Microsoft has brought their internationally acclaimed Office suite of products to cloud computing. The benefits for small businesses go far beyond the very affordable per user price to include access to all software and documents anywhere and at any time. Outlook has special benefits with increased Inbox size and the removal of the need for monitoring and maintaining an onsite Exchange server. Microsoft offers the following description of this service, named Office 365.
The cloud is a friendly way of describing web-based computing services that are hosted outside of your organization. When you use cloud-based services, your IT infrastructure resides off your property (off-premises), and is maintained by a third party (hosted), instead of residing on a server at your home or business (on-premises) that you maintain.
With Office 365, for example, information storage, computation, and software are located and managed remotely on servers owned by Microsoft. Many services you use every day are a part of the cloud—everything from web-based email to mobile banking and online photo storage. Because this infrastructure is located online or “in the cloud,” you can access it virtually anywhere, from a desktop, PC, laptop, tablet, smartphone, or other device with an Internet connection.
Let Alliant know of your interest. We’ll provide a free evaluation for your business IT System, detailing the benefits both for product and price.
Further Descriptive Elements
Microsoft’s flagship product, Office 365, includes unlimited technical support for all of your computers, as well as the software and hardware required to minimize disruption to your infrastructure, all bundled in one fixed predictable monthly bill. Microsoft includes a state-of-the-art network firewall, anti-virus software, anti-junk mail capabilities, and updating of all your computers so that you always know you’re protected from the unexpected. In addition, Microsoft monitors for security threats and hardware failures on a 24x7x365 basis for both your network and servers so that your business is less likely to be impacted by failures. If critical failures do occur, Microsoft will begin working immediately to get your business back up and running.
This offering is for companies that realize the significant contribution technology makes to an organization and wish to minimize the substantial costs associated with infrastructure downtime.
- Get virtually anywhere access to the latest Office applications, plus cloud-based IT services including business email, all with no IT expertise needed.
- Get the latest version of Office plus business-class email, a public website, web conferencing, and document sharing—all easy to manage, without IT expertise.
- With the newest versions of trusted Office applications, you can create compelling documents, gain better insights into your data, and deliver persuasive presentations with confidence—even when you’re on the go.
- Use Office on more devices. Use Office applications on more devices than ever before, including PC, Mac, and Windows tablet.
- Get more done with Office on Demand. Away from your PC. Stream a full-featured version of Office on any Internet-connected PC running Windows 7 or Windows 8.
- Stay in sync when you’re working on files together. Keep up to date with everyone’s changes in the same document, even if changes are made at the same time.
Showing the world how professional your business is has never been so easy. Create documents that will get you noticed, build an eye-catching website, use email branded with your own domain name, and more.
- Market your business with a website. Build your web presence with a site that’s easy to set up and update—with no additional hosting fees.
- Hold impressive online meetings. Meet customers and partners online with HD video conferencing and screen sharing.
- Internet access is required to install and activate all Office 365 plans and to manage your subscription account.
- Internet connectivity is also required to access Office 365 cloud productivity services, including email, conferencing, IT management, and other services.