UPDATED 22:31 EDT / JANUARY 24 2017

CLOUD

Microsoft expands FastTrack support for Windows 10, Dynamics 365 and Teams

Microsoft Corp. said it’s expanding its FastTrack services to support Windows 10, Dynamics 365 and its upcoming Microsoft Teams collaboration software.

The company is hoping that by doing so, it will help its enterprise customers to adopt those products more rapidly. “Just like FastTrack for Office 365 and EMS, FastTrack for Windows 10 and Dynamics 365 provides customers with resources and tools to support onboarding and user adoption,” Cyril Belikoff, a senior director of Office marketing at Microsoft, wrote Monday in a blog post.

Microsoft launched its first FastTrack service for Office 365 about a year and a half ago, before evolving it to support additional products. The FastTrack services are designed to help companies get the most out of products they’ve already bought subscriptions for and to ease adoption for those considering buying one. The services provide adoption guides, migration services and consultation services from Microsoft employees. So, for example, a company that’s evaluating Windows 10 for deployment would be able to use FastTrack to plan its rollout and upgrade users.

For Microsoft, it’s critical that its customers actually use the subscription services they’ve paid for. This is the company’s new business model for many of its products, and if companies don’t actually use those services they won’t renew their subscriptions. So it’s in Microsoft’s best interest to provide as much help as it can.

By including Windows 10 in FastTrack, Microsoft clearly hopes it will help tempt more enterprises to upgrade its latest operating system. This is clearly something that Microsoft wants to do as soon as possible. Just last week, its German subsidiary issued a warning to customers stating that its previous operating system, Windows 7, is no longer “fit for business,” and advised them to begin planning their move to Windows 10 as soon as possible.

It seems Microsoft is also keen to get customers onto Dynamics 365, because the FastTrack service for that product offers a wealth of technical talks and workshops that teach companies how to use it.

Microsoft Teams is currently available in beta ahead of its full release later this year, and the FastTrack service provides a number of user guides explaining how the live collaboration service can be used in different scenarios. According to Microsoft’s Belikoff, the company is making those resources available ahead of its launch in order to make it easier for administrators to get people to use the service.


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