Office 365 has taken off in a big way. Businesses all around the world have been reaping the benefits of making the move to this fantastic platform. So what can your business expect to see as a result of a successful Office 365 Project?

  • Business Insider reports that, last year, Office 365 overtook Salesforce.com to become the cloud application most used by enterprise.
  • At the same time, Microsoft announced that the suite had nearly 50 million monthly active users.
  • CIO Magazine says that Office 365, whose performance it describes as “particularly strong,” is taking market share away from Google Apps on a huge scale
  • Okta CEO Todd McKinnon said that APAC had been lagging in the move from Google Apps to Office 365 but that, as Microsoft built more data centres, the situation was changing – and the accelerating move to Office 365 in Australia and Japan supports this

What can you expect to gain from your own Office 365 Project?

In short, an Office 365 Project will pay off in:

  • Reduced down time.
    Really, we should expect down time close to zero and so far this has not happened, but as month follows month we see the results of Microsoft’s determination to fix the problem.
  • Access anywhere, any time.
    This is the great advantage the cloud brings: it doesn’t matter where you are, if you can get online you have access to all your applications and all your data. Any non-techie who has ever struggled to get in-house VPN to work will appreciate what a benefit this is.
  • More storage.
    SharePoint Online gives the company a terabyte of storage – and a terabyte is an awful lot of data.
  • Lower costs.
    When support is provided online by Microsoft instead of through a personal visit by an an-house techie, support costs fall. And a monthly cloud contract instead of up-front licence purchases, especially when you have a lot of users, can have a very beneficial effect on cash flow.There are several plans, some appealing to single user entities and some to the largest enterprise customers, allowing companies to choose the cost and payment option most suited to their needs. And then there’s the cost of the power you’re not using, that you would be using if everything went through your own data centre.

    Did you know that data centres globally use 2% of all the world’s electricity? And that, by 2020, data centres will have surpassed the entire global long haul aircraft fleet in the amount of carbon they pump into the atmosphere? There’s a useful tool here that will allow you to calculate how much you spend on power if you decide to stay in-house.

  • Improved productivity.
    Office 365 has a whole bunch of tools designed to boost productivity. Probably chief among them are multi-person editing, and the ability to set up groups to work together and share documents. And that’s apart from the productivity gain you get in any case when people are free to work where they want and when they want, without being constrained by the need to be hooked in to a company Intranet.

What about security?

While the benefits of a switch to Office 365 are evident, a number of companies have hesitated because of security concerns. In fact, though, Office 365 is at least as secure as any other IT system you may be using, and more secure than most. At the heart of this security is 128-bit SSL/SL encryption which ensures that, even if someone gets hold of your data who shouldn’t, they won’t be able to read it. Microsoft’s monitoring is at least as sustained and exhaustive as any other system will give you, and Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) keeps malware from infiltrating your emails.

Nor should compliance be a problem, because Microsoft has ISO 27001, the international standard for information security management.

To evaluate your own Office 365 project, and start putting the building blocks in place, get in touch. We’ve helped many companies navigate their way to a successful cloud implementation, and we can help you.

Considering Office 365?
Speak to the experienced team at Stanfield IT on 1300 910 333