On the occasion of Castema's 17th birthday a few days ago, I was reflecting on our history, and how blessed we are to have made it this long in business. Many small businesses aren't so fortunate. I certainly can't claim that I knew what I was doing back in 2002 when I started up a company for the first time.

Summer may have a reputation as a "kick back and relax" season, but it's been anything but that here at Castema. I thought I'd do a rundown of some of the more interesting technology news and projects we're digging into these past few months. If you'd like me to explore any of these in more detail in a future post, please let me know.

In a recent article I discussed using Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive for Business as your company's "file server" replacement, along with how the OneDrive sync client with "Files on Demand" makes the experience of using cloud file storage very similar to the experience of using mapped drives on a file server.

For this month’s post, I thought it might be useful to do a round-up of things we’ve been working on over the past few months. I’ve written about some of these concepts before but I haven’t focused on what we’re doing with them here at Castema.

We are often asked by clients what cloud app or service we recommend for sharing files, and for most of the companies we work with, the answer is easy: the ones you already have as part of your Office 365 subscription, namely OneDrive for Business and SharePoint.

While some things in the tech world -- laptop and notebook computers, for instance -- continue to trend smaller and smaller, computer monitor screen sizes are definitely trending in the opposite direction. We can never get enough real estate on our computer screens.

Last time in this space, I discussed why businesses should be looking at Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to protect themselves, and why MFA is a far better protector of your online identity than just a password. I also promised to report on a new type of "password-less" MFA that Microsoft is now rolling out to its business Office 365 customers.

Passwords Are Terrible Protection
For most of us, nearly all the "stuff" we have access to online - I'm talking about years' worth of emails, our company's servers, files on cloud services, online shopping accounts - is protected by a username/password combination, probably a poor one if statistics are any indication.

Microsoft's Ignite conference is going on this week in Orlando, and as always, there are new features, new products, and new initiatives being announced. We've picked a few to highlight that we think may be important for small businesses in the coming year.

As the summer draws to a close and as the kids head back to school with new supplies, new books and new teachers, it might be an opportune time to look at some new ways of doing things at work, too. I came across a blog post from Microsoft about some of the new developments they've been working on for their Office 365 subscribers.