Businesses and government agencies across the country continue to adopt Microsoft’s Office 365 software productivity suite. Office 365 combines software-as-a-service features as well as traditional desktop-based applications into an affordable package. While Microsoft has taken its fair share of lumps over the years, Office 365 has proved to be a clear winner.
Bleeding-edge organizations first adopted Office 365 several years ago, but a stable release did not become available until the release of 2013 versions of the components that make up Office 365, including Word, Excel, Outlook and others. As we stand here in the early part of 2015, the product is mature and ready to be used by even the most conservative of organizations.
Office 365 provides for traditional desktop-based versions of its software suites, but SaaS-based email is the crown jewel of the product. Microsoft hosts its Exchange 2013 Server in the cloud, providing up to 50 gigabytes of storage for each email user. Organizations no longer are forced to imposed draconian limits on the size of mailboxes (some as small as 100 megabytes!), or email-retention policies.
Microsoft has priced Office 365 at levels that are affordable. Consider the "Business Premium" version. The cost of this plan is $15 per month per user, discounted to $150 per year if paid at once. This plan provides for SaaS-based email, plus desktop-based versions of the most recent release of Office for up to five workstations, and smartphone/tablet-based versions of Office for an additional five devices, plus one terabyte of cloud-based storage. The "Enterprise 3" version, for organizations with more than 300 users, is $240 per year and provides the same features as Business Premium. These costs are all retail; discounts may be available for extended terms or a large number of users.
If you were to buy Office Pro Plus in the traditional manner, it goes for about $250 (street price) per user. Office Pro Plus includes the same software suite as Office 365, but only for a single device. As such, it makes little sense to buy Microsoft software the old-fashioned way, unless you plan to run your software long beyond its recommended life. Sure, some organizations can get by that way, but it’s not a good idea for reasons too long for this column.
What about migration? For organizations that are on Exchange 2007 or later, Microsoft provides a pretty robust set of migration tools. This simplifies the process, but there are always a handful of users that will need special care.
Migrating from earlier versions of Exchange is more complex, but if you’re on Exchange 2003 or earlier, you’re going to have to bite the bullet sooner or later. Exchange 2003 went end-of-life in April. Similarly migrating from other email services, such as Lotus Notes (shudder), will require a greater level of care and feeding.
Many folks are apprehensive about hosting their email in the cloud due to security. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft is better at securing its Office 365 email than all but the most sophisticated organizations, and for a far smaller cost on a per-user basis. It is true that Microsoft is a bigger target for hackers, but again, this risk is mitigated by security provisions. Further, many high-profile businesses and government agencies are just as attractive to the hacker community.
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John Agsalud is an IT expert with more than 25 years of information technology experience in Hawaii and around the world. Reach him at johnagsalud@yahoo.com.
