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Microsoft Azure Services

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Microsoft Azure provides different technologies which enable you to build robust application, data and process integration solutions.

One of the core offerings for Azure integration is Logic Apps. These technologies together provide a very rich and fully-managed Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS). It is a very robust and powerful platform to put together and automate integration workflows. Logic Apps also provides the concept of server-less computing, in which you just focus on what you want to achieve, without worrying at all about servers, patching and scaling.

Logic Apps workflows, which can be easily arranged and executed graphically (via the Azure Portal or Visual Studio), are based on the Workflow Definition Language. These workflows provide abundent ways to process and manipulate data that can be obtained or pushed via different connectors.

The advantages of using Logic Apps include the following:

  • Saving time by designing complex processes using easy to understand design tools
  • Implementing patterns and workflows seamlessly, that would otherwise be difficult to implement in code
  • Getting started quickly from templates
  • Customizing your logic app with your own custom APIs, code, and actions
  • Connect and synchronise disparate systems across on-premises and the cloud
  • Build off of BizTalk server, API Management, Azure Functions, and Azure Service Bus with first-class integration support

 

The breadth and capability of many different Azure technologies and how they complement each other is what differentiates Azure against other iPaaS vendors.  Speak to out team about eStorm supporting your business with Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft Surface Pro 5???

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People are already very excited for the upcoming Microsoft Surface Pro 5. Reports have it that it will be out as early as  April along with Windows 10. This is not confirmed and is purely speculation with other rumours reporting October release dates. We here at eStorm are looking forward to Microsoft officially advising on it’s release (whenever it happens). Stay tuned for more news and updates.

To wet the appetite, here are the unconfirmed specs of the highly anticipated device. Microsoft Surface Pro 5 is expected to feature the Intel Kaby Lake Core i7 processor. The new chip will improve the device’s overall performance and save battery life as well. It will also be equipped with 16GB RAM and 512 GB internal storage. However, this is still unconfirmed as some sources claim that the device will have Qualcomm Snapdragon 365 processor.

Microsoft Surface Pro 5 will come with a rechargeable Surface Pen, new keyboard base and a lightweight aluminum body. Reports are rife that it will also have a 12.3-inch ultra HD/4K display, USB Type-C support and a robust battery life.

Augmented Reality Tools for Education

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Augmented reality has evolved hugely in recent years within classrooms. Educators will feel far less overwhelmed when trying to introduce AR in their classroom as there are many great apps that don’t require a lot of knowledge in the field.

Augmented reality works well in schools because it brings close to real life experiences to students, immersing them in the experience. It’s dynamic learning, watch their faces when they have the opportunity to explore space, the human body, cells or chemistry elements. You appreciate how eager and engaged they become with some simple AR apps.

Chromville (Free): Educational app using the eight multiple intelligences. Students color their characters and then they come to life with the Visual Arts app.

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/chromville/id748017957?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=imascono

 

Anatomy 4D (Free): Bring the human body to life with this AR app. Have students learn about the different systems and human anatomy with this app.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.daqri.d4DAnatomy&hl=

Field Trip (Free): Field Trip, your guide to the cool, hidden, and unique things in the world around you. Field Trip runs in the background on your phone. When you get close to something interesting, it will notify you and if you have a headset or bluetooth connected, it can even read the info to you.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/field-trip/id567841460?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nianticproject.scout&hl=en

 

Microsoft Imagine Academy for Teachers

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By joining the Imagine Academy programme, you will get a full curriculum for teaching technology courses and learning tools that help students achieve success.

  • Productivity. Help students learn to be productive using Microsoft Office and other software tools for a wide range of jobs and other life pursuits.
  • Computer science. Prepare students for college and career roles in software and app development.
  • IT infrastructure Provide the core technical skills required to build a sustainable technology career managing infrastructure for cloud, clients, devices databases, and Office 365.

    Curriculum

      • The Microsoft Official Academic Course series delivers a complete learning and teaching framework developed specifically for use in an academic setting.
      • The Microsoft Online Learning curriculum provides unlimited access for more than 400 courses.
      • Ready-to-use, customisable lesson plans include links to relevant Microsoft Online Learning and free demos and videos.
      • The Microsoft Digital Literacy curriculum provides essential computing skills for learners new to computing.
      • Academic pricing for Microsoft Official Courseware (MOC), an instructor-led training intended for IT professionals and developers who build, support, and implement solutions by using Microsoft technologies.

    Resources

    • Easy to use Members Site with access to all programme information, support, and resources in one place
    • Microsoft Imagine Academy blog, social media and monthly newsletters that can help you stay up to date with announcements and benefits
    • Download and print certificates of completion for students who have completed Microsoft courses
    • Marketing materials, communications, PR guidelines and videos to help promote your Microsoft Imagine Academy to parents, communities and governmental leaders.
    • Access to the Microsoft Regional Support Centre for programme enquiries and assistance

    Join: Microsoft Academy

Microsoft Surface Pro 4 – November SPECIAL

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Talk to us about our current Surface Pro 4 Bundle offer for the month of November. The device, keyboard and pen are all included.

