What is Office 365?
Office 365 is a suite of online services to replace that dusty server in the corner of your office. There are different plans to suit your size and needs covering Email, Document Storage, Intranet Sites, Messaging and Online Meetings. Plus many plans give each of your staff a free copy of Office applications to install on their PCs and mobile devices.
Office 365 Benefits
1) Reliability
For small businesses downtime of services tends to be quite problematic. Generally with no in house knowledge to fix problems an external IT support teams is required to get these issues resolved which can be time consuming. Microsoft have a service level agreement in place that promises a financially backed 99.9% reliability and when issues do arise they have expert knowledge immediately available.
2) Latest version availability
Often businesses miss out on the latest versions of office products as the licence costs are prohibitive to upgrade, with o365 you have access to the latest version as soon as it’s released as part of your subscription.
3) Cost
- No infrastructure overheads
- No large server licence investments
- Monthly subscription per user instead of price for each installation of Office
- One licence of Office Pro is comparable to the cost of 4 years subscription to Office 365 Business Premium for a user, in that time a new version of Office will have been released (see latest version availability)
4) Collaboration
- Share documents on SharePoint
- Communication (Message, VOIP, Video) through Skype for Business
- Online editing with Office Web Apps
5) Mobile Experience
There is an optimized experience for commonly used devices (IOS, Android and Windows Phone) available through the app store of the particular device.
6) Compatibility
As with the mobile experience Microsoft have spent a lot of time making sure that there are version of office that run on as many popular operating systems as possible so that all types of businesses can make use of the Office suite.
7) Availability
With early versions of Office businesses needed an Office setup with a VPN to offer external email access. With Office 365 your documents, emails, meetings are available anywhere so when that Rail strike hits, your staff can continue working as usual where ever they are.
8) Larger mailbox storage
With a 50GB mailbox you can store every e-mail you ever received and never have to worry about deleting your crowded inbox to receive more recent e-mails.
9) Security
When running your own servers, you will need to spend considerable time and effort making sure the security is up-to-date (when did you last really check?). Microsoft have numerous certifications for the security at their data centres which takes away the burden of protecting your data.
10) Disaster Recovery
As soon as you start to calculate what you would need to put in place to carry on working if your office burned down, the cost is enormous! With Office 365, you can carry on working with your email and files from anywhere without the lengthy configuration of new hardware. Even a power cut could have the potential of stopping a small company from operating as it would take out the email communication and some internal collaboration, Office 365 would mean that this could continue by using mobile services and laptop battery power.