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Microsoft 365 Business Sessions and Resources from Inspire 2018

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Now that the dust, okay, sand, so much sand, has settled after Inspire last week, it's time to start reviewing some of the content. This was a great week for me, I got to spend some time with different members of the extended Microsoft 365 team, some old friends and acquaintances and a few new ones as well. It's been a year since Microsoft 365 Business has been announced, so let's start by discussing the session that covered one of the biggest changes since the product was announced and launched.

OFC301w - Nuts and Bolts of Deploying Microsoft 365 Business

This was easily my favourite session of the week, and not just because I had a chance to review the content in advance and provide feedback. The big focus of this session was different approaches for working with Windows 10 devices in a cloud only or hybrid environment, something that has kept me pretty busy for the last few years. The difference this time is that it's the first major Microsoft event where it was discussed in the context of Microsoft 365 Business. You can download the presentation at the link above.

Why is this so important? The overwhelming feedback whenever I was engaged in a Microsoft 365 Business conversation prior to the April update was "What? No on-prem AD support?". Those who knew enough about AAD Connect, Azure Active Directory Join and hybrid AD join could have easily gotten this working, but the important thing was that it wasn't a supported scenario. Now it's not only supported, but it's being publicly discussed, and in my last post I highlighted some of the richer guidance that is now available - Microsoft 365 Business Technical Deployment Guide available for download. SEC111 - Deliver end-to-end security for your SMB customers with Microsoft 365 Business

I wasn't able to attend this in person due to it conflicting with the session above, so had to watch the recording. Thankfully I was at the Microsoft 365 Business pre-day, so was able to see some of this content, as well as catch up with one of the main presenter. As the session name suggests, the of this session was on the security enhancements that were added to Microsoft 365 Business in April, such as Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection, Azure Information Protection, Data Loss Protection, Exchange Online Archiving etc. The video and presentation for this session are available from the link above.

This session includes a walkthrough of the security and compliance settings in the Microsoft 365 Business admin center, and if you are new to Microsoft 365 Business, you'll get a huge amount out of this. If you are only familiar with the recently released Microsoft 365 admin center for enterprise customers, this is probably going to eye opening in terms of the SMB focused functionality that is exposed.

It also covers building services around the security capabilities, with part of the discussion based on the Security Practice Development Guide. This is a collection of material that includes some that may look a little familiar to you if you joined me during the 8 Week Security challenge that ran in Australia.

OFC300 - Acquire more SMB customers with Microsoft 365 

This session was focused on growing a business around Microsoft 365 Business, and you can watch the video for it from the link above. It included some demonstrations of the enhanced capabilities of Stream, and a quick look at Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection in email.  Some of the resources that were highlighted in this session were the following, available from aka.ms/m365bpartner.

WIN14t - The how-to's on pitching Windows 10 to small business customers with Microsoft 365 Business

Last but not least, this session was mostly focused on the Windows 10 capabilities that Microsoft 365 Business enables easily. At the last minute I was given the opportunity to present some of the content in this session, so if you watch the video or download the presentation you'll see and/or hear me. This was only a twenty minute session, so you could imagine it's quite a challenge when there's so much to talk about, not even a single joke from an Aussie or Kiwi at the expense of another, which I think might be some type of world first!