Highlights from SPC14 IT Pro audience keynote Session

I have attended Bill Baer’s SPC14 sub keynote for IT Professionals track. I usually love whatever Bill Baer presents. I had attended his SharePoint 2013 IT Pro Intro presentation at SPC12 and he was able to run through his presentation packed with full 2 hours of content in less than an hour. His fast, rapid fire, and clearly articulated presentation style is perfect for IT Pro keynotes. This year man himself beat his previous record and completed IT Pro audience keynote in less than half hour and gave attendees more than 2 hours of break prior to breakout sessions.

Here are the major highlights of SPC14 IT Pro audience keynote. Thanks to Ali Mazaheri (@AliMazaheri) capturing brilliant picture of Bill while prepping up for the session.

On-Premises Server Investments

• SharePoint Server 201x Launch – vNext availability around mid-2015 calendar year
• SharePoint 2013 SP1 released in Feb 2014
  • Service pack contains all the cumulative updates and the public updates since RTM including March 2013 Public Update, March PU is no longer baseline, you can install SP2013 SP1 on SP2013 RTM.
  • One Drive for Business for On-premises (Replaces SkyDrive Pro as personal storage)
  • Windows Server 2012 R2 Support
  • New Cloud Ramp features like Office 365 Administration category for On-premises – Hybrid integration & redirection for Yammer and OneDrive for Business, Audience & Security Groups enabled which would allow selectively redirect users to Office 365 OneDrive for Business

Office 365 Innovations

• 1 TB Site Collection, Limitless Tenant (customers pay for storage)
• Codename Fort Knox – encrypting shredded storage
• Multi-Factor Authentication Support for General Users – It’s been available to Admin Users since June 2013, available for any users since Feb 2013, increases the security of user log ins for cloud services above and beyond just a password, users are required to acknowledge a phone call, text message, or an app notification on their smartphone after correctly entering their password

Hybrid Investments

• Yammer Newsfeed and OneDrive for Business Integration – Available with SP2013 SP1 On-Premises Server Version
• Use Windows Server 2012 R2 Web App Proxy as recommended replacement for  retired TMG reverse proxy
• Investments in Search
  • Today – Query Federation – Two discrete result sets
  • Future – Remote Indexing, Crawling Remote Sources, and Single Index – One single results & refinement set

Additional announcements:

• New Office 365 IT Pro Yammer Network – https://www.yammer.com/ITProNetwork/
• Access apps General Availability for Office 365 customers – Announced in Feb 2014, Was available as Preview since Feb 2013, Now available for production use
• Simplified login to Yammer from SharePoint Online -  Announced in Feb 2014, ability to enable user mapping between Yammer and Office 365 identities, avoid prompt for log in while browsing both systems, please note that this is still not a single sign-on solution, you still have two identities and required Yammer ID if you are accessing Yammer directly.
• SAML 2.0 Support for Federation – Announced in March 2014, support for SAML 2.0 identity providers, although this wasn’t announced during keynote, I had to add this because it came out right after SPC14 – another testament of Office 365 continuous innovations even Microsoft speakers didn’t know it’s coming on last day of conference.

If you haven’t been to SPC14 IT Pro keynote, there you have it!!!! Enjoy!!!