Office 365

[WarriorWithWood]

Is anyone else using this? I just picked it up instead of hosting an exchange server and I'm impressed so far.

I'm going to try and set up Lync so we can do meetings right from our offices. We're now in 2 locations so this may work out nice.

I've never had Sharepoint so I'll be doing some reading up on that.

Those that have it, how have you integrated it into your office besides the exchange server?

Those that haven't seen it.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/offic...id=gmatMtxG6T4

I really wish I'd bought it years ago, 5 bucks a month for exchange is cheap.

[jstoddard]

Well, it didn't exist years ago (at least not at this price level) - so you didn't miss anything ;-) . What they're calling O365 now was known as "BPOS" - 'Business Productivity Online Services" (is it any wonder it never caught on?) up until a year or two ago - it was substantially more expensive and they were still working out the service offerings and how they were going to deliver it. Frankly it was a CF back then -people inside of Microsoft couldn't agree on what it was or how they were going to sell it. I went to a partner developer meeting in NYC and two guys from MS got into a knock-down drag-out over it. THat's typical for MS as they hammer out specifics of these programs.

Fast forward a few years --- Microsoft (the kings of desktop / conventional server software) is changing course and putting a good many of their eggs in the "cloud" basket - and Office365 is their vehicle going forward. This is a necessary thing... they are losing ground daily to Google Docs, Zoho, OpenOffice, and any of the other cheap-or-free "Office" alternatives. 5 years ago you were fighting city hall not to buy a copy of MSOffice - today that's not the case at all - you can get along fine without any of it.

They've infuriated a good number of their third-party data center partners - they're offering these plans direct with consistent national pricing - instead of pushing people to the 3rd-party providers as they did in the past. Hosting companies like FPWeb, GreenGeeks, or GoDaddy can all offer their own plans -but they have to compete directly with these very low prices MS is offering

If you're going the O365 route I do suggest subscribing at the "E" level of accounts so you get SharePoint and Active Directory. It's only $2/more per month to start ($8 vs.$6 for a "P" account).

Personally - if I didn't have any of the on-premises software and wanted to use MS Office, I'd probably just go for the $20 version which gets you a physical copy of Office 2010 Pro. At $240/yr, that's no more expensive than staying on MS's normal upgrade bandwagon.

I uploaded the "comparison" chart with a little mark-up.
JLS

[jstoddard]

PS - There is also an E4 level account not shown on my graphic -- it's $22/mo/user and includes an on-premises version of Lync Server (VoIP-PBX replacement for bigger office phone systems) . There are also a couple of low-cost "Kiosk" (K1, K2, etc.) plans for "Kiosk workers" - primarily developed for offices where people work in shifts at the same workstation - insurance claims people for instance)

I also wanted to mention that the plans that include physical copies of Office are pretty generous - they allow FIVE installations of the software on different devices - per user. Compare that to the current two (2) for the boxed software products. MS is finally getting real about how people want to use their software.

[WarriorWithWood]

We currently have the E1 version. I have the sharepoint server but I have no idea what it's for yet. I'm still figuring out all of the synchronized folder options. There's a lot more to this than I originally thought.

[Ted S.]

We currently have the E1 version. I have the sharepoint server but I have no idea what it's for yet. I'm still figuring out all of the synchronized folder options. There's a lot more to this than I originally thought.

This is where were at too.

It's very hard to even understand what it is.

[dgbldr]

Do those plan prices include hosting your website?

[WarriorWithWood]

Do those plan prices include hosting your website?

This is our "public" site they give. I'm not sure of the limits (website size or bandwidth) but I can track it down if you're seriously interested.
http://bowmangroup.sharepoint.com/Pages/default.aspx

[WarriorWithWood]

huh?..........

[Ted S.]

So Microsoft is doing a really good job of confusing us with where they are going with their software. We have been using 365 on the E4 plan for a year, things are changing so fast, we don't know what is what. The " roll out " to Office 2013 is at the end of he year for us. But others are getting it now? I have a guy that works for me that is very good with our IT needs, he has been into computers all of his life. He writes code and built our database, today he tried to figure out what is going on with our Microsoft subscription and just had a daze on his face. I said why don't we just end this lunacy and go buy some physical disks with a desktop install, he said you can't, those days are over...is this really progress? And can Microsoft please send us someone in the mail to figure out his stuff? I can't afford to hire someone full time to implement their software, if it even it is still called software anymore. I don't get it.