“Cloud Computing” is one of the big buzzwords today – in the 21st century, why should the fact that your office is in London but you’re in New York make any difference as to how you work? But too many Cloud Computing solutions require you to learn new systems and adjust to new applications. We at PC Correct think that the technology should adjust to the user, not the other way round. And this is why we’re providing Office365 to our clients.

So many people use “Microsoft Outlook”, and sitting behind this is probably “Microsoft Exchange”. This is powerful, but to have a Microsoft Exchange server in your own office is expensive and needs management. And if you’re only a few users, it’s overkill. So why not host Microsoft Exchange in the cloud? And if you’re putting it in the cloud, why not have the system run by Microsoft themselves?

This is Office365.

Rather than the time and expenses of purchasing, configuring and managing your own server, you register your users on Office365 and simply pay “per user, per month”. Costs vary from about £6 to £20. You can administer your accounts yourselves, or we can do them on your behalf.

Once set up, you can use Outlook Web Access to read your E-Mail from anywhere, or Microsoft Outlook 2007 or 2010 installed on your machine (and some of the Office365 packages come with a license for the complete Office 2010 application suite, which can be installed on your computer).

Office365 E-Mail includes all the functionality of an Exchange server in your office (eg shared calendars, centralised distribution groups). As well as this, Microsoft Forefront E-Mail security and anti-spam is included free with the service. And being hosted by Microsoft, you can be sure that the servers are always completely up to date with the latest versions of the software and security updates.

What else do I get in Office365?

Office365 doesn’t just provide E-Mail. You also get (depending on the package which you select):

• Microsoft Sharepoint – a platform for hosting web sites (public facing Internet or internally facing Intranet), and for file sharing and collaboration.
• Lync – Microsoft’s latest “Instant Messaging” system. But this integrates fully with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Sharepoint to ensure your team can work together in the best way.
• Microsoft Office Web Applications – as well as Outlook Web Access, there are web-based versions of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Powerpoint, which you can access from anywhere without needing to install them on your PC.

What’s the next step?

Give us a call or drop us an E-Mail. We at PC Correct can set up your Office365 service and migrate over your existing E-Mail and documents, to enable you to work in the best way possible.