Heard people talking about Office 365 but unsure what it is? Office 365 is essentially a Microsoft subscription service. Their pitch is that rather than investing a large amount of money up front on your company’s email and Office programs (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, etc.) can pay monthly to run it from Office 365.
A monthly service option can be great for businesses looking to keep those early, hard-earned dollars in the bank. It can also make financial sense in organizations where users are spread out but need a cloud based centralized location to work from. And because their price points are based on what is included, you can choose which plan works for you.
There is Business Essentials which offers email hosting, OneDrive (Microsoft’s Dropbox) and Skype – $5.00/Month
The Office 365 Business package offers the latest version of the Microsoft Office suite of programs which you can install locally on 5 of your computers or tablets per license – $8.25/Month
And then the Business Premium package which combines both services, giving you hosted email and the ability to use their suite of programs – $12.50/Month
You can purchase Office outright for your computer for between $150 and $230 so besides weighing the cost; businesses need to decide if they want to have their business’ IT tools located outside of their office. With a locally based Exchange email server, issue resolution is dependent on your company’s IT team whereas with Exchange online your business is at the mercy of Microsoft’s support team. While simple issues may be resolved quick, large issues can turn into frustrating finger pointing where one service blames Microsoft and Microsoft blames the other service. Besides the possibility of support issues there is also the risk they increase their prices. What made financial sense yesterday may not today.
So what is Office 365? Its Microsoft’s subscription based cloud solution for hosted email, their Office suite and some other handy tools for your business.
To learn more about Office 365, visit their website.
