The move to cloud-based voice solutions for business communications has been underway for years and Microsoft has joined the party with its Skype for Business Cloud PBX offering. While there are many cloud PBX systems on the market, Microsoft's Cloud PBX provides the added benefit of complete integration with the familiar Office 365 suite. This can be a powerful advantage when you are looking to implement a major phone system change.

Everybody has a burning desire to keep score. Whether it involves the seventh game of the NBA finals or the value of your house compared to your next-door neighbor, most people want to know where they stand.  

Up to now, there hasn’t been a comprehensive scoreboard to empirically gauge data risk levels in the cloud. That all changed with the introduction of Office 365 Secure Score – a feature from Microsoft that tracks and analyzes your ongoing activity and security settings and presents you with an overall security score.

Maintaining the security of your data and systems is crucial to your business. Using Secure Score is an effective way to keep a close eye on your security tools use and procedures.

Duro Bag was once a small, family-owned paper bag manufacturing business with traditional IT needs. After being acquired by a private equity firm, a new entity was created called Novolex. After a flurry of acquisitions, Duro quickly became part of the largest paper bag producer in the world with nearly 2,000 employees and billions of dollars in revenue. The CIO and Director of IT suddenly found themselves in charge of the IT infrastructure for an organization that was no longer a small manufacturing company, but instead a billion-dollar enterprise with multiple subsidiaries, and more coming on board.

“There is no way they had enough excess capacity in the original company to merge all the acquired IT systems together,” says Matt Scherocman, President of Interlink Cloud Advisors. “They had to go to the cloud because they couldn’t possibly move fast enough to build servers and infrastructure, to be able to consolidate the firm’s IT systems.”

We are a technology company that works with clients all over the Midwest, including Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Michigan. Travel is a natural part of our business flow; therefore, we have adopted some proven applications and services that help us stay productive and less stressed while on the road and in the air.

Stay Productive Everywhere

Office 365 + Skype for Business Phone System

It’s no secret that we’re big advocates of Office 365, but we’re also Office 365 users, and it’s the main reason our team can stay productive when they’re outside of the office (whether it’s traveling, working from home, or accessing information from a client site). Having access to our emails, files and Office programs in the cloud allows us access to anything we need from any device, as long as it’s connected to the internet.

Interview with Matt Scherocman – Licensing Wrangler and President of Interlink Cloud Advisors

Slashing through the dense thicket of software licensing often requires the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of Job, and an army of product experts. Understanding and sourcing your Microsoft licensing is like pouring over the Cheesecake Factory menu. But instead of deciding between hundreds of appetizers, lunch or dinner dishes, you must wade through pages of operating systems, applications, and security solutions.

“The entire licensing process has always been a problem for companies,” says Matt Scherocman, President of Interlink Cloud Advisors. “Thankfully Microsoft is doing something about it.”

That “something” is Microsoft’s new Secure Productive Enterprise (SPE) offering that may make licensing headaches a thing of the past. SPE is a secure, desktop licensing bundle that is sold by user. Before getting to this new, streamlined offering, however, Microsoft has taken us on a bit of winding branding and bundling journey.