Why are customers moving to Office 365?
This is a great question and something we get asked time and time again, so to help you all understand our business reasons for this we have decided to write an article on our website for you.
Less Hardware and Software Requirements
A big part of Office 365 is the hosted Exchange email service, this is provided as part of the subscription meaning you no longer need to purchase thousands of pounds’ worth of server hardware and software. Not only do you have to purchase the software you then have to purchase CALs (Client Access Licenses) which authorises your users or devices to access the data stored within Exchange.
This makes a big saving upfront for businesses and reduces additional monthly costs, like server maintenance contracts, electric bills and multiple internet connections.
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for Email
As the designers of Exchange, Microsoft are the best people to host, update and secure the email platform for you. This platform is provided as a PaaS which is included in your Office 365 subscription, as part of this platform your email is load balanced across many servers instead of the usual 1 to 3 servers used by small businesses.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
As part of your Microsoft Office 365 subscription you can opt to include the Microsoft Office suite, this is the software like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and so on…
Adding this option to your subscription not only means you have the latest and most secure platform; but also, the latest and most up-to-date software with all the new features all the time.
Gone are the days of buying the software once per machine at around £200 and then having to do that again two years later, going down this route means you get the latest version as it is updated. Included with each subscription you are licensed to install the software onto five different devices!
For example, if you have ten employees and each of them had two devices in the form of a desktop and a laptop you would need twenty copies of Microsoft Office for your business. With this option, Office 365 is licensed per user so you would only need ten licenses to cover your employee’s requirements.
Value for Money
For many years’, web hosting companies have offered mailboxes as part of their hosting packages with the options to upgrade the basic mail box to an Exchange mailbox at a cost. This has been good for customers without local Exchange servers, but as the Office 365 system has evolved many of these standalone Exchange mailboxes are becoming expensive in comparison and generally lack the ability for correct backup.
Looking over our own pricing, it is cheaper to have an Office 365 user subscription than a standalone Exchange mailbox; and by doing this you gain all of the following advantages: –
- Skype for Business – Web conferencing
- Yammer – Enterprise social networking
- OneDrive – Online file storage (per user storage, not great for business sharing)
- SharePoint – Business teams and structure (Can add file storage, calendars etc as required)
- Office Suite – Can add desktop software to subscription at additional cost
- Backup – Interface for backup solutions like Datto Backupify
This list is not exhaustive as Microsoft keep adding more all the time making the benefits vast.