Having done some 30+ migrations now to Office 365 the product, in my opinion, is a great fit for SOHO, Small and even Medium businesses who wish to use an enterprise email system with centrally accessible email data that integrates into Outlook, Smartphones and Tablets. It reduces the dependency on-premise hardware, backups, storage for email data and means that Email is accessible, at all times and the only requirement is an internet connection.
Office 365 can be coupled with the Server 2012 R2 Essentials role on an on-premise Domain Controller, means that the organization can utilize single sign on between their Active Directory domain credentials and Office 365.
Office 365 also includes Microsoft’s Lync Chat client, Office Software Assurance licensing (free upgrades of MS Office which is Word, Excel, Outlook etc) for up to 5 devices per user license as well as Sharepoint Online and these features are either included or not depending on the license model chosen.
the monthly OPEX cost means It that the smaller businesses can take advantage of the full suite of Microsoft Collab products without having to pay the CAPEX cost of perpetual licenses as well as the requirement to run some of the products, such as Lync Server and Exchange Server on in house Physical or Virtual Machines.
The other benefit of Office 365 is that, when you are using Outlook as your email client, it doesn’t require a special add-in to sync mail like Google mail does and it synchronizes your inbox, sub-folders, calendar, notes, contacts which is much more data than any standard POP or IMAP service.
Microsoft’s Office 365 data centers, at least here in Western Australia, are located in Singapore or Hong Kong.
I would love to hear of another product which can integrate as well as this one does or offer equivalent features, ease of use and maintain a low admin overhead?
