Office 365: Expect huge improvements for admins

The cloud war is on. My colleague Eric Knorr made that clear in his recent blog post “Microsoft and Google launch new assaults on the cloud,” and it’s hard to resist the desire to write about the obvious battle ahead. Eric has kicked off that conversation, and InfoWorld’s mobile guru, Galen Gruman, followed up with how Office 365 doesn’t live up to Microsoft’s promise that it would run on mobile devices.

But whatever your view on the merits of Google’s and Microsoft’s cloud offerings, the fact is many admins will use Office 365 as an upgrade from the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), Redmond’s first real productivity cloud offering into managing Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync.

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BPOS vs. Office 365: The admin’s perspective

I’m a BPOS user and promoter. The pricing was compelling enough and included so many great add-ons like SharePoint, Live Meeting, and Communicator that I jumped at it. However, I admit its administration is a bit confusing at times, and I have a hard time finding what I need when I log in. Take a look at the initial login interface for administrative BPOS below.

The Office 365 interface has a new home page with some of the same elements, but there’s one key distinction I don’t like: You have to click Admin to go to the Admin Overview page, where you can add new users and such. (Both the initial home page and the admin home page are shown below.) Typically I only log in to work on users, so I prefer the BPOS arrangement where those controls are right on the home dashboard.

One thing I really like about BPOS is that you go to the user list and have a handy list of links on the right side that include enabled users, administrators, disabled users, users who have never signed in, and users with disabled licenses. It’s an easy way to see who hasn’t signed in before.

With the Office 365 beta, the administration views are not set yet from what I can see. Right now there are only two views: Sign In Allowed Users and Sign In Blocked Users. When I try to create a new view, which you can do with BPOS, I don’t get the same level of options that BPOS offers. In BPOS, I can configure location, last sign-in date, services licensing assignment, enabled accounts, disabled accounts, and more. With Office 365, I don’t have many options for creating my own views, so I’m hoping for improvements.

The Office 365 interface is polished and has the SharePoint 2010 feel, which I really like. I also appreciate that at any time I can click the top to take me to my Outlook Web App interface by clicking Outlook or to my SharePoint Team Site by clicking Team Site.

Where administration of Office 365 shines

It may be easy for people who are not familiar with all the enhancements in Exchange 2010, SharePoint 2010, and Lync 2010 to overlook where those enhancements benefit administration. For example, Exchange 2010 has a new Outlook Web App (OWA) that users can benefit from. In fact, Office 365 is already built on Exchange 2010 SP1, which has further enhancements to OWA, like the addition of themes that users can choose, which are easy to see on the user side of Office 365. However, that doesn’t mean anything with regard to administration.

If you try to manage Exchange Online from the Office 365 console, you’ll see the new benefits quickly. In BPOS, administration is limited to a handful of configuration options like the creation of distribution lists, safe senders, blocked senders, and conference rooms. But when you enter the Office 365 administration for Exchange Online, you get the new Exchange Control Panel (ECP), which provides most of the functionality online that you have in an on-premise deployment of Exchange.

You can work with all your users in a familiar ECP interface rather than going through the typical hosted Exchange Web-based interfaces that are designed purely for a hosted experience. With an OWA-based ECP, you can configure roles, which include the ability to configure discovery management (and correspondingly allow users with permissions to perform multiple-mailbox discovery searches if necessary). The delegation of responsibilities through the ECP is a real plus.

One of the great aspects of the ECP, which is tailored for the hosted experience in Office 365, is that you have auditing and a variety of other reports. You have ActiveSync device policy control through the ECP, as well as the ability to control unified messaging dial plans. You can perform a modicum of message hygiene through some of the mail control settings auch as IP Safelisting, Safety, and Rules. The rules control alone is exciting in that you can configure transport rules through the ECP.

I didn’t get the chance to play with the SharePoint management features to the same degree, but I did see that the use of SharePoint services is streamlined and easier all around. Again, it’s the actual product that has changed, making for all of these new and easier administrative pluses SharePoint admins will no doubt appreciate.

The verdict: A few view isues aside, a much more powerful admin tool

I admit it: Initially I wasn’t pleased with the surface-level changes in the Office 365 administrative interface. It could be I’m just so comfortable with the BPOS environment that I don’t like change, but there are still a few aspects I’d like to see fixed (like views for my users) before it goes live.

Overall, though, the incredible control I have thanks to Exchange 2010 ECP makes me look forward to pushing BPOS aside for Office 365. As an Exchange admin at heart, it is hard to give up my control to a hosted service. The more control I have and the more that control is provided through tools I’m used to working with (like the ECP), the better. Office 365 delivers that control.

This article, “Office 365: Expect huge improvements for admins,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of J. Peter Bruzzese’s Enterprise Windows blog and follow the latest developments in business software and Windows at InfoWorld.com.