UK business is increasingly adopting aspects of cloud or internet based computing for the provision of core IT services. Figures published recently in the Financial Times forecast that spending on cloud computing is expected to double between 2012 and 2016 while the IT market as a whole is only anticipated to grow at around 3 per cent per year.
This desire to access applications and information from a cloud application is driven by a number of factors and by organisations of all sizes. Fundamentally cloud computing enables a business to reduce their internal IT costs of capital and management at the same time as providing increased flexibility to enable growth and change.
Microsoft’s Office 365 is a cloud application suite whose adoption amongst small and medium sized business is growing at a tremendous rate. It delivers robust solutions that help businesses of all sizes connect, communicate and collaborate easily.
For those unfamiliar with or unsure of what is included it combines a number of familiar office products such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, OneNote and Outlook with a number of other communications, information sharing and collaboration tools. These include Lync, a telephony, video conferencing and messaging system as well as SharePoint which enables a business to share information and collaborate both internally and externally.
Having helped a number of Connexion clients to transition to office 365 we have compiled a list of the top 5 benefits from the feedback received.
1. Removes an email headache – email is increasingly the core communications tool for business but its reliability can be seriously affected when mailboxes become full. 365 provides a substantial 25GB mailbox, helping to improve the reliability and business continuity and for small additional fee it also has the additional option of a full email archiving and retrieval system with unlimited storage.
2. Increased flexibility – access their email, contacts, files and share information from anywhere using PC, Tablet or Phone without the aggravation of having to use a VPN to login to their network. In addition their ability to grow or change the business is not dependent on upgrading the internal IT infrastructure; resources can be flexed up or down according to demand.
3. Increased functionality for one monthly fee – for those organisations that are not yet using products such as Lync or SharePoint their inclusion helps enhance communications and information sharing. The introduction of these tools has helped clients to improve productivity, service levels and their overall market competitiveness.
4. An easy and CAPEX free upgrade – when faced with the need to upgrade aging IT infrastructure Office 365 provides a really easy upgrade path without the need to acquire high cost hardware and software infrastructure.
5. Improved IT Service reliability – the software, updates and data are all managed by Microsoft and is underpinned by a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
