What you need to know about Microsoft Office 365

Office 365 is Microsoft’s answer to Google Apps, for people who already use and prefer Microsoft Office. Office 365 is a subscription based tiered service that allows small businesses to have the high availability and features of a traditionally enterprise Microsoft environment. Depending on the plan that you choose, you may be entitled to full desktop versions of Office products. That’s a potential savings of $249 USD (or more) per user! Your employees will already be familiar, and comfortable with the Microsoft Office suite of software. There is no hassle in figuring out software licensing, CAL licensing, backups, etc. compared to traditional on-site Microsoft environments. You pay for what you want, and nothing else. Office 365 does have limitations. For example, your data will be hosted in the USA. For some of our clients with confidential data such as law firms, this is not acceptable. For most businesses, this is not an issue. A popular use for Office 365 is for small businesses who already have their own on-premise Active Directory environment, and wish to introduce the functionality of Microsoft Exchange at a reduced cost. We are able to setup full syncing of existing Active Directory accounts to Office 365, for a full single sign-on solution. Use the same password to access your emails from your browser, as you do to login to your computer in your office!