Trying to navigate your way through the myriad of information on Office 365 and BPOS (Microsoft Business Productivity Online Services)? James Milne, (Chief Technology Officer) at Myriad Technologies helps to chart a course.

So first up, let’s get BPOS out of the way. Back in 2009, BPOS was released as a hosted service, then this service gave way to Office 365 and in the next few months we should see an upgrade to the new 2013 version of Office 365. 

Office 365 is essentially a hosted service, or more commonly called a “Cloud Service”. This gives you access to a number of facilities that would traditionally require hiring a team of IT specialists to provide the same service. 

Office 365 provides a number of products and services for a monthly fee per user. This billing model is what we have previously seen with mobile phone users on a business plan, however now we can use this same model to pay for a number of business technology related services and products. The Office 365 products and services break down into 4 main areas:

Office Professional Plus

One of the primary benefits of Office 365 is the fact that you are renting the latest version of Microsoft Office Professional Plus. For a lot of small businesses keeping up with the latest version of office can be a real challenge and software is traditionally purchased on an “as needed” basis.

 The problem with this model is if you have an old computer you might be using Office 2003, then as new staff join your company the newer laptops will have newer versions of Office 2010 or 2013 installed on them. This mixed bag approach to purchasing software can lead to confusion and incompatibilities. 

Office 365 now introduces a new way of purchasing software, whereby you are effectively renting your software. This has two main benefits to small businesses. Firstly, the software is rented, so you don’t own the software. Using this approach means you can write it off as an operational expense and you don’t have to depreciate your software as an asset. 

Secondly, because you are renting the software it is part of the service to be able to upgrade to the next version of Microsoft Office. Office 365 also includes a new technology called “Click-to-Run”, which means you can simply click the install button in the Office 365 portal and you can download and install the latest version of Microsoft Office as part of your monthly plan. 

Exchange Online

Microsoft Exchange provides robust Email and Calendar sharing for your employees. If you have ever run exchange in your office you will be familiar with the powerful email management and calendar sharing that it provides, but you will also be familiar with the amount of work that it takes to manage and maintain your on premise exchange servers. Having undertaken this role myself in the past I am more than happy to have Microsoft manage my Exchange Servers.

SharePoint Online

Traditionally people have used email as a mechanism to share files and information with each other. Slowly this behavior is being changed by SharePoint, because you can now share your files online using the increased collaboration capabilities that SharePoint provides. A good example of this is that you can send your colleagues a link to your document so you all end up working on a single version of the document rather than many copies of the document, as would happen if you had sent out attachments in an email.

The SharePoint services offered by Office 365 have some impressive options for providing solutions to both public facing and internal web sites. You can use Office 365 as an extranet solution to share information with your clients or partners, or share information with the wider public through your company website. This is all available through the same platform, so once you know how to upload a document on your intranet you can do the same process to share documents with your customers or partners or to even put content on your public site.

Lync Online

Microsoft Lync provides online presence information so you can see when your colleagues are online. Using this presences information you can choose to instant message them or place a call via VOIP. You can use this as another means of collaborating with your colleagues online to share your presentations or even your desktop. These technologies combined really make it possible to work in a small office or collaborate remotely.

What size fits your business?

Once you understand the products and services that make up Office 365 you can pick and choose a plan that fits your business needs. Understanding these different suites will help you select the best option for your business.

The “P” Suite

Office 365 for Small Business and Professionals (the P Suite) is the entry level for Office 365 aimed at Small Businesses and Professionals up to 25 users. For each user you get a 25 GB mailbox protected by email spam filters and antivirus. Each of your users also gets access to Office, SharePoint and Lync.

The “E” Suite

Office 365 for Enterprise (the E Suite) is targeted to medium to large organisations and provides a complete cloud solution for email, document management and communications. The E suite is offered on four levels:

Plan E1 gives you Exchange, SharePoint and Lync Online

Plan E2 provides all the services you receive on E1, with the addition of Office Web Apps

Plan E3 is the likely the most popular for larger organisations, providing Online 365, SharePoint, Lync, Office Professional Plus and Office Web Apps.

Plan E4 is not promoted by Telstra, but is available on request directly through Microsoft. This plan bundles all the features from plan E3 with the added benefits of Lync Plus voice technology.

The “K” Suite

Office 365 for Kiosk (the K Suite) is targeted to organisations that have a number of employees that don’t have regular access a computer. The K Suite offers basic email facilities, with a 500MB mailbox, POP3 access for mobile connectivity and an Outlook web app for email access on a kiosk style PC. Users can also easily access company information through the SharePoint Online Kiosk provided with the product. If you choose the extended Kiosk suite (Plan K2), your users will also be able to take advantage of viewing documents online through the Office Web Apps feature. Office 365 for Kiosk is an ideal solution for organisations that require employees to quickly and easily access their information on the road or in an environment with shared PC access. 

Upgrades and Maintenance

The major benefit of Office 365 is the fact that upgrades and maintenance are all performed by Microsoft. This means that you don’t need to worry about the day to day running of your SharePoint, Exchange and Lync services. A great example of this type of support that just happens is in the next month or two Microsoft will offer you the ability to upgrade to the 2013 versions of Office, SharePoint, Exchange and Lync. The ability to take advantage of the latest products without all the pain of doing the upgrades yourself is probably the best example of why you should consider going to the cloud.

Not every cloud has silver lining

You may find the bundled licensing and the hosted services very appealing, but I want to point out some of the issues we have faced in our journey to the Office 365 Cloud. Like many services it is great when they work the way you expect. But when things don’t work it is nice to have someone to call upon. 

Like all IT Helpdesks there are some challenges around getting support when you need it. I am the first to take my hat off to the ladies and gentlemen that work these front lines providing support. It’s a tough thankless job, and doing it from a remote location is an even a greater challenge. We have been having minor issues with calendars and we have been spending a lot of time with support trying to resolve the issue. This is fine for us as we are actually IT Company, but it does worry me for those companies who aren’t so IT savvy.  

Mail-outs and newsletters

If your business depends on electronic mail outs or bulk email notifications you will need to be aware that Office 365 might have some challenges. There are some deliberate limitations built into the mail service to stop people using Office 365 as a spam service, but this will also impact customers who have legitimate needs to send bulk emails out to their clients. If you do choose to switch to Office 365 then you will need to have another service for handling your bulk emails.

Data sovereignty  

One of the most overlooked issues with moving to the cloud is data sovereignty. This issue stems from where the data is technically stored and what business data you are actually storing inside Office 365. From a business perspective you will need to understand what information you are going to store in your email and SharePoint sites.

Contact Myriad Technologies at info@myriadtech.com.au