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What Microsoft got right in Office 365

Posted on 7 Mar 2011 at 10:44

Simon Jones reveals why Office 365 tops Business Productivity Online Suite - and it's not only the name that's better

There’s no beta programme Office 365 Education yet, and no launch date. Information seems limited and very US-centric, with lots of talk about “K-12 institutions” – that is, Kindergarten to 12th Grade”, equivalent to primary and secondary schools here.

What's right in Office 365

So, what has Microsoft got right in Office 365? First, but possibly not the most important: the name is a lot better. BPOS was officially known as “Business Productivity Online Suite”, a right mouthful that was often subverted to “Big Pile of Sh*t” by detractors (and even some users). Office 365 suggests constant availability, and merging these three similar but different brands under one label is probably sensible.

The Office 365 SLA guarantees 99.9% uptime, including any scheduled outages, and backs this up with financial commitments to give you money back if it should fall below that.

There are multiple datacenters around the world with arrangements to transfer data to another one if a problem arises. There’s a datacenter in Ireland to host EU companies’ data within the EU, so they don’t have to invoke the “Safe Harbor” agreements for transferring data into US jurisdiction.

What has Microsoft got right in Office 365? First, but possibly not the most important: the name is a lot better

Security is good, with 128-bit SSL on all traffic, and Exchange Online uses Microsoft’s well-respected Forefront Protection, scanning for spam and malware with multiple antivirus and anti-spam engines.

While the main Office 365 offerings are for the 2010 Office, Exchange, SharePoint and Lync products, you don’t have to be running Windows 7 to take advantage of it: it will work with Windows XP SP3 or Windows Vista SP2.

You can also use Office 2003 and above, and Firefox 3 or Safari 3 work with Office Web Apps, SharePoint and Outlook Web Access. (Support for Google’s Chrome browser is more patchy.) Active Directory Federation means you get single sign-on between your domain and Office 365, and the management consoles are clear and easy to use to provision services to the end users, including roll-out of Office 2010 Professional Plus, if you buy the subscriptions.

Using Outlook Web Access to get to an Exchange Online Mailbox is relatively painless, but using the full Outlook 2010 client is better because the data is cached locally on your PC. Lync Online uses only the remote server to communicate presence information and set up IM, audio, video and sharing sessions.

Once set up, the audio, video and application/desktop sharing data goes direct from one participant to the other, but not being able to place calls from Lync Online to an ordinary PSTN phone is very unfortunate and negates one of the major selling points of the full, on-premise Lync Server.

Stumbling blocks

Storing large quantities of data in SharePoint Online may be another stumbling block. If you have many users all in one office, putting your main information store into the cloud may require a fatter internet connection than is generally affordable by many small UK companies.

Just servicing the browsing needs of a 75-person company via a single 2Mbits/sec ADSL link (2Mbits/sec down but often only 256Kbits/sec up) can often cause demand to outstrip supply, but if all their Office documents had to come down the same pipe, the users might find the delay in opening or saving documents unacceptable.

It’s possible to buy a fatter pipe, but the price may make it uneconomic. SDSL is available in some big cities, but not in the countryside at all, and fibre is still years away for most people. Two-way satellite technology has too high a latency for many applications, and one-way satellite comms still relies on your ADSL link to backhaul your data up to the net.

If, however, your workers are spread out over many sites, each with its own net connection, such caveats may not apply. Office 365 might be just what you’re looking for, allowing you to decentralise your IT, push it all out to the cloud, save money on support and stay up-to-date and well connected.