Number 62

EOFY

Been a long while since the last CIAOPS Newsletter and I'll explain why shortly but it's fast approaching the End Of Financial Year (EOFY) here in Australia and that makes it a good point to round up what's been happening of late. I hope its been a good year for everyone and you have to pay lots of tax because you've generated lots of income!

Of course send an email to director@ciaops.com and let me know your thoughts about the topics in the newsletter. I read and respond to all emails I receive.

I appreciate you being a subscriber and taking the time to read this email.

Contents

1. The future of this newsletter?
2. PowerBI.
3. Windows 10 is coming
4. Tips and tricks

1. The future of this newsletter?
I've always enjoyed doing a newsletter and have done one since I started my business 20 years ago this year! However, I've also prided myself on looking at the pragmatic side of doing something like this because what you may not appreciate is that it takes a fair amount of time and effort to create this newsletter.

That's because I compose and edit all the content myself (can't you tell by the grammar and spelling mistakes?) and that is on top of the other content I create for my blog and Cloud Business Blueprint. That adds up to not only a lot of writing but also a major time commitment on my part.

Now as much as I enjoy detailing the wider IT industry trends and philosophical points of interest when it comes to technology, I have to also acknowledge that I need to put food on the table. That therefore means I need to focus on good ol' return on investment. People are busy these days and most want specific and relevant information delivered to them that can help them with their business or their job. Yes, much of the stuff here is interesting but is it particularly relevant to helping them get their job done?

That's an interesting question that I will put to you, as a subscriber, many of you who have been with this current newsletter since it started. I'd love to keep producing this on a regular basis but I'm struggling to determine what my business ROI is? Tell me your thoughts either way. Contact me directly via email director@ciaops.com and tell me what you'd like to see and whether I have it all wrong.

My current thinking is to 'retire' this list and focus my email energies on a new newsletter that is all about Office 365 and productivity using Microsoft products such as OneNote, SharePoint, Yammer and the like. That, to my way of thinking, is far more targeted and useful to a tightly focused audience.

How do you get on this new list? You do so via my FREE training course for SharePoint delivered via email which you can sign up to by visiting the Getting Started with SharePoint Online page, My plan is to shortly start a new monthly newsletter, on Office 365 and Microsoft productivity but have I got it all wrong? Please let me (director@ciaops.com) know your thoughts on how I can still help people but also get some tangible ROI for my time investment. I'll read and respond to all emails.

2. Power BI
We are soon to be swimming in even more data than we already are. This is because we are poised at the beginning of the age of the Internet of Things (IOT). This will be a world where EVERYTHING has a full time connection to the Internet and is generating data. From your toaster to your toothbrush to each shoe lace, it will all be connected and constantly spewing out data.

Now all this data is pretty useless unless it can be somehow turned into information. One way that this information conversion could be accomplished is using the Power BI tool from Microsoft. Power BI is short for Power Business Intelligence and allows you to report on data sources and create informative dashboards.



As you can see from the above screen shot they way it displays information is very clear and would help anyone make sense of the all the data.

Power BI is set to become a free component of Office 365 and I wrote a more detailed blog about it recently at:

Switching on to Power BI.

There are also mobile apps you can download and use to provide single press access to business information from a variety of sources. For information about Power BI checkout the webs site:

http://www,powerbi.com

Could you use Power BI in your business? if you can send me an email (director@ciaops.com) and I'll help you get started.

3. Windows 10
Have you noticed that little Windows icon down on your system tray? It isn't malware, what it is in fact is Microsoft extolling you to sign up for a free upgrade to Windows 10. 

If you do sign up, bits of Windows 10 will start downloading to your system in the background (total download is around 3GB), then after July 29th you will be prompted to update your existing system to Microsoft's latest.

Windows 10 will remain a free upgrade for all licensed users of Windows 7, 8 and 8.1. It will remain free for these users for 12 months at least, so there is no immediate rush to update. Going forward, once Windows 10 has been installed, all future updates to Windows will simply be downloaded. In many ways it appears Windows 10 will in fact be the last Windows desktop product to have a version number. From now on it will simply be known as 'Windows'.

So what differences does Windows 10 bring to the fold? Well for starters, the Start Menu is back and that will please many. It will also have a new 'light-weight' browser called Edge (Internet Explore will still remain) as well as the ability to be logged in to teh device via facial recognition.

I've been testing the pre-release versions of Windows 10 and it looks pretty solid. It also gets plenty of good press so it appears it will be well adopted across personal and business users. You have 12 months to update for free if you qualify so there is no rush to update immediately.

Of course if you have any questions about Windows 10 then please contact me (director@ciaops.com). I'm here to help.