Microsoft Build is an event that here at GT we look forward to every year.  Our team are always hungry to see what new features, tools and technologies we can leverage to help our customers do more to enable productivity. 

We will be hosting our Roadshow in June this year where we will cover these topics indepth with our clients, however, if there is space you might be able to join.  Request an invite here.

Satya Nadella the CEO of Microsoft got us super hyped with the announcements this year, and while there are so many phenomenal topics to dig into we are going to share the top 5 announcements we love.

A silver lined cloud

Was 2017 all bad? No, GTconsult were able to attend the Microsoft Ignite African Panel, and the company was featured in a number of South African publications.

The year also saw the growth and success of SharePoint Vitals as well as the added benefit of Umlindi. There was a major announcement regarding the local Azure and Office 365 Data Regions, and GTconsult once again became Microsoft Partner Award Finalists.

Unfortunate disappointment

As mentioned earlier, there were some disappointing events in 2017. This includes the downsizing of the Johannesburg office, and the loss of senior management

The loss of our senior management and downsizing of our JHB team forced us to focus and strengthen our approach towards the end of 2017. 20ATeam is going to filled with dedication, focus and delivery.

The Modern Workplace minus the fluff

The modern workplace has become a buzzword, just like the digital office, work from home with more productivity, and becoming a mobile workforce.

The truth is that while these buzz words and technological trends are pushing the world forward, they hardly ever have a major impact on the existing workforce.

Why is this so? Well simply put, people don’t like to change, or change management was never implemented and the changes go unnoticed. Further, training was poor and users were unable to leverage the new technology. At GTconsult, we don’t worry about any of that, we identify issues in the business and find solutions that require minimal training and change management. Further, it and ensures the business requirements motivate the team to leverage the new technology. Teams has done just that, reduced email, unified communication, knocked down barriers between clients and created a transparent easy to manage modern workplace, minus the fluff.

Packaged, ready to use business solutions

SharePoint is a platform that can be leveraged in several ways to increase business collaboration, productivity and governance. A number of these solutions are available out of the box with some training and can be leveraged right away.

However, with the technical advances of cloud integration and enterprise workflow, the SharePoint platform can be leveraged to enable business solutions that are scalable. With this is mind, we have created The Workbench for SharePoint, an on-premise or cloud integrated multi use framework for business solutions.

With automated mail management and enterprise workflow integrations we have created the following solutions with the framework, helpdesk, claims management, underwriting, document approvals and more. All are extremely scalable and deployed in days.

Craig Tarr will show you how we built this framework, how we have integrated the framework with our favourite enterprise tools and how we have helped a number of customers to date.

Security is a major issue, yes for SharePoint and Office 365 too

Ransomware, data breaches and internet crime soured to its highest levels ever in 2017. What will happen in 2018? We all can agree that 99% of the time, our data is safer on the cloud when it is managed and monitored by the dedicated security team at Microsoft. However, the relaxed attitude towards security is having a negative effect on security governance and could compromise your entire company’s security.

Allow me to explain, you still need to connect to your company’s secure SharePoint site or business critical system from your office, home or cell phone. Is your Wi-Fi secure? Has your device got a good anti-virus and been checked for trojan horses? Does your phone have an outdated Bluetooth driver? Has someone other than yourself touched your machine recently? While your company intranet is secure, you yourself could be the problem and hackers are taking advantage of this. And if you decided not to go onto the cloud and manage your own SP environment, are you sure you are keeping track of who is using the platform and for what?

Throughout 2018, we will review how hackers are stealing your data without you even knowing about it. We will also focus on what to do to ensure a good security culture in your business.