to Office 365
Most organizations that choose to move to the cloud do so because they have decided they need it for business agility and want the cost savings that come with it. If your organization is considering Microsoft Office 365 as your first step in moving applications to hosted solutions, you may have found similar inconsistencies in […]
Can You Use Microsoft Teams Without an Exchange License?
One of the government clients that I support has selected to use Google as their primary unified communication service. However, they also purchased an Office 365 tenant to use for SharePoint Online, Skype for Business, and OneDrive for Business. The Exchange license is turned off for all of their users. But what about Microsoft Teams? […]
4 Project Management Applications You Should Be Using Now
According to PWC, more than half of the companies that are unhappy with the project management software say that it is because the software is too expensive. Are you still using sticky notes or Microsoft Excel to manage projects? I continue to be surprised that Excel is still one of the most popular project management applications. If you […]
Board Portal Solutions – Diligent vs Office 365
According to Wikipedia, “a Board Portal can be a custom-built, in-house application, an off-the-shelf, commercial application that is deployed by IT, or a subscription-based software as a service (SaaS).” The portal is used to provide information to the board of directors and organize documents used to conduct a meeting. Diligent Corporation (formerly Thompson Reuters Boardlink) […]
Office 365 vs. Your Information Security Program
As you compare Office 365 versus your company’s security program, you should evaluate both internal and external threats. Many security professionals focus on external threats, but data shows that internal threats are more common than external threats. I have found that that NIST has a lot of great resources that can be leveraged to build […]
Top Azure Consulting Companies
Below is a list of what I believe are the top Azure consulting companies in the DC Metro area including Maryland, Northern Virginia, and Washington D.C. The ratings are based mostly on industry insider knowledge, including factors such as satisfaction of known customers, consultant turnover, and experience with key 3rd party solutions from the Azure Marketplace. Top companies can do more than just migrate virtual machines to Azure, […]