External IT

Every year, two or three pieces of software stir a great deal of speculation and excitement. This year, anticipatory ticker-tape came raining down again. The software that generated all the press was Microsoft 365. Will it be the "game changer" that some people believe? Let's take a look.

Microsoft 365 is tentatively scheduled to greet the world late in 2011, and in fact, it isn't one product but two distinct offerings: enterprise 365, and non-enterprise. Both are supported by External IT.

Office 365 / the non-enterprise version

Consider this a rejoinder to Google Apps, based primarily around SharePoint and Office Web Apps. At $6 per month ($1 more than Google Apps), it comes pretty close to being a free web-based productivity suite. You should know that it is light in functionality and flexibility, but nevertheless a great value for small offices with very simple needs.

What is the best, easiest, and most cost effective way to put together a comprehensive cloud solution with non-enterprise Office 365? Don't. There's no reason to spend the time, money or suffer the grief of building something from scratch. The ideal answer is already ready to go, and it's called Go CC/365.

Go CC/365 combines Office 365 (non-enterprise) with the Portal Desktop, Cloud File Manager, and External IT FlexSupport. This gives you a complete, supported, high integrity cloud computing solution that can grow as quickly as your company grows. If you turn out to be the next Google, or Microsoft, you'll already have the very cloud computing platform you need.

Office Web Apps vs. full Windows-based Office

Office Web Apps is not an MS Office replacement.
It's her "companion"

Office Web Apps still has a fairly long way to go to deliver the breadth and depth of capabilities that come with the fully-feature Windows version of Microsoft Office. Microsoft refers to Office Web Apps as the web “companion” to MS Office. Office Web Apps is not yet a replacement. One day, perhaps.

For most people, while Office 365 (Office Web Apps) would not be considered a substitute for full MS Office, it could be useful in many ways.

Using the Portal Desktop you can work on a document from any browser, without relying on a Citrix plug-in or RDP. You can edit a document on your iPad. Many clients are already provisioning it as the primary productivity suite for those people in your company who only require simple functionality.

Office 365 / enterprise version

This is the version that meets the needs of the majority of business people today. It bundles a licensed version of the full Office suite (local install required) with the "web companion" version: Office Web Apps, along with SharePoint and Exchange—delivered in the form of commodity hosted services .

Note: You will still need to install the Windows-based version of Office on every device where it will be used. It does not take you fully into the cloud. For that you only have the simpler, "companion" Office Web Apps.

Where Office 365 starts to get really interesting

External IT is a Gold Certified Partner of Microsoft. This means that in combination with the OS33 Portal Desktop you'll have the ability to access fully-featured Microsoft Office hosted by External IT, use the lighter Web version, or even open documents using fully-featured Office running locally.

Lower Microsoft licensing and hosting costs

Once released and integrated, you'll not only enjoy dynamic capabilities, but there's also discovering the little nicety called saving money. Ultimately, working with a cloud platform that unifies all of your assets, whether Windows or Web, is where you'll discover the real value of External IT.

Fully in the cloud with a unifying platform

With External IT, you're fully in the cloud, no longer anchored by anything that only runs locally. You can effortlessly go from Windows apps, to SaaS, to custom applications. You can shift from dedicated Exchange hosted by External IT to hosted Exchange by Microsoft, and do the same with SharePoint and other apps if you’d like.

With External IT, you'll be fully supported by a single solution provider. No need for your staff to call multiple vendors for differing issues. Which brings up an interesting question. Where in fact do you turn if you don't have a single outsourcing provider hosting your IT through a unifying platform?

Microsoft Help Desk: "Hello. Microsoft."

You: "Yes. Here's the problem. I have an issue with my QuickBooks application. I'm running it on my Apple iPad."

Deploying Office 365 without External IT

Wine should be complex.
IT shouldn't.

For most companies, using any assortment of applications without a unifying platform is not the best idea. Consider: using Office 365 as an adjunct to how you're working right now, it's most likely that you will still need to worry about the same traditional IT responsibilities.

You'll have to manage your network, your local domain servers, file servers, backup systems, remote access, software updates, and a list of chores almost too long to mention.

Two things might be easier. Exchange can be hosted for a small fee per user, and company SharePoint sites can also be located off-site and managed.

But what about hosting your core productivity applications, your corporate file system, your custom applications? What will you do to provisioning users, handle authentication, file permissions and compliance?

Without a unifying cloud computing platform, you'll remain very much in the IT management business.

Life outside of Microsoft

Things are not only in the process of changing in the world of IT, they've changed. There are now a) millions of downloadable applications b) a stunning list of Software-as-a-Service providers c) Windows applications, and d) a rapidly growing number of devices, with multiple operating systems, all reporting to work each day.

Microsoft still has plenty to offer. But when you look around, it's pretty clear that the world of business is no longer solely Microsoft centric.