This is the ultimate productivity device, forget the hassle of multiple devices. The Surface Pro 4 delivers the versatility of a tablet and a laptop in a single sophisticated package. Built on a powerful 6th Gen Intel Core processor, the Surface Pro 4 is not just more powerful, but also runs quietly.

A 12.3″ PixelSense display, 5MP front-facing and 8MP rear-facing cameras deliver crisp images and allow for HD video, while the battery life of up to 9 hours ensure you can work without interruption.

The Surface Pro 4 runs the latest Windows OS and Microsoft Office on par with other traditional computers.

Drive Profitability With The Right IT Support

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In order to continue to drive profitability for your business, you need to make sure your IT systems are up to date and running smoothly. IT is no longer just a way to improve your competitive advantage; staying connected and keeping your business applications running smoothly is an essential part of every successful business operation. Whether your primary work involves service-based activity or consumer retail, your customers, suppliers, and employees depend on your IT performance. Downtime not only costs you money, it harms your business’s reputation.

However, the right IT support provider can help you overcome IT challenges and drive profitability in your company by empowering your users, optimising your application delivery and by customising your IT systems to your specific needs. This allows you to ensure your business’ responsiveness now, in preparation for future growth.

Ensuring IT service availability

On-demand expectations have changed the way businesses operate. Your employees, customers and suppliers rely on the critical data and operating systems you use. Building true business continuity isn’t a matter of just having the ability to recover your files from an isolated date or time; you need to be able to continue working, regardless of interruptions.

IT providers can offer cloud-based recovery and back-up solutions that ensure business continuity. They will manage the integration of services that benefit your users. By offering the right software and the right service level cloud solutions, IT providers offer new opportunities and possibilities that benefit your users and improve your profitability.

Empowering users

In today’s economy, IT services are a core part of nearly every business. A large majority of employees will be using your company’s IT services daily. The more time employees are spending using IT, the more it affects their productivity and thus the business’ profitability. Providing your employees with the right IT tools to do their job is essential, as well as making sure those IT tools work quickly and reliably.

Some important considerations are:

Performance – Uptime and business continuity have already been covered, but it’s also important to ensure that the IT systems are responsive and reliable all of the time. Constant delays such as, applications and crashing computers, waste employees’ time and reduce productivity, even if they aren’t officially counted as “downtime”.

Accessibility – Are your employees able to access all of the IT services from wherever they need them? If they are at a different office for the day, or using a different computer can they still work as normal? Remote working solutions not only let people continue to work when they can’t work from the office, but can also provide flexibility within the office too.

The right IT provider should have a good understanding of your business and industry sector, so they can appreciate the challenges your employees face and suggest improvements where appropriate. Regular engagement between your IT provider’s team and both your management and floor level users is essential to this process, a purely reactive and faceless help desk only service will not achieve this.

The Benefits of Enterprise Level IT & How They Drive Profitability

Many small businesses rely on the combined IT knowledge of their current staff members to handle any IT problems. But, the fact remains that in today’s economic environment if you experience problems such as downtime, you can experience serious, long-term impacts on your business. Your customers will go elsewhere, and the loss can be irreparable.

Outsourcing IT support with the right IT provider removes IT burdens from your existing staff. It allows you to access the resources that large companies enjoy, without incurring the same costs. Moreover, instead of having to upgrade, replace, and purchase hardware, your provider can offer linear grow options that tailor your IT performance capabilities to your needs.

Like any outsource strategy, it allows your team of professionals to concentrate on doing what they do best, rather than be distracted and importuned by IT necessities.

To find out more about outsourcing your IT to drive profitability in your business, speak to one of our IT technicians today on 1300 378 678 or email us.

Microsoft To Release Their First Laptop, The Surface Book

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On Tuesday Microsoft Corp unveiled their first laptop, a new range of Lumia smartphones and a new Surface Pro tablet which will all be running their latest operating system, Windows 10.




The laptop, named the Surface Book, has a 13.5-inch display with 267 pixels per inch and features a track pad made of glass. Microsoft have claimed that it will be twice as fast as Apple’s MacBook Pro.




The Surface Book combines 6th Generation Intel Core i5 and i7 processors and up to 1 TB of storage with Intel HD graphics and optional discrete NVIDIA GeForce graphics. Microsoft have stated that the Surface Book could be used for photo and video editing, fast rendering or gaming.




Like the Surface tablet, the screen can be detached and Microsoft is boasting an “advanced touch and precise inking experience”.




With 12 hours of video playback battery life and full size backlit keyboard Microsoft is pitching the Surface Book as the “first full laptop in the Surface family.”




The Surface Book goes on sale in Australia on November 12 with preorders starting from October 7.




If you have any questions in regards to this product or would like to enquire about setting this up in your business, please contact the eStorm office on [email protected] or 1800 ESTORM




For more information on Microsoft’s newly updated products please visit this page.

Microsoft Office 2016 has arrived!

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Microsoft have globally released Microsoft Office 2016 for Windows and Mac, as well as several new and enhanced Office 365 services today.

Office 2016 will bring new versions of desktop apps, including the popular programs Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook and Access.

