Microsoft has done an honest job of selling its new online service but it could have done a touch better educating consumers on what it actually is. Many of our clients have come to us wondering what the differences were between their current hosted solution and Office 365. While there are many nuances to the present comparison it's good to urge the 5 big ones out of the thanks to see if you're still interested before you delve into any of the smaller details.
1. Limits
Check your limits together with your current provider. If you run an on-premise solution then there are not any real limits. Your question could also be more about Total Cost of Ownership vs. these limits. the most limits are:
- 25GB Mailbox
- 25MB attachments
- 30 messages per minute/per user
- 250 seat online meetings
Blasting emails to many thousands of users? No good. 26 MB attachments? Look elsewhere. Additionally, if you're using Mail Enabled Lists in SharePoint you'll not be ready to still use those in Office 365. (Mail enabled lists are lists within SharePoint that you simply can email to. SharePoint catalogues the mail and stores the attachments)
2. The Hosting Company
Who is currently hosting your solution? Office 365 is run and managed by Microsoft themselves with a financially backed 99.9% up-time guarantee. Your current provider could also be doing 99.99% or higher but if you're running your own servers likelihood is that you are not getting that sort of up-time. The difference between 99.9% and 99.99% is 8.76 hours of un-scheduled downtime per annum vs. under 1 hour per annum . you've got to make a decision what sort of downtime your company can withstand. We do like that Microsoft is backing the downtime guarantee financially since it puts Microsoft on the hook for tons of cash were they to possess any outages.
3. The Bundle
Besides email are you getting Instant Messaging, SharePoint, and Lync Online for meetings? Most are becoming the primary two but few are becoming all three. Only you'll answer if you really need all three. Additionally some plans accompany versions of Office which we'll get to later.
4. This is often 2010
There are a couple of outfits out there that provide hosted Exchange that are using Exchange 2010. For awhile it had been a differentiator. However the whole Office 365 suite of products is that the 2010 version. Exchange 2010, SharePoint 2010, Lync 2010 and Office 2010. This brings us to perhaps what I concede to be the most important difference.
5. Office Professional Plus
This is perhaps the most important difference because it's in effect a completely new thanks to license Office 2010. rather than paying one large sum to receive a perpetual license of Office 2010 Professional Suite, this version of Office is subscription based. You pay one low monthly fee and you'll use the software locally on your machine also their cloud based counterparts once you are on a machine that does not have Office installed. The Office Web Apps sit natively within SharePoint. Simply click on a word Document and choose edit and you're during a light but quite functional version of Office.
Additional customization is out there through add-on services which are purchased through partners. you'll fine tune your spam, anti-virus controls and mail routing with Forefront Protection add-ons also as receive more robust Archiving with Exchange Hosted Archiving.
There is potentially another difference that exists; price. The hosted offerings available run the gamut from $5/month to $20/month and up. The Office 365 offering provides several price points from as low as $10/month to the yet unreleased E4 Plan which incorporates a VoIP based PBX replacement for $27/month, which you can try at setup.office.com. To confuse things a touch more there are online only "Kiosk Worker" versions which start at $4/month.
These are your major considerations when weighing your current solution against Office 365.
