What is ‘your complete office in the cloud’ and why do you need one?

No doubt most of us have now seen Office 365 advertised on the TV, radio and of course the web and many of us are probably wondering what exactly it is? After all a ‘complete office in the cloud’ is probably not the most distinct definition for an IT system. To understand what Office 365 is about it makes sense to understand what it can do for your business.

Mobile working – many businesses have staff working on the road, visiting clients, travelling overseas or increasingly working from home. Mobile working is in fact becoming the new norm yet providing IT to cater for it can be costly. Being delivered from the cloud, Office 365 can provide a consistent experience for mobile and office workers without significant investment.

Predictable costs – Office 365 is delivered through a subscription model which means an end to the drain on your cash flow when ‘upgrade time’ comes around. And because it is priced per user, you can predict your IT costs as your business grows. And of course Office 365 is cloud based so there is no need for expensive hardware draining your power.

Security and compliance – it is not uncommon for most businesses to have had an IT security issue or confidential data leaked from their systems at some point in time. Most of us have IT security policies in place along with the basic technologies to protect us. Technology to proactively manage and protect your data has until now been the preserve of larger organisations but with enterprise-grade data loss prevention and security tools built in, Office 365 can keep you compliant and free up your time.

Availability – can your business function effectively without email or access to key documents? For most of us the answer is ‘no’ yet few SMEs have effective recovery strategies for these systems. And where they do exist, they are often expensive to maintain. Office 365 sits on a highly available cloud platform which represents a very effective prevention strategy against risks associated with loss of these systems. Read how moving to the Cloud helped Pro Drive ride out the recent winter storms.

No more upgrades – as Office 365 is delivered from the cloud it updates continuously too. So gone are the days of time consuming upgrades that disrupt your business.

In fact there are more reasons that we can cover here for you to take a serious look at office 365. Contact us on 0330 124 3599 for a free demonstration or to take out a trial.