Get Started with Microsoft’s Online Services

If you’ve been paying even half attention to technology media in the last year, you’ve probably noticed that more and more vendors are trying to sell businesses on moving core IT operations to an Internet-based service-delivery mechanism—that is, cloud computing. Microsoft has been promoting a version of cloud computing, Software Plus Services (S+S). The heart of the difference between S+S and Software as a Service (SaaS) is that S+S uses specialized client-side software such as Microsoft Office in conjunction with online applications. This combination blends the convenience of a web service with a feature-rich client application.

Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite is a great example of the kind of services that can have a big impact on small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs). A “seat” on the services give you access to Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Office Live Meeting at the affordable price of $15 per user per month. Small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs) that would never consider having an on-premises Exchange server, for example, can now benefit from Microsoft Office Outlook features that “wake up” when used with Exchange (e.g., using the Global Address List—GAL, meeting-room scheduling, invitations to meetings with accept/deny built in, calendaring, and free direct push email to Windows Mobile 6 devices). Similar capabilities are available from SharePoint Online for document collaboration and Live Meeting for real-time collaboration. Let’s take an IT pro’s eye view of the suite, starting with a quick overview of the online services, then walk through setting up the services, with some helpful deployment and management tips.

Services Overview
The suite comes in three flavors:

• Standard: This is the primary version of the Business Productivity Online Suite. At the Microsoft data center, these standard services are deployed using a multi-tenant architecture (i.e., a single instance of the software runs on the cloud vendor's servers, serving multiple client organizations, or tenants), which provides a very useful set of services at an affordable price. Microsoft made the solution scalable and affordable by providing the most valuable core services while limiting the user’s ability to customize the solution. Understanding the scope of what is and isn’t customizable in the Standard version is key when you’re evaluating or migrating to the Online Suite.
• Dedicated: Dedicated offerings, usually for businesses with 5,000 seats or more, are typically customized agreements that engage Microsoft to facilitate migration, support, and deployment. The dedicated version enables a greater degree of customization in multiple layers, such as support for specific types of federated identity and SharePoint customizations.
• Deskless Worker: This is an inexpensive option for shop-floor workers or other scenarios that provides a mailbox accessible via Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA) and read-only SharePoint. This option is due for release the first half of 2009.

Subscribing to Microsoft Online Services
The Microsoft Online Customer Portal (MOCP) is where you subscribe for services and add additional storage, if needed. Before you begin the signup process, you can select to Try or Buy the services. If you select Try, you get a free, 30-day subscription limited to 20 seats. (The services are otherwise the same as for a paid subscription.) After 30 days, you’ll have the opportunity to convert to a paid subscription.

Ordering the Business Productivity Online Suite is like ordering any other service: You provide your basic contact and company information and agree to the licensing and privacy terms. Here’s how the signup procedure works.

1. Select a valid Windows Live ID to permanently associate with a MOCP account. The Live ID you select will be associated with the subscription you create. You can’t use this ID for more than one subscription, and at the time of this writing, the Live ID association with subscription cannot be changed. You’ll use MOCP for adding more services or increasing storage, but not for day-to-day administration. Note that the LiveID used can’t be a username on the system, so you might want to create a special, new Live ID for the MOCP account.
2. Provide a good technical contact. The technical contact information you provide will receive communications about service updates and other service news. Microsoft support may also call or email this contact, if needed.
3. Provide the “base” domain name. The base domain name you provide will be added to microsoftonline.com to create a unique login domain for your account. For example, if you entered contoso.com, your account will be provisioned as something similar to “contoso1.microsoftonline.com”. You can add a unique domain name to use for email and logon after your account is provisioned. Entering a domain during the signup doesn’t affect any DNS server or impact mail routing for the entered domain in any way.
4. Associate a partner. When you sign up, you’ll be asked to select a Microsoft Partner to associate with your account. You can proceed without such an association, but Microsoft recommends working with a partner to help answer questions, plan migration, and integrate the services into your existing workflow.
5. Receive the Admin password. Once provisioned, you’ll receive an email inviting you to return to MOCP and retrieve the Admin account password. Note that there’s a delay at this stage while your account is provisioned. This could take an entire day, but when I used the prerelease beta versions of Online Services, it took less time than this.

With password in hand, you can now browse to the Microsoft Online Administration Center (MOAC) (admin.microsoftonline.com), which Figure 1 shows, and start configuring the services.

Figure 1: Microsoft Online Services Administration Center portal