Many of our clients, including ourselves, are utilising Microsoft’s Office 365 platform in some way, shape or form and have been for many years now. This shift primarily (in the SMB space) was due to the Small Business Server Operating System retirement after the SBS2011 version and since then we’ve seen the maturity but more importantly the value of this suite of products shine to a new level and haven’t looked back!
Lots of people reading this will simply think of email or perhaps the Office 2013 suite (word, excel, Outlook etc) when we mention Office 365 but it’s the Lync (soon to be Skype for business), SharePoint, OneDrive, Project and Yammer that can really help drive your business above and beyond your competitors.
The reason I mention “it’s the gift that keeps on giving” is that every few months we automatically get more great features and functions as part of our subscriptions! Previously with a server what you implemented on day 1 was what you used for the next 3-5 years whereas businesses need to stay agile and “up with the times” to ensure they’re relevant and competitive. Simple examples of added value are the likes of OneDrive storage being increased from 25GB to 1TB for all users (and soon to be unlimited!), Email storage jumping from the initial 5GB then 25GB and more recently 50GB per person and most recently office 365 video being released which looks like an amazing new platform for all types of businesses to take advantage of.
Only this morning we’ve heard news that Office 365 will be hosted here in Australia which is fantastic news as we’ll see speed improvements but also a new set of clients who had previously held off until their data was stored in our country.
Office 365 is a great solution for every business full stop. This productivity suite set is only going to continue to develop and improve over time so don’t get left behind!