As IT professionals, Office 365 brings a great range of benefits to both ourselves and our customers. However there are a lot of myths that surround this fantastic service which stops a lot of business migrating.
Are any of these the reason you have put off moving to Office 365?
MYTH 1: Office 365 is just Office tools in the cloud, and I can only use it online.False: The Office 365 suite of programs can be installed on your computer, tablet, laptop and phone all to use offline. You can also view all your emails and even compose new messages offline.
MYTH 2: Office 365 only includes the office suiteFalse: Office 365 are a range of enterprise services, such as Email, Security and Data storage. These can be added as required for your business to build a custom solution just for you.
MYTH 3: Keeping data on-premises is safer than in the cloud.False: Most SME’s only have a limited budget for IT maintenance and as such security often gets neglected. Microsoft has teams of security and compliance experts working 24/7 to help keep all of your data safe.
MYTH 4: I have to move everything to the cloud; it is an all-or-nothing scenario.False: Office 365 can integrate with your current setup and you can choose which services you want to move to the cloud, or even have in hybrid mode. You are in complete control.
MYTH 5: Cloud migration is too much for my business to handle.False: Planned properly, Office 365 migrations can be smooth and simple, with little or no downtime to your users.
MYTH 6: If our data moves to the cloud, our business will no longer have control over our technology.False: When you move to the cloud, headaches and time spent maintaining hardware and upgrading software are significantly reduced. Now you and your team can focus on the business rather than constantly firefighting.
MYTH 7: The Cloud is unreliable. False: Microsoft are serious about uptime and give a 99.9% uptime guarantee which is finically backed.
MYTH 8: Email isn’t any simpler in the cloud.False: Instead of worrying about servers, new equipment, updates and downtime, just choose from a simple per seat model for each employee whilst Microsoft do all of the heavy lifting in the background.
MYTH 9: Continuously updating Office 365 will break my critical business applications.False: By keeping everybody on the same standard version, rather than using the software installed at the same time as the PC, it means your staff can collaborate without worrying about incompatibility.
MYTH 10: Office 365 costs a lot because we pay monthly. False: The features delivered in Office 365 are more beneficial than in house equipment. If you also factor in the extra costs of maintaining, upgrading and managing equipment without big disruptions to staff, Office 365 comes out on top every time.
If you are interested in seeing how the power of Office 365 can help transform your business, contact Carden IT Services today.