Microsoft 365 Anyone?

[waynerp]

Hi All,
As i'm still at the early stages of setting up my business, i'm still adding and still deciding on many aspects of my kit.
The main issue i have at the moment is syncing all my kit / paperwork.
obviousy when i'm out at a clients i need their details which at the moment i use my diary, (the kind that need pen and paper) and then fill out all the details when i get back home and update them onto excel.
i know there are LOADS of options out there like PCRT and CRS, along with plenty of apps for iphone and android etc, but i am thinking about office 365.
Has anyone/ is anyone using it?
does it help in the day to day running of your business and keep everything synced ok.
I'm quite anal with my outlook pst file which has thousands of saved emails on it, and am not sure how this will be affected if i start syncing it with the 365 system.

Can anyone offer any other options out there. i'm a one man band but i'm using on average 5 pc's, laptops, netbooks and iphone everyday, and need to get it all synced, if not just to save time when i get home.

regards

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

We resell it...it's been good. Regarding your worry about your PST...it's just Outlook Anywhere connected to Hosted Exchange. When you setup on it for the first time....you just "import' your PST into your hosted Exchange mailbox...done! Presto! Just like importing any PST into any Exchange mailbox...hosted ...or local server on the LAN.

Comparing Microsofts hosted Exchange to any others out there...(we've dealt with a few)...it's rock solid. I mean..Microsoft...making a move to do hosted Exchange...when Exchange is their very own product. Makes sense that it would run smoothly.

 

[rsarceno]

Hi All,
As i'm still at the early stages of setting up my business, i'm still adding and still deciding on many aspects of my kit.

I personally don't use Office 365 but I have converted several SMB to Office 365. For new customer, I would recommend Office 365 (email only) instead of setting up an exchange server. It's cheaper and the best ROI. You do need a minimum of Outlook 2007 to import.

As far as other option is concern. I'm using CommitCRM with online option. Not only do I have access to my documentation, but so as my client. Another advantage is you can share the info with other tech. In addition, existing customer can post a ticket that will streamline data entry. For email I simply use yahoo and gmail with my own domain name.

 

[BurlingtonITGuy.com]

I've had a customer recently inquire about Office 365, admittedly I don't know much about it, but what's involved in becoming a reseller?

Thanks.

 

[minc3d]

Microsoft's information on becoming an Office 365 reseller are convoluted and difficult to understand. I've been trying to gather everyone I can from their partner website and I'm still lost:

https://partner.microsoft.com/global/program

I'm personally shooting to become a Google Apps reseller as it's more mature of a product and the customers I have which are on the product enjoy it a lot. Lot less issues than they used to have with Exchange, and definitely a lot cheaper. Take a look into Google Apps for Business if you are curious about an alternative: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html

 

[BurlingtonITGuy.com]

Thanks, I attempted reading that site too, confusing.

I actually migrated the company I work for (during the day) over to Google Apps a couple years ago, about 130~ users, been going quite well, although we use it mostly only for email, not so much the office suite, we still have a local install of Office 2007/2010 on the workstations...it's funny, it never dawned on me to try and resell it, I'm vastly experienced in it...thanks for that, going to look into it.

 

[dagint]

For small to medium size company's office 365 seems like a great alternative. Personally I would perfer going with google apps though.

For my day my day job I'm one of the technical leads for a migration of 8,000 + users to Office 365. This is a Lotus Notes to Office 365 migration which has it's own challenges, but so far I've been concerned with the support and knowledge of the M$ resources which have been engaged to assist with the migrations. Unfortunately I feel that most of the time I'm training the M$ resources on there own product.

This product is still maturing and has some challenges for a larger company trying to manage all users/contacts/groups successfully. One of the large challenges is trying to get AD house all of the exhange info for all of these 8,000 users without having an exchange server onsite (this will change shortly but only after we have migrated a bulk of the users.)

For a small company this seems like a great way to go to exchange without having to support exchange. I can't see how a company with less than 25 user would fair from a cost perspective though, seems pretty pricey.

I think google apps would be a better choice between the 2 in it' s current state, although I'm sure M$ will be resolving and building an appropriate infrastructure to support Office 365 users within a very short period of time.

 

[callthatgirl]

I am not a fan of 365 quite yet, I haven't used it either but have test driven the sky drive thing and hated it. (mostly because it was "fake" excel, not really the real deal and if your browser froze, so did your spreadsheet, literally drove me nuts).

If you already have Office, here is our layout in a nutshell.

Ticket System
We use Mhelpdesk for tickets, you can use on your phone, log in at client visits, instant print for receipts, put on your website for incoming new requests, download to Quickbooks. We use Google calendar sync tool to keep the appointments on our calendars and assign tickets.

Financials
We use Quickbooks + Payroll for business financials.

File Sharing
We use dropbox for sharing files, everything we do is shared here. Software, documentation, drivers, etc. All are accessable from a clients home by logging into dropbox.

Email
We use Go Daddy Imap email, always keeps folders synched

Chat with other techs
Google chat

Just a few thoughts for you.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Microsoft's information on becoming an Office 365 reseller are convoluted and difficult to understand. I've been trying to gather everyone I can from their partner website and I'm still lost:

https://partner.microsoft.com/global/program

Do you have an account with a major wholesaler like Ingram Micro or Tech Data? They have a Microsoft team with a rep you'll be assigned to..made it easy peasy for us...they hold your hand through the whole process.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I am not a fan of 365 quite yet, I haven't used it either but have test driven the sky drive thing and hated it. (mostly because it was "fake" excel, not really the real deal and if your browser froze, so did your spreadsheet, literally drove me nuts). .

The basic interface...yeah it has the thin version of Office skin presenting the storage layer. But if you have the full local install of Office...you use Sharepoint client to share/store your files on the Drive....the Sharepoint client is setup much like DropBox. Syncs selected folders on your PCs with the folder arrangement you setup on the SkyDrive. This uses SkyDrive in original purpose..just as..."storage" in the cloud.