Benefits of Office 365 Enterprise

We seem to spend so much of our lives waiting.  Children excitedly waiting for Father Christmas, Villa fans waiting for the next FA Cup triumph and businesses waiting for a truly affordable portable SharePoint solution. Well, Villa players have more important priorities at the moment, the elves have only just started making this year’s Christmas toys, but Microsoft have only gone and cracked it. Office 365 Enterprise really is what we have all been waiting for.

Office 365 is the ‘cloud’ based solution from Microsoft which includes Email, Instant Messaging, Live Meetings and storage. But the bit that really excites us at Office Talk is SharePoint 2013. Not only using it for Document Management and internal Team sites, but also to run the company Web Site. Yes, I know there have been many false dawns (no, I am not talking about Villa FA Cup runs), but Microsoft really have now given us FULL SharePoint capability. This is SharePoint without the Server. It has to be tried to be fully believed.

Like many of you Office Talk despaired with the limitations of BPOS and tried to hide our disappointment with Microsoft Online. But now pushed by the competition of the all-powerful Google (with their Google Docs and Google Mail) Microsoft have produced an absolute gem. The Office Talk engineers are a doubting lot, but after spending three months testing and trying to break Office 265 Enterprise edition the only conclusion is a big thumbs up.

So what are the benefits of Office 365 Enterprise then? Here are the things about it that makes me smile;

1. It really does include a fully working SharePoint Farm. With My Sites and User Profiles.

2. It comes with a Web Site powered by SharePoint and easy to configure. Including setting SEO optimisation.

3. You buy it per user and pay monthly. So even the smallest company can use it.

4. It comes with storage, a Sky Drive, for each user. Now I really can store my files securely and not have to panic about backing them up.

5. It works on my smart phone and my iPad. I even get it working on my old Blackberry.

6. It lets me create files straight in SharePoint without the need to having Office installed locally. Brilliant on the iPad.

7. It doesn’t need extra SQL licenses or SharePoint Internet licences or any complicated licencing calculation

8. You can easily add your existing domains. A couple of tweaks of ‘Go Daddy’ and your existing Website address can now be used for your email on Office 365.

9. No need to buy client copies of latest Office applications these can be freely downloaded as part of the monthly subscription.

10. Best to have ten benefits so I shall re-echo that it is FULL SHAREPOINT 2013. Central Administration and all.

So, you can see how excited we are about Office 365 Enterprise, but please don’t take my word for it, but try it out yourself. After all I was excited when I heard they were bringing back ‘Catch Phrase’.

To try Office 365 Enterprise with no questions asked or credit cards required please visit the Office Talk website. http://www.office-talk.com/index.php?id=186

As for the Villa I remain confident of Premiership survival. I think we require 40 points though to remain in the top flight. So we might have to beat Wigan on last game of the season. 

STOP PRESS : Villa 6 Sunderland 1 - Maybe next season the FA Cup if we keep Benteke.