So here we are – April of 2012, and Office 365 is changing the way Mavidea purchases IT services and software for our clients. Mavidea’s newest Virtual Chief Technology Officer (vCTO) Chris Nichols (recently promoted) and I were just running through the numbers again, and Office 365 keeps making sense and is our recommendation for email and productivity for small businesses. The great news is that last week Microsoft reduced the prices on most Office 365 services by 5-10%! Prices now start at just $8 per user for the full suite – nice!
Office 365 is a suite of software that the industry would refer to as Software as a Service, or SaaS. The basic premise is that instead of a company buying a bunch of servers and software to get the functionality they actually want, they can instead just buy the functionality without all the up-front costs and hassle. Customers can then just buy service for the number of endpoints they want. If you have 15 employees, you buy 15 services and pay for them each month (instead of up front).
Typically, most of the businesses we work with have the same basic needs:
- Email for communication with clients and each other.
- Access to an application used specifically for your industry.
- Comprehensive calendar that can be shared with others.
- Smartphone / mobile access to email, contacts, and calendar.
- Files and printers shared with other workers.
In this case, the service is delivered by Microsoft, and includes their popular Exchange Online for email and calendar, SharePoint Online for file storage and collaboration, and Lync Online for instant messaging, audio / video chat, and conferencing. Some of the Office 365 packages even include a full version of Office 2010 Professional Plus for each user subscribed.
Each time Chris or I compare the prices of a new SBS server vs. a standard server plus Office 365, Office 365 wins – always for functionality, and usually for price at the same time. It doesn’t always win just on price because Office 365 brings Microsoft Lync to the table. Few companies have had or used Lync to this point, but I can tell you that it has become central to the way that Mavidea does business.
I usually tell people that Lync is like a Yahoo! Instant Messenger on steroids, but secure and for their office only. At its most basic level, Lync allows users to shoot instant messages to each other. If you have a microphone or webcam, Lync also allows users to talk via audio or video chat. Once you really start to look at it, you realize that Lync does far more. It actually integrated directly into Exchange and Outlook, and even SharePoint.
We migrated over to Office 365 Lync Online in February and I can tell you that Lync is changing the way Mavidea does business. It is well named because it literally links us all together. Let me give you some examples:
- Dan has an office at home, and James is located in our Springfield office. Each of them is always just a quick chat from the rest of our staff when they have needs or questions.
- Chris worked from home last week and used his webcam to call me to go over some details for a client meeting. Could we have done it over the phone – sure! But there is something different and better about face to face communications.
- As I am typing this right now, I am using Lync to share my Microsoft Word session out to Dan, who is proofreading and making suggestions for me.
- Last week, Lync synced up with Jamie W’s calendar and told me he was on a conference call. I needed a quick question answered, so I shot him a message and he responded without me disrupting his call.
- Most of the above can also be done on your cell phone or tablet. Windows 7 phones, iPhones, and Androids all have Lync apps available for free to subscribers.
Could we have built all of this functionality in house? Yup, I have several guys who could do it. But it all came down to the fact that I didn’t want to go out and buy all of those servers – it didn’t make sense to us. So we signed up and are using 25 accounts on Office 365. Each time we hire a new employee (BethAnn just started last week) we just sign up another account.
If you have questions, just give us a call – we’re happy to answer them. We also have an Office 365 Lunch and Learn coming up on April 11th. We’ll buy lunch and go over Office 365 in a lot more detail.
I’ll finish by saying this – my job at Mavidea is to help companies spend money on IT wisely in ways that increase user productivity and drive revenue to the bottom line. Office 365 is definitely one of my tools to make that happen.
Jamie
You can also find this article in our Q2 newsletter (that you can sign up for on our homepage!) it's here: https://www.mavidea.com/newsletters/q2-2012/Mavidea_Mar12.htm
