Microsoft Office 365 team: Yammer Enterprise now included in Office 365 Midsize Business and Education plans

Hi All,

Here is a latest update from Jared Spataro on Yammer and Office 365 and the SMB market.

Have a good one and I will see you in Washington at the Microsoft World Partner Conference 2 days from now.

Jean-Claude Chan

Jared Spataro is the General Manager of Enterprise Social at Microsoft.

One of our key themes at the SharePoint Conference in March was Work Like a Network. Yammer is at the heart of this new way of getting things done, and ever since the acquisition we’ve been focused on weaving social capabilities deeply into Office 365.

In November we announced the addition of Yammer Enterprise to all Office 365 Enterprise plans. And today—to further support our vision—I’m pleased to announce that Yammer Enterprise has been added to all Office 365 Midsize Business andOffice 365 Education plans.

As part of this update, all existing Office 365 Midsize Business and Office 365 Education plan customers will receive licenses for Yammer Enterprise. See Yammer Plans & Pricing for additional information. In addition, Midsize Business and Education customers are no longer required to purchase Yammer Enterprise licenses for external users within their external networks. This also applies to Enterprise customers, as we announced last November. This simple licensing change significantly reduces the friction in cross-organization collaboration and will enable your users to work with customers, partners, and parents and students without having to worry about additional costs.

We’re excited about what Yammer can do for these organizations. Midsized companies are always looking for ways to increase revenue, and schools are under increasing pressure to do more with less. Yammer and Office 365 can help your business or school work like a network and achieve your goals.

—Jared Spataro

 

 

 

90% of Microsoft Unmanaged SMB Partners will not attend the SharePoint Conference in Vegas in March

Hello goodmorning folks,

First of all Happy Valentine for all of you! 14/2/14. How special does this sound:-).

What is also very special is the upcoming SharePoint Conference 2014 in Las Vegas.
As you all know, the SharePoint Conference 2014 is taking place in 2 weeks from now and I am going to be there on behalf of my consultancy organization JCC Consultancy . One thing should be make clear for those who are NOT attending this event. Eventhough the event is called SharePoint Conference, the topics and sessions given there are not only SharePoint related. This year topics will be besides SharePoint, also Cloud, Big Data and Mobility. So there are many very interesting topic which will be interesting for everyone. Go to 100 reasons why you should attend this event.

Anyway, let us get started:

This year the SPC 2014 event is going to be very interesting for 4 major reasons:

1. Microsoft is changing their course in terms of strategy, Sales, Marketing and Cloud Services and for those who are attending this event, I think very important strategic intelligence can be collected there which will be interesting for Microsoft SMB Partners to use in executing their short and longterm strategy;
2. Microsoft has a new CEO very recently, Satya Nadella so it is going interesting whether Satya will be introduced as new CEO at the SPC Conference.
3. The keynote this time will be delivered by former US president Bill Clinton who is great speaker and inspirator for many of us.
4. This year there will be 33 Executive/Business Decision Makers session which JCC Consultancy will attend.

90% of Microsoft Unmanaged SMB Partners will not attend the SPC 2014 conference

Last December and January 2014, JCC Consultancy has conducted a survey among 500 Executives/Owners of Microsoft Unmanged SMB Partners in the Netherlands and one of the questions imposed was:

Are you going to attend the SPC 2014 Conference?  And if not , why not?

90% answered: ” No, i will not attend the SPC 2014 Conference, but I do want to be updated with the latest developments and updates during the SPC conference”.

The result was an eye opener for us, but also a very interesting opportunity for JCC Consultancy,  because this figure shows that most of the attendees at the SharePoint Conference are mostly Microsoft Managed Partners and  not Unmanaged SMB Partners.

Special platform for Business Decision Makers and owners of Microsoft Unmanaged SMB Partners worldwide

So JCC Consultancy decided to launch a special platform/site (you can call it a interactive live Blogsite) called JCC Cloud , which is only focused on providing information in terms of Strategy, Sales, SharePoint, Office 365, Windows Azure, Cloud to solely Business Decision Makers or owners of Microsoft Unmanaged SMB Partner worldwide.

What can you expect from JCC Consultancy during the SPC 2014 event?

After JCC Consultancy conducted the survey and presented the figures, we were approached by Microsoft Unmanaged SMB Partners and they wanted to hire JCC Consultancy to collect relevant information in terms of Executive and Strategy at the SPC 2014 in Vegas.

Real live information on Strategic and Executive level

So you as a owner or business decision maker of Microsoft Unmanaged SMB Partner who is not able to attend the SPC 2014 event in Vegas, can stay home in your country and  expect from JCC Consultancy the following:

1. JCC Consultancy will solely visit Executive/ Business decision makers sessions. There are 33 sessions and we have already pointed out which sessions are very interesting for us. For an overview which Executive sessions JCC Consultancy will attend go to this page.
2. JCC Consultancy will blog live daily during the event from Sunday 2nd of March till Thursday March 6th, via our JCC CLOUD platform during all Executive sessions we will attend;
3. JCC Consultancy will collect all relevant and interesting Customer Showcases presentations and white papers and for Microsoft Unmanaged SMB Partners who are interested in this intelligence, you can contact me on info@jccconsultancy.com to order relevant white papers or presentations.
4. JCC Consultancy will also give you an impression of Las Vegas by taking pictures and movies at the event and during the sessions and share relevant pictures or movies on our platform JCC Cloud.

We help Executives and owners of Microsoft Unmanaged SMB Partners who are staying at home

I hope you have a good overview of what JCC Consultancy is trying to do with these activities in order to help, support, advice Owners and Executive of Microsoft Unmanaged SMB Partners who are not able to attend this event.

Follow us via  JCC Cloud to be the first Unmanaged SMB Partner who is staying at home, but still get live and updated information/intel on a Executive/Strategic level.

If you have any question please let me know via mail :info@jccconsultancy.com or twitter me on @jeanclaudechan or just leave message on my special portal JCC Cloud.

Have a good one.

Jean-CLaude Chan

Owner/ Founder of JCC Consultancy and JCC Cloud