There has been a lot of talk about Cloud Computing over the past few years and in many cases there have been a lot of questionable claims made on the subject. But among all the techno-babble and marketing hyperbole, a few key services have emerged that are of genuine use of small businesses. Microsoft’s “Office 365” is one such service.
Until as recently as last year, a true enterprise class business messaging service which allowed you to synchronise access to your email on PC and smartphone, keep your phone calendar in sync with your desktop and make use of secure instant messaging between colleagues was very expensive. It required your business to invest significantly in servers which were not only very costly to install but also to maintain and upgrade going forward. That put it out of reach of most small businesses. As a result, most small businesses still use the basic email service that comes with their website hosting. Some even use Eircom, Hotmail or other generic accounts that are not associated with their business name or website at all.
In the days when each person in the business had one PC, these type of solutions met people’s needs. However, now most business people are using more than one device, be it laptop, tablet or smart phone. That means it becomes much more important to be able to keep all your email synchronised – be able to see what you’ve already read and responded to and have appointments you make on one device appear on your other devices. With synchronisation, your life becomes easier, more productive and less tied to your desk. Without it, you live in a world where emails sent from your PC are not on your phone and appointments clash unseen. And that’s where Microsoft Office 365 comes in.
What Microsoft has done here is taken their Exchange mail and calendaring server, and put it on the internet (sorry “Cloud”). Exchange servers have been the bedrock of most corporate electronic communication for more than a decade. Instead of investing thousands for an Exchange server of your own, you can now rent one from around five euro’s per month per email address – even if you only have one email address! What’s more, they’ll throw in secure instant messaging using their Lync product. And if that’s not enough they also add in an internal webserver called Sharepoint that you can use in your small business to post important internal documents, maintain that vital office holiday calendar and keep people updated, all from the comfort of a webpage. It makes the whole technology side of small business much simpler. Microsoft maintains it, Microsoft upgrades it, Microsoft secures it – you don’t have to worry about it – they have an army of people doing that for you.
At Eonvia we’ve set up Office 365 for a number of clients. In many cases, it’s the synchronisation that business owners want. In one case, a business owner wanted to know that the office was responding to trade enquiries, even though he was rarely there to check. Synchronising to his iPhone solved that problem. For another business owner, being able to have the Calendar appointments she set up on her iPad update back at the office was the killer feature.
In all case, it’s now clear that enterprise class business messaging is finally available with a Small Business budget. Give Eonvia a call and we will help you make the transition. Microsoft Office 365 giving small businesses access to an enterprise class business messaging system on a small business budget!
