Microsoft Office 365 was launched over the summer as Microsoft’s latest “cloud” product offering. Office 365’s centerpiece is Exchange, an e-mail and collaboration server. The Exchange version included with Office 365 is Exchange 2010. Key features of the offer include e-mail storage of 25 GIGs (including basic backups and deleted e-mail recovery), shared calendars, contact lists, task lists and Active Sync to link to mobile devises. Other parts of the basic small business offer include Microsoft Lync and Microsoft SharePoint for document sharing and storage and Office Web apps for basic document editing. With Lync, Office 365 provides for tight integration with Microsoft Office 2010.

Should your New Jersey based business be considering Office 365? If your e-mail is currently provided through a POP3 provider or a service like AOL, Yahoo or MSN and you want to sync your e-mail, calendar and contacts to your smartphone, Office 365 is for you. The ability to share calendars and sync to a smartphone are worth the low price of $6 for a small business account. When combined with TriNet Teledata’s SpamSoap service, the Office 365 system provides a safe, fast and feature rich solution versus any POP3 system. Office 365 also uses TLS encryption for transporting the e-mail from the Exchange server to the Outlook client, meeting HIPAA and PCI encryption requirements.

If your business has an aging Microsoft Exchange server, Office 365 should be considered as a logical successor to the system. Rather than refreshing your Exchange server by purchasing a new server, new software and services to migrate to the server, Office 365 can provide the same basic functionality of Exchange 2010 for just $6 per month per mail box. The savings are substantial not even factoring in the electrical and support savings.

With Office 365 such an attractive solution, why wouldn’t a company elect to move its e-mail to the clouds? One reason a company would elect to have their own Exchange server would be if they use Public Folders. Office 365 does not provide Public Folders as part of its solution. If a company makes extensive use of Public Folders in a current Exchange server, the Public folder cannot be migrated to Office 365. If there is not a lot of data in the public folders, the data may be exported and moved into the SharePoint server that is included as part of Office 365 providing much of the same functionality. A second reason a company may not be a good fit for Office 365 is if they have automated work flow around Exchange with scripting or forms. The scripts and forms are not transferable to Office 365.

Other options available in the Office 365 Enterprise monthly options include:

• Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010
• Microsoft Unified Messaging
• Microsoft Active Directory Synchronization

In September DeckerWright Corporation migrated its e-mail functionality to Office 365. Upcoming newsletters will discuss planning, implementing, and post implementation results. Contact DeckerWright Corporation if you are considering the move to Office 365.

About the Author:
Marshall Wright of DeckerWright Corporation has been providing New Jersey businesses with HARDWARE, SOFTWARE & NETWORKING technology consulting services since 1984.

For more information please contact DeckerWright.