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Is Microsoft’s cloud-based Exchange, SharePoint and Lync package “ready for primetime”? Members discuss the pros and cons of Office 365 during a recent WebForum.
Topic: Office 365 considerations
Moderator: Let’s move to a topic that comes up quite often at our round tables and in other sessions regarding Office 365. Is it ready for primetime? If not now, when? Bill, what are you guys doing with Office 365 right now? Are you considering it?
Bill L.: Well, we are a membership organization and several of our members which are large organizations are either about to implement it or talking about it. Others are talking about Google as an enterprise solution or thinking about it. So it comes up in conversation all of the time wondering whether it is ready for primetime or not.
Jack C.: We are just poking around a little bit. On the one hand it sounds attractive to not have to worry about the administrative end of things as far as Exchange but we are so far in bed with our installed on-premise Exchange that I am just not sure whether we would go there or not. Probably not, not soon anyway.
Moderator: Let’s back up just a second. What does Office 365 include? Can anybody give us a good overview of Office 365?
Bill L.: Besides just the basic applications it does include a hosted Exchange SharePoint and a communications link that allows you to share conferencing and that sort of thing.
Moderator: So Lync, SharePoint and Exchange, all right. What is the appeal Bill? Is it all about cost? How does Microsoft position this? Save money, save hassle?
Bill L.: Well, we are dealing with organizations that have their headquarters and then they have their field offices and satellite offices so multiple offices, often global and managing a traditional IT structure in house, servers, doing email and SharePoint and that sort of thing needs a lot of hands on upgrading and that sort of thing. The cloud environment means that gets off of our workplace plate and others are responsible in a seamless way. We just have to get users to the site and then in theory we are OK.
That is the appeal. The appeal is less support required and more easy access in a seamless manner and hopefully a less cost-per person situation.
Curt: Another play here is for us in speed to implement SharePoint. We don’t have a broad SharePoint environment at this point. If we wanted to do it and do it fast not only do you not have to build it if you go this way but you can do it quicker. So there are the cost savings of not having the internal resources but also speed. We are also in an acquisition cycle where there is some appeal to bring people on quicker. So speed is definitely a factor.
Moderator: Where are you in the process? It sounds like you might be leaning towards doing it.
Curt: We are considering it. We have seen an initial presentation. We are going to go and do an executive briefing with our IT team and get a better sense of it. There is a lot to think about. We are a Notes shop still and there is the mail play, using the actual lite version of the Office suite may have some appeal in the retail locations that don’t really have an Office Suite at all other than some basic freeware stuff. So there are a number of use cases that it may fit but we are investigating still. I wouldn’t say that we are definitely doing something. There is a lot interesting about it.
Moderator: What kind of a commitment would it be in terms of time? Could you get out of it?
Curt: That is also some of the appeal. You are not really tied in. You can do it as a bridge and then bring it back in.
Moderator: So it is really renting and not leasing. Thanks for that Curt. Are others looking at Office 365? Any thoughts on this? (no response) Well am I correct in assuming then that most of you aren’t looking at this?
Mike O.: That would be correct.
Moderator: Sounds like it. Let’s do a quick poll to find out what the interest level is?
We are considering going to Office 365 20%
We are somewhat interested in Office 365 57%
We have no interest in Office 365 21%
Unknown or N/A 2%
Moderator: Well, Bill, that gives you a little bit of an indication that some people are thinking about it but at this point it doesn’t look like too many folks have actually stuck their toe in the water.
Bill L.: The problem is that no one wants to be first and I am not willing to hang my reputation on being at the head of the pack. So I think I will probably hold off until others have at least tried it and can give feedback.
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