Microsoft Surface Pro With 4G in Australia, and the people rejoiced!
It’s been a loooooong time coming, but it’s almost here!
A number of our clients provide Surface Pro’s for their staff, and for what seems a very long time, have been complaining about the lack of a Surface with LTE. It seems like such a simple thing, yet Microsoft haven’t released it in Australia. IT departments have gone out and purchased a number of other devices to try and meet the requirements, some have been successful, others sooo very not so, but all have added complexity or diversity to the number of devices that these departments have had to provide and support.
But the wait looks to be over, the Surface Pro with 4G is set to launch in April. You can pre-order specific hardware configurations now from the Microsoft Store, Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi.
Now all I need is a compatible external battery, I have been less than impressed with the support of the current 3rd party battery that was purchased.
Happy New Year – 2017 is here!
Wow, is it a new year already?
As we all enjoy the pleasure that is traffic, cubicles, tea-room chats, to-do lists and all things ‘back to work’, I’d like to take this opportunitity to thank our customers for their support in 2016 and look back at the year as well as the future for Adexis.
Cloud – We increased our focus on cloud centering primarily around Office 365, Azure and Hybrid-cloud solutions. We invested in training and certifications while increasing the volume of cloud work we performed enabling us to provide outstanding cloud planning, migration, implimentation and maintnence services. We created the Cloud Readiness Audit to help customers to understand their environment, it’s applicability to cloud and the pros and cons of cloud solutions for them.
Proactive Services – We created a new portfolio of proactive services to compliment the professional services portfolio we’re known for. This includes Managed Services which centres around outsourcing portions of your environment so you can focus on your preferred core functions and Scheduled Services which allows you to maintain your own environment with a Micorosft specialist providing guidance and quality assurance. Together these provide a completely flexible, technical-focussed approach to managing your environment.
Partnerships – We recognised a need to help our customers with a greater range of technologies. Understanding the contrasting feedback that our customers come to Adexis for our specialist Microsoft skills we decided not to generalise and diversify, thus diluting our quality of service. Instead, we partnered with outstanding organisations that share the same values of no-fuss consulting lead by technical excellence. We first partnered with Hastwell IT, who provide networking procurement, consulting and technical services. We have also partnered with AISH Solutions for hardware and software procurement and Academy IT for Microsoft-focussed training. Together with these vendors we can provide a complete set of technology services with consultants who all specialise in their respective fields and contribute to a cohesive delivery model.
Increased Certifications – Understanding the importance of our primary vendor, Microsoft, our team undertook a range of learning tasks and exams to increase our certification including multiple gold partner and Software Assurance Planning Services partner. We also increased our level of collaboration with Microsoft.
Our own back yard – We understand that providing quality service comes from a baseline of great people with passion and the right tools and processes to support them. We invested in our internal tools and processes as well as establishing greater collaboration so that we can provide a greater level of service and better quality documentation to you.
Digital Presense – We established an improved digital presence so we can hear from you and tell you some of the exciting things that are happening. This included the creation of this blog, our LinkedIn page, our Facebook page and an update to our website with information on some of these exciting new services we’re offering.
Much of the above work in 2016 was preparation work for a great 2017. We’ll use these initiatives as a foundation to continue growth in all of these key areas and we look forward to the increased flexibility, quality and range of services this will enable us to provide our customers in 2017. At the same time we’ll continue to focus on what’s most important; providing a technically competent, no fuss, independent Microsoft infrastructure specialist consulting service that’s genuinely customer focussed.
Thank you again for your support and we look forward to working with you in 2017 and beyond!
Adexis is known in Adelaide as the number one experts in SCCM and windows deployment. Did you know you can engage an Adexis expert and have Microsoft pick up the tab?
Many customers aren’t aware that they’re entitled to a little golden nugget called Desktop Deployment Planning Services. DDPS is a benefit provided by Microsoft to customers who purchase Software Assurance through their Volume Licensing whereby you can engage qualified partners to provide services for you and Microsoft will put in the dollars. In addition to our SCCM and deployment expertise, Adexis is also a qualified Desktop Deployment Planning Services partner, meaning you can engage under this scheme.
Through this scheme we can help you to plan and/or impliment on-premise, cloud-based or hybrid solutions for the deployment of windows and office to your user base utilising products including SCCM, Windows, Office and Office365.
Imagine for example you would like to try out Windows 10 for your users. In order to do that you would need to assess it’s suitability and compatibility, plan an upgrade of SCCM to 1606 or later, plan the windows deployment and impliment both solutions. These are services that Adexis can help you with and can be provided for under Desktop Deployment Planning Services. Perhaps you’ve been thinking about doing an upgrade like this but budget constraints have proven to be a challenge, this is where DDPS comes in.
Microsoft does have some strict guidelines on how these services can be utilised however. For example, they can only be utilised for the improvement of your environment using approved products. So, don’t be thinking “I can get that tricky issue fixed in my SCCM environment”, Microsoft won’t cover that one. Engagements are set up in groups of days and can allocate funds of between $3000 and $15,000.
So, you’ve decided you’d like to utilise your entitlement, how do you go about it?
2. Select Software Assurance from the top menu.
3. Click Planning Services. This will take you to the Manage Software Assurance Benefits page.
4. Click the LicenseID for which you want to manage Planning Services. This will take you to the Benefit Summary page.
6. Select the voucher type and service level (length of the engagement in days).
7. Assign the Planning Services voucher to a project manager within your organization by entering their name and email address, and any special instructions.
8. Click Confirm Voucher Assignment.
9. Once the voucher is created, click Assign Voucher. This takes you to a benefit details page confirming voucher information, including voucher status and expiration date.
We manage the rest of the paperwork on your behalf and you’re good to go with your engagement.