May Newsletter: Office 365 is Your Office Environment, Anywhere!

Recently, we took a look at Google Apps and Ganttic, and how those can be useful for businesses with field workers and heavy calendar-based scheduling.  If you’re running mostly in an office environment however, then you may want to take a look at Microsoft’s Office 365 package.

Featuring a plethora of applications, Office 365 is one of the best solutions for an office-driven businesses. It even offers an online store to get new third-party apps working with Office 365, depending on your company needs.

Many organizations that used to have to maintain an Exchange server in-house are now considering using Office 365 instead, and there are migration paths in place for moving existing email to Office 365.  For businesses, Office 365 is available in 3 plans:

Email with 50 GB mailbox, 1 TB file storage and sharing, HD video conferencing Office Online

(Email not included), 1 TB file storage and sharing, Fully installed Office on PC/Mac,Office apps on tablets and phones

Email with 50 GB mailbox, 1 TB file storage and sharing, HD video conferencing, Fully installed Office on PC/Mac, Office apps on tablets and phones

NOTE: If you have existing copies of Microsoft Office applications already on your PCs, the less-expensive Office 365 Business Essentials package usually make the most sense.

Email is extremely important for all businesses. With Office 365 you get a similar mail setup as you would have with Outlook alone or with a dedicated Exchange Server, in the office or on a mobile device. The web interface used in Office 365 is designed to mimic the exact Outlook interface you have been using for years, and it pulls it off exceptionally well. Through the mail interface, you also have access to your calendar, contacts, and more.

Microsoft decided to include OneDrive into their Office 365 Suite. This is a huge help to businesses that were previously using something like Dropbox to share files with their workers or with others. Integrated with Office 365, OneDrive provides secure online storage, accessible from the Office 365 web portal and any workstation or a mobile device.

One of the nicest things about Office 365 is the familiarity you already have with Microsoft’s applications. The bundle you get when you sign up for full version of Office 365 includes versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote, and so on. Having these easily recognizable applications around makes the transition to Office 365 very easy. Even better, while using these applications you can save directly into OneDrive, share the documents with coworkers or access them from a mobile device. Having documents in the cloud also eliminates data transfer that used to be necessary when replacing your PC or Mac.

Mobility is king right now, and with Office 365 you get everything you need, on any device. Office 365 applications exist for iOS, Android, and Windows Phones. These applications give you access to your email, OneDrive and more, so you can pull documents up on the go, whenever needed.

In summary, with Office 365, you get a good email setup, a very interactive personal calendar and a plethora of familiar applications to work with at the office and on any device. For these reasons, we here at Grundig IT recommend it for many business environments. The setup of Office 365 makes for a smooth email transition and the additional apps are worth trying.

If you have a company that has to schedule and run many field workers, we would still lean towards using Google Apps instead, which was covered in more detail in last month’s newsletter.