Category Archives: Architecture

This category is intended to provide communication and collaboration architecture related content. Architecture, for this blog, is defined to be a holistic and maybe even vendor-agnostic approach towards intelligent communication architectures.

erik 21:30 on 16. July 2019
Tags: BitTitan, , , ,   

Microsoft Teams Tenant-to-Tenant Migration?

In the past I wrote a post regarding migrating a single capability, Teams telephony workloads, from a source to a target Office 365 tenant. In this post I like to emphasize a new third party service and its capability which can help to accomplish a complete Teams Tenant-to-Tenant migration.

[erik365] Migrate Office 365 Tenant-to-Tenant

BitTitan, a third party service provider for service automation, announced their new service to migrate Teams from a source to a target tenant. It enables companies who need to merge or split Teams into or off another Office 365 tenant.

BitTitan MigrationWiz Teams Tenant-to-Tenant Migration

MigrationWiz enables for migrating the following Team workloads:

  • Teams instance and the individual components
  • Teams
  • Channels
  • Conversations
  • Permissions
  • Files within that instance

On top the service offers a pre-migration assessment

  • to analyze the number of Teams to be migrated
  • to analyze the amount of data to be migrated
  • to analyze the number of users to be migrated

The above described service capabilities are subject to change at anytime. The described capabilities are just a high-level overview. I recommend to read the lastest service provider’s service specification etc. before.

Conclusion, opinion and summary

I dealt with a few Microsoft Office 365 Tenant-to-Tenant migration due to different business requirements. However, it was very much to do and script. Now, MigrationWiz seems to really simplify the complete process for Office 365 Tenant-to-Tenant migrations regarding Microsoft Teams.

As of now [July 2019] there are only a few service providers out there offering a service to smoothly migrate Teams from Tenant-To-Tenant as far as I could see. So, BitTitan MigrationWiz is now an option to speed up, simplify and automate your T2T migration batches for Teams, too.

Additional Resources

erik 09:03 on 12. July 2019
Tags: Event,   

Microsoft Inspire 2019 live stream

For market observers, in this post I want to notify about Microsoft Inspire 2019. The event takes place in Las Vegas, Nevada from July 14th – 18th, 2019. It’s for Microsoft partners to meet, connect and of course, get inspired all around Microsoft’s and Partners’ services.

There will be a live stream of some keynotes on the Inspire page:

  • Monday, July 15, 2019 approx. 17:30 – 19:30*
  • Wednesday, July 17, 2019 approx. 17:30 – 19:30*
    * Europe/Berlin time)

As usually, Microsoft plans to make the Inspire sessions available some time (approx. two days later) after the event or session took place. So, stay tuned for more details on the below pages as the event comes closer and after it took place.

Additional Resources

erik 14:20 on 6. July 2019
Tags: , ,   

Microsoft Teams Licensing Notes [Update July 2019]

There are many options for licensing Microsoft Teams depending on the capability requirements for users, devices and rooms. In this post I like to point out some “special” licensing options besides the normal ones for Teams in enterprises.

The hereinafter described license options might be subject to change. Moreover not all licenses or subscriptions are available in every country around the globe, especially calling plans and audio conferencing (shortened: Audioconf.).

Teams Licensing Basics

  • Microsoft Teams is just a single service of the massiv Microsoft 365 services stack which it tightly linked and integrated within this service stack.
  • Microsoft Teams is part of a “packaged” Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions by default.
  • Microsoft Teams replaces Skype for Business (Online). The Skype for Business Desktop Client within Office 365 ProPlus is also obsolete, meaning that new (full) Office 365 ProPlus installation will get a Teams instead of a Skype for Business Client.

The following slides and drawing are intended to provide you with an overview on licensing options. I also point out what you should take into account in case of Teams Direct Routing (TDR), in this post and following drawings I call a TDR scenario a “hybrid” scenario.

Telephony with Teams (for users)

Overview (May 2019)

Call Queues (CQ) and Auto Attendants (AA)

Resource accounts for CQ/AA need a license. Till 01.07.2019 you had to license these users with typical user licenses. Now you can buy and assign a free “Phone System Virtual User license”.

UPDATED JULY 2019 Call Queues (CQ) and Auto Attendants (AA)

At the bottom I’ll add a link to a well-written how-to post “Add a free licence to Call Queues and Auto Attendants (Microsoft Teams)” from ucgeek.com which describes how to buy and assign the license.

