Microsoft is at it again, and so is Quest Software, which is now part of Dell. Yesterday the Microsoft engineering teams signed off on the RTM release of the new Office. You can read the announcement from Kirk Koenigsbauer’s blog. This is a real milestone for Microsoft as this launch includes new releases of the venerable Office Suite, Lync, SharePoint and Exchange as well as an update to Office 365. No small feat, believe me.
What does this mean to you, our customers? Well, it depends. Are you going to deploy this new release soon? It’s been our experience (we’ve been supporting the Microsoft platform with our migration, recovery, compliance, automation andcustomization solutions for more than a decade) that not all organizations will jump to this new release. Most will wait for Service Pack 1 (aka SP1) before any serious consideration of moving to Office 365, Exchange 2013 or SharePoint 2013. On the other hand, some of you may be forced to consider this new release because you will be losing support for your current deployments. In either case, Quest can help. Our migration tools either already support the new version or will soon. And our management tools will support the new version either at GA or soon thereafter.
Are you considering moving to the cloud / Office 365? Seemingly the cloud is part of every IT conversation these days. If you are like the myriad customers I speak with, then your organization is, at least, considering a move to the cloud and Office 365 is certainly part of that consideration. Regardless as to whether your organization stays on-premise or moves to the cloud (or goes with a hybrid approach), Dell has you covered. For example, we offer OnDemand Migration for Email which is a SaaS solution that can migrate your email content from Google, Exchange, Notes, GroupWise, Live@EDU all to Office 365 (and other destinations as well). In addition, our Migration Suite for SharePoint can also migrate your enterprise content to Office 365. I would advise you to consider Office 365 or any cloud platform carefully. While Microsoft, as well as other cloud providers, tout the cost advantages a move to the cloud can bring, you need to be sure that you can still meet your organizational objectives of security and compliance.
The bottom line is that Microsoft is to be commended for this accomplishment. Moreover, we continue to pledge our support to the Microsoft platform in terms of providing new releases of our award-winning products to support this new platform. If you have specific questions about your product supporting this new release, I encourage you to contact your account representative for clarification.
By the way, if you’re not sure about what’s in the new version of Office, you can give the pre-release version a try at office.com/preview.
Best Regards,
Bill Evans
Sr. Director, Product Marketing