One third of organizations have already adopted Office 365. Perhaps it’s on your radar for 2017?
It’s a very tempting prospect, certainly – cloud-based services that make sharing and collaboration easier, cross-device synchronization practically seamless, and remove a lot of IT overhead in managing versions and licenses. It looks like a no-brainer if you’re already a Windows and Office user.
But it’s not quite as clean a switch as it may first appear. Although the browser-based versions of Word, PowerPoint etc. are incredibly full-featured and comparable to their desktop equivalents, they are not a complete replacement. If, like me, you like to work offline or have the full desktop experience, then you will be installing Word, PowerPoint and the other tools.
So, not all the IT management headaches are solved. It’s still necessary to be able to handle distribution of updates for the desktop Office applications across all your desktops. With these updates being served from Microsoft update servers, that could be a significant amount of network traffic that could impact your business traffic.
Office 365 updates are slightly different to normal Windows updates. Office 365 uses “click to run” installation which means that updates are distributed as files or parts of files (byte ranges) and generate multiple requests for content compared to normal updates where a single request would be issued.
With the latest release of 1E’s Nomad, Office 365 updates can now be distributed alongside your other applications and updates. The individual pieces of an Office 365 update are downloaded and cached like any other content and can be shared amongst peers in just the same way. 1E has worked with the Microsoft Configuration Manager product team to develop enhancements to the Microsoft Alternate Content Provider (ACP) API changes required for Nomad to support Office 365.
Nomad, with its proven strengths of bandwidth management, peer sharing and resilience, is the only Alternate Content Provider solution on the market that provides a fully supported means of downloading Office 365 Updates.
If you’ve been unsure how to manage Office 365, then Nomad should be able to answer your questions. This new release shows the continuing innovation 1E brings to Nomad which is relied on by hundreds of the most complex IT organizations around the world to streamline their IT infrastructure.
The new release also includes enhanced support for WLAN clients and other enhancements. It also supports the latest Configuration Manager Current Branch release (1610). For more details, please refer to the 1E customer portal.
