Fixing Office 365
I've talked to over a dozen people about Office 365 and, like a cable news panel, everyone's got a different opinion.
I did an extensive report based on Redmond Report readers' experience and found that serious Microsoft IT pros loved Office 365 because it matched the on-premise equivalent pretty much feature for feature and was managed much the same way as the software it replaced.
Smaller shops preferred Google Apps. With hardly any features, it is cake to get this up and running and keep up and running.
Greg Shields, who himself moved to Office 365 some time ago, found this out when he recently moved a friend's small business over. The migration left Greg thinking that Office 365 could flop if Microsoft doesn't fix three big problems:
- Beef 1: The features exceed those of ordinary men (and ladies), making it hard to use.
- Related Beef 2: Because Office 365 is based on enterprise software, ordinary men (and ladies) quickly feel they need an IT pro to help get this stuff running -- and they're right.
- Most Fixable Beef 3: Shields is a highly skilled IT pro, but even he needs help sometimes. In the case of Office 365, Greg found online support more wanting than Madonna at a Chippendale's review.
What is your take on Office 365? Does Microsoft have work to and if so, how?
Posted by Doug Barney on 04/20/2012 at 1:19 PM