InterlinkCloud

Nobody likes file servers. They are often in a state of chaos and accessing them from a mobile device is nearly impossible. Virtual private networks (VPNs) only work well on PCs and even then, we find users crossing their fingers every time they go to connect. Thankfully there are new options for sharing and collaborating on files. 

Here is a quick primer on some of the best new file server alternatives:

OneDrive for Business/Groups

Exclaimer Cloud - Email Signatures for Office 365

Exclaimer is the premier cloud service for centrally managing and controlling Microsoft Office 365 email signatures. Exclaimer provides users with a standardized high-quality signature when sent from any device. Users can work with either a pre-made template or the drag and drop signature editor to create personalized signatures. Best part: no HTML skills required!

At a time, when there are so many regulations from governments, corporate compliance and third-party regulators, Microsoft is guiding the path to more granular data location controls within organizations on a global scale with their Multi-Geo feature. This feature gives organizations with Office 365 the ability to put their end user’s Office 365 data in different Microsoft data centers across the world and setup unique permissions for each country, and it is now available for Exchange Online and OneDrive for Business. Future releases of Multi-Geo will include support for SharePoint Online and Office 365 Groups.

Today’s businesses are ever more dependent on their Firstline workers. A Firstline worker is someone whose main job is focused on creating or delivering a company’s product. This could be workers who interface directly with a customer or those employees building your product on the manufacturing floor. These Firstline workers frequently have been under resourced with technology. Many companies find it difficult to justify paying the same price for software subscriptions for a Firstline worker versus a traditional knowledge worker, when Firstline workers spend very little time in front of a computer. Microsoft recognized this challenge and began offering Kiosk plans. Those plans first evolved into the F1 plans and now Microsoft includes the F1 plan into their brand-new Microsoft 365 (M365) F1 bundle. The M365 F1 offering includes three major pillars – Office 365 functionality; a scaled down version of the Enterprise Mobility + Security Suite; and Windows 10. Microsoft has priced this product aggressively, which is less than a third of the cost of the regular Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 plans, while offering all the features and security your Firstline worker needs to be successful.

“Immutability” is the industry-standard term for “preserving data in the system so that it is discoverable and cannot be destroyed or altered."

With Exchange Server 2016 with Enterprise CAL or Exchange Online Plan 2 (included in Office 365 E3 and Office 365 E5 plans), Microsoft enables organizations to preserve individual or all mailbox items for discovery natively, keeping those items within the Exchange infrastructure. This approach is called, In-Place hold.

One significant benefit of hold - as opposed to separate, read-only storage - is that items are preserved within the Exchange infrastructure. This preserves more of the information, including metadata, and makes management easier for IT admins. Users benefit because they can manage their mailboxes using the familiar Outlook interface. From an IT-perspective, In-Place Hold eliminates the necessity and complexity of maintaining a separate infrastructure and potentially storage for Exchange items.