Microsoft announces the availability of Office 365 on its datacenters located in South Africa. Customers in the region can now migrate their accounts starting today according to the announcement.
“We are proud to announce that Office 365 is now available on the local datacenters! Migrate your current Office 365 account today!“
In March this year Microsoft announced its cloud datacenters in Africa. To be located in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. With Azure being the first of Microsoft’s intelligent cloud services to be delivered from the new datacenters.
At the launch event Microsoft said its cloud based productivity solutions; Office 365 and Dynamics 365 intelligent business application services were expected to launch by quater three this year. However Microsoft now says customers should expect Dynamics 365 and Power Platform to be available in the fourth quarter, 2019.
What this means is that African customers can now have their data stored on datacenters in Africa. They can also expect better services with regards to latency, data residency and regulations.
Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for business are services Microsoft shares will be made available. As well as “many of the Microsoft Services that work in conjunction with this data, for example, but not limited to, Exchange Online Protection, Delve, Office Online, and Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection.”
With the availability of Microsoft’s cloud services delivered from Africa, it will mean local companies can securely move their business to the cloud.
Yousef Khalidi Corporate Vice President of Azure Networking
Microsoft’s Office 365 apps have a new design and boy they look wow. I mean i like them. They look fresh, clean, simple, modern and oh fluent lol. The design overhaul finally catches up with the office 365 apps. Microsoft calls this change “designs that honor heritage and welcome the future”
“Today, we unveiled redesigned Office app icons to honor the heritage of Office and welcome in the future. These app icons provide flexible visuals that reflect product changes and the new ways in which people are working” – Kirk Koenigsbauer, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365
Microsoft’s head of design for office 365, Jon friedman said “we’ve evolved our visual identity to reflect the simple, powerful, and intelligent experiences of Office 365”
The last time Microsoft Office apps were update was in 2013. The redesign includes changes to the letter and symbol ratio and has flexible visuals. Microsoft says the changes will be rolling out across platforms in the coming months, starting with mobile and web apps.
“We’ve changed the letter-to-symbol ratio. Traditionally, the letter occupied two-thirds of the icon, and the symbol took up one-third. We’ve changed this ratio to now emphasize the symbol”
To support this changing world of work, Office is transforming into a collaborative suite that lets you work together in real-time from almost any device. We’ve infused our tools with powerful AI: you can get insights from data with less effort, write a paper using your voice, or make your resume using LinkedIn insights. We’ve also added totally new apps to the suite like our AI-powered meetings and chat service, Microsoft Teams. In the end, it’s great design that makes these experiences fluid and seamless.
How do you like the new Microsoft Office 365 icons? Share your thoughts with us.
Mahala is a Microsoft education initiative that provides students with access to free Microsoft Office 365 and 1TB of OneDrive
Speaking at LEADEREX 2017 event, Microsoft South Africa MD spoke about many initiatives including Mahala.
Mahala is an education partnership between Microsoft South Africa and 2enable. The initiative seeks to offer all South African school learners from the ages of 8 and above free access to Microsoft Office across all their devices as well as 1TB of OneDrive storage.
Microsoft South Africa says; with the platform, we have simplified the process for signing up for Office 365 for Education. We have extended the benefits that we supply. By using the Mahala.MS platform to register you will receive the following;
Install of Office 365 Pro Plus (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote & Outlook) across multiple different devices across all platforms (iOS, Android & Windows)
1TB of OneDrive storage
Office Online applications that work across all browsers (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote & Sway)
So what’s the difference between signing up via Microsoft Education and Mahala.ms? Microsoft SA says;
We’ve simplified the signup process to remove blockers such as lack of Academic email address. We have extended the benefits to include the installed version of Office instead of limiting to web access only.
How and what do you need to get started?
You must be a full or part-time student at an academic institution in South Africa, between the ages of 8 and 22. You will need the following information while signing up on the platform.
South African ID number (can be found on the birth certificate or ID book)
Internet access
Private email address, used for correspondence of Mahala.MS log in details.
What will happen when the access expires? If you are still eligible, you can re-apply. But if it’s not your documents will still be available to view but not editable.
Visit the Mahala page and register for the offer. Are you in South Africa and excited about this? Tell us what you think in the comments.
