Jay Allred

www.itrenovation.com — This is the fourth post in our series, Office 365 for SMBs. If you missed the previous posts you can go back and read them using the links below: Office 365 for SMBS - A New Series Office 365 for SMBs - 3 Things to Review Before Signing Up Office 365 for SMBs - The Free Trial Walkthrough - Part One This week we will walk through the actual free trial sign-up process. Though Microsoft makes the process pretty straight-forward, we will look at each step to make sure the options are clearly explained.

www.itrenovation.com — This is the third post in our series, Office 365 for SMBs. If you missed the previous posts you can go back and read them using the links below: Office 365 for SMBS - A New Series Office 365 for SMBs - 3 Things to Review Before Signing Up In this post we are going to review the Office 365 plans available to SMB owners and how to determine which one is the best place to start. Microsoft has done a good job of constantly reviewing and revamping the Office 365 plans for the SMB market.

www.itrenovation.com — Last we kicked off a new series, Office 365 for SMBs. In this installment we will look at three things that every company should review before signing up for an Office 365 trial. Let's dive right in... Before signing up for an Office 365 trial it is extremely beneficial to take an inventory of your existing environment and business needs in order to understand what you have, what problems you are trying to solve, and how Office 365 will solve those problems. Office 365 is a powerful SaaS offering that includes solutions for email, real-time communication, and collaboration.

www.itrenovation.com — Microsoft's Office 365 service has become one of the most well-known and well-respected cloud offerings in the world. Over seven million users subscribe to the Home and Personal editions of Office 365 with millions more subscribed to the Small Business, Enterprise, Government, and Non-Profit editions. These are amazing numbers considering Microsoft launched the first version of its SaaS offering in 2008. Office 365, which is the successor to Microsoft's original BPOS offering, was officially released in June, 2011 and is combination of some of Microsoft's most widely-used products.

www.itrenovation.com — This is the tenth (and final) post in our series on the cloud. If you are just joining the series check out these previous posts as well: Cloud 101 for SMBs - The Cloud Defined Cloud 101 for SMBs - Software as a Service (SaaS) Cloud 101 for SMBs - SaaS Vs. In-house Smackdown! Cloud 101 for SMBs - Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Cloud 101 for SMBs - IaaS Part Two Cloud 101 for SMBs - Desktop as a Service (DaaS) Cloud 101 for SMBs - Platform as a Service (PaaS) Cloud 101 for SMBs - Public, Private, and Hybrid We wrap up our series by asking the question: Over the past few months we have explored the ever expanding world of cloud computing.

www.itrenovation.com — This is the ninth post in our series on the cloud. If you are just joining the series check out these previous posts as well: Cloud 101 for SMBs - The Cloud Defined Cloud 101 for SMBs - Software as a Service (SaaS) Cloud 101 for SMBs - SaaS Vs. In-house Smackdown! Cloud 101 for SMBs - Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Cloud 101 for SMBs - IaaS Part Two Cloud 101 for SMBs - Desktop as a Service (DaaS) Cloud 101 for SMBs - Platform as a Service (PaaS) This week we look in to cloud deployment models, namely public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud.

www.itrenovation.com — This is the seventh post in our series on the cloud. If you are just joining the series check out these previous posts as well: Cloud 101 for SMBs Cloud 101 for SMBs - The Cloud Defined Cloud 101 for SMBs - Software as a Service (SaaS) Cloud 101 for SMBs - SaaS Vs. In-house Smackdown! Cloud 101 for SMBs - Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Cloud 101 for SMBs - IaaS Part Two This week we look in to Desktop as a Service, or DaaS.

www.itrenovation.com — This is the sixth post in our series on the cloud. If you are just joining the series check out these previous posts as well: Cloud 101 for SMBs Cloud 101 for SMBs - The Cloud Defined Cloud 101 for SMBs - Software as a Service (SaaS) Cloud 101 for SMBs - SaaS Vs. In-house Smackdown! Cloud 101 for SMBs - Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) This week we are delving deeper into Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS. In our last post we defined IaaS as a product where technology infrastructure is offered as a service, and we looked at how IaaS could be utilized by the SMB market.

www.itrenovation.com — This is the fifth post in our series on the cloud. If you are just joining the series check out these previous posts as well: Cloud 101 for SMBs Cloud 101 for SMBs - The Cloud Defined Cloud 101 for SMBs - Software as a Service (SaaS) Cloud 101 for SMBs - SaaS Vs. In-house Smackdown! This week we are looking at Infrastructure as a Service, or more commonly referred to as IaaS. If you remember from one of our earlier posts we defined the cloud as follows: IaaS fits in to the enterprise-level services part of this definition.

www.itrenovation.com — This is the fourth post in our series on the cloud. If you are just joining the series check out these previous posts as well: Cloud 101 for SMBs Cloud 101 for SMBs - The Cloud Defined Cloud 101 for SMBs - Software as a Service (SaaS) In the last post I mentioned we would be doing a more in-depth comparison of a popular SaaS solution and a comparable in-house solution. So, let's get ready to rumble... In the blue corner, the young challenger...Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online, better known as Office 365, Microsoft's SaaS offering.

www.itrenovation.com — This is the third post in our series on the cloud. If you are just joining the series check out the first two posts: Cloud 101 for SMBs Cloud 101 for SMBs - The Cloud Defined In the last post I proposed the following simple definition for the cloud: Now that we have a working definition of the cloud we will spend the next few weeks looking at specific cloud models. This week we look at Software as a Service, also known as SaaS. The opposite of SaaS would be to install the application on your local computer or server.

www.itrenovation.com — As I mentioned in the previous post, is comprised of so many different technological components that coming up with a simple definition is nearly impossible. But, if the cloud cannot be easily defined for SMB owners then they will continue to be skeptical of its potential benefit. Maybe the best place to start is trying to understand where the cloud got its name... The idea of centralized computing has been around since the mainframes of the 1960s. Over time, companies began connecting their offices through wide-area-network (WAN) links, which were provided by local or national TELCOs.

www.itrenovation.com — For several years now the cloud has been one of the top buzzwords in both business and tech circles. But, for many company owners the cloud is just a vague term for any technology that does not reside within their office. Dropbox, Facebook, email, Google, Office 365...are all of these the cloud? If things were not already confusing enough, the cloud can actually be broken down into multiple sub-groupings and derivatives such as private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud, software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), PaaS, CaaS, DaaS, and MaaS.

www.itrenovation.com — This is the fifth post in our series, Office 365 for SMBs. If you missed the previous posts you can go back and read them using the links below: Office 365 for SMBS - A New Series Office 365 for SMBs - 3 Things to Review Before Signing Up Office 365 for SMBs - The Free Trial Walkthrough - Part One Office 365 for SMBs - The Free Trial Walkthrough - Part Two Last week we walked through the free trial sign-up process. This week we will take a tour of the Office 365 Portal. Let's go...

www.itrenovation.com — This is the seventh post in our series, Office 365 for SMBs. This week we will install Office and configure Outlook for our trial account. Here we go…

www.itrenovation.com — This is the eighth post in our series, Office 365 for SMBs. This week we look at SharePoint.

www.itrenovation.com — This is the ninth post in our series, Office 365 for SMBs. Last week we took a tour of SharePoint. This week we look at Lync, now Skype for Business.