Teams Common Area Phone (CAP)

Teams Common Area Phone

Teams Meeting Room

Teams Meeting Room

Conclusion, opinion and summary

The above drawings quickly depict how you can license users, common area phones, meeting room devices and even call queues or auto attendants for Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft is working on an enhanced licensing model for applications like cloud CQ/AA [as you can read in “Manage resource accounts”]. Still, at present user licensing applies for cloud CQ/AA. [done]

Additional Resources

erik 06:30 on 27. May 2019
Tags: , ,   

Microsoft Teams Licensing Notes

There are many options for licensing Microsoft Teams depending on the capability requirements for users, devices and rooms. In this post I like to point out some “special” licensing options besides the normal ones for Teams in enterprises.

The hereinafter described license options might be subject to change. Moreover not all licenses or subscriptions are available in every country around the globe, especially calling plans and audio conferencing (shortened: Audioconf.).

Teams Licensing Basics

  • Microsoft Teams is just a single service of the massiv Microsoft 365 services stack which it tightly linked and integrated within this service stack.
  • Microsoft Teams is part of a “packaged” Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions by default.
  • Microsoft Teams replaces Skype for Business (Online). The Skype for Business Desktop Client within Office 365 ProPlus is also obsolete, meaning that new (full) Office 365 ProPlus installation will get a Teams instead of a Skype for Business Client.

The following slides and drawing are intended to provide you with an overview on licensing options. I also point out what you should take into account in case of Teams Direct Routing (TDR), in this post and following drawings I call a TDR scenario a “hybrid” scenario.

Telephony with Teams (for users)

Overview (May 2019)

Call Queues (CQ) and Auto Attendants (AA)

Call Queues (CQ) and Auto Attendants (AA)

Teams Common Area Phone (CAP)

Teams Common Area Phone

Teams Meeting Room

Teams Meeting Room

Conclusion, opinion and summary

The above drawings quickly depict how you can license users, common area phones, meeting room devices and even call queues or auto attendants for Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft is working on an enhanced licensing model for applications like cloud CQ/AA [as you can read in “Manage resource accounts”]. Still, at present user licensing applies for cloud CQ/AA.

Additional Resources

erik 17:00 on 19. May 2019
Tags: , ,   

Microsoft modern communications webinar series

Microsoft initiated a webinar series by Microsoft communication leaders and HR to share insights and challenges regarding modern communication and cultural transformation. There are several webinars from May, 16 to June, 26, 2019. The contents are, for instance, communicating better, storytelling, empower employees, effective internal communication, employee feedback and optimized communication on employee feedback.

Additional Resources

erik 06:30 on 15. April 2019
Tags: ,   

Microsoft Build 2019 live stream

For market observers, in this post I want to notify about Microsoft Build 2019. The event takes place in Seattle, WA from May 6th – 8th, 2019. It’s all about development around Microsoft products and services, e.g. containers, artificial intelligence, machine learning, DevOps, IoT and mixed reality.

Conclusion, opinion and summary

At the time I wrote this post there were no details regarding live streams available. Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure there will be a live stream at least for certain sessions available. I guess on the Build 2019 page and Channel 9 you might be able to watch the keynotes and later, after the event you could find recordings of certain sessions there. So, stay tuned for more details on the below pages as the event comes closer.

Additional Resources

erik 06:00 on 15. April 2019
Tags: ,   

Google Cloud Next ’19 recordings

In this post I’d like to point out some Google Cloud Next ’19 recordings which you can watch on YouTube. Their focus are on modern communication and collaboration based on Google services. The links are at the bottom of this post.

Conclusion, opinion and summary

I watched some bits of the event to get some insights on what’s Google offering regarding modern collaboration and communication services. I saw some common, innovative as well as different (implemented/looking) features and services. From my point of view, although otherwise mentioned by the speakers of the sessions, to me the services deliver just some certain service building block for an enterprise grade IT service infrastructure. You need to take a close look at several aspects to find out if the provided services are right for your company. But that’s what you need to do for all services and things before you start rolling out anything.

To me, it was interesting to watch what and how certain modern collaboration capabilities are offered by Google. Also remarkable that Google partners with Cisco to enrich their, both, communication and collaboration portfolio and feature set. Finally, I’m looking forward to read news from Gartner regarding cloud-based unified communication (for 2019) and which player is categorized as a leader (for 2019).

Additional Resources