Microsoft Launches the Office 365 for Business Public Roadmap

3 July 2014 // View as Webpage // Update Profile // Share this publication We have learned a lot on how customers expect communications in a fast-paced, services world. We got great feedback from customers on our transparency for future investments in our business services. Building on this, we have decided to take the next step and communicate with you in a new way, via a public roadmap, to make sure that many people as possible know about the exciting improvements we are bringing to the service. The most significant change that we are making is how we communicate updates and provide a forward-focused view of our service plans. The Office 365 for business public roadmap provides you with a way to learn about upcoming updates before the change comes to your service. This will be your best source of updates for product enhancements coming to the service. Just as we transformed our development processes, we have transformed our communication processes regarding changes and future updates. In addition to the public roadmap, we are also rolling out a new program called First Release. First Release gives customers who opt into the program to get a small selection of significant enhancements to the Office 365 user experience, SharePoint Online, and Exchange Online first. If you opt-in to First Release, you will receive new qualifying feature updates first, a minimum of two weeks before customers in our standard release group. By default, all Office 365 customers are part of the standard release group. If you’re in this group, you will receive the new feature updates a minimum of two weeks after availability in First Release. The vast majority of service updates will be made available to all customers via our standard release processes. Updates to Lync Online, Exchange Online Protection, Office 365 ProPlus, or other related services are not included in the First Release program at this time. Read more on the blog announcement here. Maria Martinez Torres Microsoft Office & Office 365 Business Group Lead Microsoft NZ TechEd New Zealand 2014: Less than 1,000 tickets left! There are less than 1000 tickets available for the IT conference of the year! Spanning three and a half days, TechEd provides delegates with the opportunity to meet Microsoft experts, and network with peers and industry influencers. Only 2 weeks to go until the New Zealand SharePoint Conference The New Zealand SharePoint Conference is only 2 weeks away. There are some excellent things to watch out for here. Check out some of the videos from featured international speakers. Use the code MICROSOFT to receive $50.00 off your ticket, or make the most of the Group discounts – Buy 3 and get 20% off! New enhancements to HDInsight in Microsoft Azure With the 24/06/2014 release of Microsoft Azure, there are new updates to HDInsight service. Check out this blog post on what how the new features in this release can improve your infrastructure. Increase to OneDrive storage plans announced OneDrive Team has announced increases to their OneDrive storage plans. OneDrive will now come with 15GB of free online storage - up from 7GB previously. Check out this blog post for more details. Creating aliases in Outlook.com There are life moments that call for an email address update. With Outlook.com, you can create new email addresses or aliases in addition to your existing address, and manage them all from one inbox. Outlook.com aliases also share the same contact list, calendar, and account settings as your primary email address. New Zealand SharePoint Conference 22-23 July 2014 (AKL) The New Zealand SharePoint Conference 2014 is being held on July 22-23 in Auckland. This is New Zealand’s BIGGEST SharePoint event! At this event, you will have the chance to learn from the best in the field: engineers who built the product, Microsoft Certified Masters, and MVPs. Buy your tickets today! TechEd New Zealand 2014 9 -12 September 2014 Less than 1,000 tickets are available for the IT Conference of the year! Don't miss out! Dynamics Day 2014 (Auckland) 23 October 2014 Intergen are hosting Dynamics Day 2014 in late October. This is a unique opportunity to hear from leading practitioners in Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM offerings, providing a combination of product information, updates, practical information and customer insights. Office 365 ProPlus Deployment for IT Pros In this demo-rich session, Come hear how these new IT Pro deployment features of Office 365 ProPlus, such as licensing and activation, Click-to-Run, Office Telemetry, and building App-V packages make upgrading Office a lot easier, faster, and economical. Office 365 Fundamentals This session examines the Office 365 architecture from the prospective of the IT Professional, then takes the student through deploying Office 365 and finishes with rolling out changes to applications and services. © 2014 Microsoft Corporation Terms of Use :: Trademarks Microsoft respects your privacy. To learn more, please read our online Privacy Statement. If you would prefer not to receive this newsletter any longer, click here to unsubscribe. To set your contact preferences for other Microsoft communications click here. The Privacy Officer // Microsoft New Zealand Ltd, PO Box 8070 Symonds St, Auckland 1150, New Zealand