Microsoft is recommending the new update particularly to enterprise customers, as the Office 2016 includes a range of security features; including support for data loss prevention across the Office 2016 apps, multi-factor authentication and “other mission critical control capabilities”, according to a blog by general manager of Office 365 technical product management, Julia White.

Microsoft launched its Windows 10 update in July, designed to work across laptops, desktop and smartphones and Office 2016 has been designed to work smoothly with the operating system update.

The new Office 2016 apps are available in 40 languages and require Windows 7 or later versions. Microsoft also said starting Tuesday, Office 365 subscribers can choose to download the new Office 2016 apps as part of their subscription.

What’s new in Office 2016:

Word

In the Word app there are finger-friendly cursor controls for easy text selection, copying and pasting, plus tapping on a spelling mistake brings up a touch menu of possible replacement words. There’s also a new Bing-powered feature for Word called Insights, and this looks up background information, websites and news stories for selected words. Track changes, comments and co-editing are available too, as mentioned below.

Excel

Excel has benefited from a substantial makeover, and additions including snap functions and smart scrolling which make tapping in your spreadsheet data an easier process. It has the same touch-friendly interface, but it’s not as stripped down as with Word, and it has a status bar that lets you switch between sheets in your workbook and view the results of common formulas for selected cells.

Design

Office 2016 includes colourful new themes that match closely with the Windows 10 themes, and the latest office releases for Mac, iOS and Android apps. The colourful range of options appear on application ribbons and include blue for Word, green for Excel and red for PowerPoint. Ribbons also are redesigned slightly to make room for the ever-present “Tell Me” search field, detailed below.

“Tell Me”

Perhaps one of the most helpful inclusions of Office 2016, the Tell Me box has been incorporated to help users be more productive in Office 2016. Microsoft has added the Tell Me box that sits in the centre top of the program title bars for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Embedded in the title bar’s ribbon just to the right of a lightbulb is the search field with “Tell me what you want to do…”

If users need help trying to figure out how to add an image to a Word document, create a formula in Excel or add an animation to their Powerpoint project, simply ask the Tell Me box. Just start typing in questions using natural language query, and Microsoft will narrow the answer down the best it can.

office 2016 goes with you

Bring it all together with OneDrive cloud storage
Easily save to your cloud storage and switch from one device to the next without missing a beat. Office apps pick up right where you left off, regardless of the device you were using.

Move over Powerpoint…Sway is here

Sway is the new, ‘cooler’ way to create a presentation. Sway allows you to drag and drop photos, videos and files from YouTube, a computer, Facebook, Twitter or OneDrive onto a web browser, smartphone or tablet app. Sway lets you organise content in an engaging way to help communicate in a nonlinear (PowerPoint) manner.

Sway, in preview since October, will be available in Office 2016 and to business and education subscribers in Office 365 later this year.

Real-time co-editing In Word

Another extremely useful feature Microsoft has added to Office 2016 is a feature that Google Doc users have been enjoying for years now – real-time co-editing in Office documents. Real-time co-editing makes it easier for teams working on the same document not to double up or change information without the other team members knowing.

Real-time presence in Word

Part of co-editing in Word is actually seeing what the other person is doing – as they are doing it. To achieve that, Microsoft has added a Real Time Presence feature that allows a user to see where in a document teammates are editing.

Attachments to emails made easier

Outlook also got an update in Office 2016. When a user adds an attachment to an email, the Attach File menu option now includes Recent Items, which includes any Office documents that have recently been closed. This will save you the trouble of searching through all of your files to find what you are looking for.

office 2016 working together

Work groups Via Outlook

Outlook 2016’s other new feature involves creating work groups. Microsoft believes teams are collaborating more via email, video, IM, and in physical and virtual meetings. To help facilitate this cooperation and collaboration, Microsoft have added the ability to keep tabs on group activity, access conversation history, and manage files and group notes stored on OneDrive.

Upping security in Office 2016

This update is particularly beneficial for business customers. Microsoft have upped the security in Office 2016 with tools to prevent data leakage and manage file permissions. Administrators now can enable and set Data Loss Prevention policies for Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

From the management point of view, policies can fight data leakage by allowing administrators to restrict what files can be sent to whom, and prevent data from being copied and pasted outside of Office 2016 applications.

IT administrators can place restrictions ranging from “notification” of a violation, allowing users to “override” rules with a justification, to finally “block” dissemination of content. In addition, Microsoft adds file-level encryption of Outlook, Word, Excel and other content. One also can choose to store data in a Customer Lockbox to control whether Microsoft can access sensitive information.

Better security: Word

The Data Loss Prevention features are extended to Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Users will be alerted when inside an app if they try to save a file containing confidential information in a directory, folder or service where it might not be secure.

Skype embedded into Word, Excel And PowerPoint

Microsoft has integrated Skype into Office 2016. Users can now initiate Skype voice and video calls, and text-based chats directly from within an Office document.

Overall, Microsoft have included a lot of new and updated features in Office 2016.

For information on pricing, or how to upgrade your service, please contact the eStorm office on 1300 378 676 or [email protected]