[jetpack_subscription_form subscribe_placeholder=”Enter your email address” show_subscribers_total=”false” button_on_newline=”false” submit_button_text=”Hi, sign up so you can get the latest in breaking news, reviews, opinions, events, opportunities and community updates right in your inbox. ” custom_font_size=”16px” custom_border_radius=”0″ custom_border_weight=”1″ custom_padding=”15″ custom_spacing=”10″ submit_button_classes=”” email_field_classes=”” show_only_email_and_button=”true”]
Check out other stories making the news in the technology ecosystem in Africa and the Middle East.
Microsoft Nigeria hosted bloggers from Nigeria to an interactive session on Empowering Digital Transformation.
The bloggers meetup event was to bring a familiarization of service solutions offered by Microsoft and the new updates coming with the Creators Update to the bloggers.
Digital Transformation is simply doing things differently and with ease.
The Creators Update is the next major update to the Microsoft Windows operating system. The Update is scheduled to start arriving first on new devices and then to the older devices from April 11th 2017. Also Microsoft has said that you can use the Microsoft Update Assistant to manually initiate the update from April 5th 2017. For Windows 10 Mobile devices the creators Update will start rolling out from the 25th of April.
The Creators Update will begin to roll out on April 11th. Like with the Anniversary Update we delivered last August, this update for Windows will proceed in phases.
For the those of you who are eager to get the Creators Update right away, you will be able to initiate the update manually, starting on April 5th, via Update Assistant. This option is intended for advanced users on devices running a licensed version of Windows 10.
We’ll iterate this process over a period of several months until all compatible devices running Windows 10 worldwide are offered the Creators Update. Windows Phone will follow the same phased approach, with rollout scheduled to begin April 25.
At the event Microsoft Nigeria shared updated statistics of Windows 10 since it’s launch.
There are currently over 400 million monthly active devices.
Over 135 Billion hours spent on Windows 10
Cortana has been asked over 5 Billion questions with over 1 Million daily queries.
10 Million of streamed Xbox one games to Windows 10 PCs.
On digital transformation and how Microsoft technology can help you achieve more, there was a presentation on what’s a digital business? Addressing bloggers on the topic there was an elaboration on How is the business being digitally transformed and How is the business model being digitally transformed. Speaking on the four pillars of Digital Transformation:
GNPC in a bid to keep employees productive and connected on the go have chosen Microsoft’s Office 365. But this deployment has to happen without any kind of interruptions to service delivery, as such they turned to Microsoft Fast Track and Microsoft Premier Services Support to help with migration.
Godfred Ofori-Som, IT manager of Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), talks about the decision to use Microsoft Office 365, the adoption and migration process in a blog post.
In our bid to ensure that our employees stay constantly connected and equipped to work everywhere, including in the field, we decided to invest in a robust IT structure and in tools that support on-the-go connectivity. This is crucial to support timely communication internally as well as mission-critical email with partners, customers, suppliers and other key stakeholders.
Godfred talks about how the they were already using some Microsoft services like Windows server, Windows OS and had a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement. So based on that trust choosing office 365 was top and came natural to accomplish what they were looking for. Finding out about Microsoft’s Security support for hybrid and on premises deployments gave them a boost.
Our first step was to convince our management team that security and reliability wouldn’t be an issue. Once we established that Microsoft security capabilities are fully supported in hybrid and on-premises deployments alike, everyone was on board
The IT team had a challenge when it came to hybrid migration as they hadn’t deployed anything like this. Microsoft Fast Track and Microsoft Premier Services Support came in handy and helped assess their IT infrastructure and environment, and created an adoption.
We worked with Microsoft Premier Services Support, and together, FastTrack and Premier not only helped us deploy Office 365, but also developed a high-level view—a cloud strategy for the whole business. This included providing advice on how to migrate our other apps over time and get the most out of the capabilities and components of Office 365.
Microsoft FastTrack includes resources, tools and experts that help you rollout Office 365. The Microsoft FastTrack team believe a successful Office 365 rollout focuses on driving adoption and helping everyone understand the benefits of working in a new way.
Microsoft Premier Support services provides continuous hands-on assistance and immediate escalation for urgent issues, which speeds resolution and helps you keep your mission-critical systems up and running.
With the help of these Microsoft products and services, GNPC has moved their apps to the cloud.
Our employees are already changing the way they work. Managers can now share data with each other and access it even while they’re traveling—a new best practice—rather than store data on their computers. Employee communication and engagement have also been improved. Employees can connect on Yammer by posting photos, videos and more. Our Corporate Affairs department shares quick updates with staff on Yammer, which further drives collaboration among the teams within the business.
