13 Enterprise Considerations for Office 365

With the announcement of the Microsoft Office 365 cloud-based suite, there’s plenty of buzz about what this new technology will mean for productivity and business needs. So, to help you think through the issues we've compiled this list of 13 considerations for evaluating Office 365.

1. Do your homework. Deciding which version to go for is a research project in itself, but it is necessary to fully vet the available packages and do your due diligence. Despite the best efforts of the Cloud Security Alliance and other bodies, there are no industry standards for assessing cloud technology so you are on the hook for validating how Microsoft will store your data and how you will go about getting it back should the need should arise. 

2. Select the right plan.The offerings range from a basic, small business edition that provides Outlook e-mail for $2 per user, per month, to an enterprise-class service that includes standard Office 365 elements like Exchange Online, Lync Online, SharePoint Online and Office Web Apps, as well as the full desktop version of Office, for $27 per user, per month. Microsoft will continue to rely on third-party partners to provide advanced functionality. Third-party archiving solutions, for example, can be affordably added and integrated with any of the Office 365 plans to provide advanced compliance, e-discovery and data protection (i.e., a second copy of your Office 365 data).  So, some companies may choose to purchase E1 and then add LiveOffice (paying as little as $15 per user/month for the entire bundle).

3. Have a backup plan. Recent BPOS outages have caused some IT folks to pause and consider the impact that an outage would have on their business. The possibility of some downtime is normally part of most cloud contracts,  but you should have a backup plan and know how your business will stay productive during an outage. By leveraging a third party archive, like LiveOffice, you have a second copy of your data. Plus, some archiving solutions even offer always-on email continuity allowing your users to send and receive messages, even if there is an Office 365 outage.

4. Understand the SLAs. Microsoft Office 365 includes a 99.9% uptime guarantee.  The monthly uptime percentage for a specific customer is calculated by taking the total number of minutes in a calendar month multiplied by the total number of users minus the total number of minutes of downtime experienced by all users in a given calendar month, all divided by the total number of minutes in that calendar month multiplied by the total number of users.

The maximum credit that Microsoft will offer is capped at your monthly subscription amount.

5. Ensure your existing systems are compatible. If the decision is made to move to Office 365, it's essential to make sure users are running PCs and mobile devices that are compatible with the suite. For the most part, you'll need to ensure your company's computers are running the latest, or at least very recent, versions of Microsoft's (or for Mac users, Apple's) key client, server and Web products. The oldest version of Windows that will support Office 365 is Windows XP, Service Pack 3. Mac users will need at least OS X 10.5 or later. For Web access, users will need Internet Explorer 7 or later. On Macs, Safari 3 or later will do. Also note that Office 365 does not currently support Outlook 2003 or earlier versions. Microsoft has published a full list of system requirements here.

6. Understand the licensing implications. Licensing with Office 365 is fundamentally different than Microsoft's traditional licensing. Office 365 licensing is based on a per-user basis that should enable IT leaders to better manage budgets and tailor licensing functions to the specific needs of end users. Microsoft is updating the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) to provide online and on-premise Microsoft licensed products through a single agreement. Check out this podcast to learn more.

7. Do the math. Before signing on the dotted line, take a look at your existing systems, software versions and software version dependencies to ensure that your business is properly positioned for a cloud infrastructure. Here’s Microsoft’s own assessment for the midmarket over a six-year span.  But, as they say, results may vary so you will need to put pencil to paper to make sure it makes business sense for your organization.

8. How will you get your existing mailboxes to the cloud. There are several options for moving your existing mailboxes to Microsoft Office 365 for enterprises, and choosing the right one requires careful planning. Remember, by archiving all of your Exchange data first, it will make the migration process that much easier as you will have less data to actually migrate (plus you will have an extra copy of your data as an insurance policy in case anything should happen during the migration).

Depending on your current email environment and your company’s functional requirements, you may choose:

• Migration: This involves moving all of your existing mailboxes to your Microsoft Exchange Online
  email and discontinuing use of mailboxes in your on-premises environment. You can migrate your
  mailboxes all at once or in phases, depending on the size of your existing email environment.
• Coexistence: This allows you to maintain your current on-premises email environment and synchronize
  it with Office 365 email, allowing you to share mailboxes between your on-premises and online
  environments.
   

9. Regulatory Compliance. Some organizations are mandated to meet regulatory compliance demands by archiving email within a secure, tamper-proof storage infrastructure that meets all SEC/FINRA email storage requirements (not to mention the slew of data protection and privacy regulations including HIPAA, GLBA, U.K. Data Protection Act, and PCI compliance guidelines). This often includes a supervision component requiring organizations to actively monitor their communications with the outside world. NOTE: Third-party solutions are required for SEC/FINRA compliance with Office 365.

10. Advanced E-Discovery. The pricier Office 365 Enterprise plans (E3 and E4) include some helpful e-discovery functionality including mailbox-level legal holds, audit trail reporting and multi-mailbox search. Some organizations with higher legal risk profiles may need more advanced functionality, including:

•       Role-based permissions
•       Case management for online review
•       Ability to delegate review to multiple reviewers
•       Message-level, dynamic legal holds
•       Export load files in EDRM XML format for early case assessment

Here again, some third-party archiving solutions offer some of this advanced functionality and integrate with Office 365 to provide a centralized platform for capturing messages and SharePoint Online files within a single, searchable archive.

11. Consider a Pilot Program. Before doing a full-blown Office 365 deployment, it may be prudent to launch a pilot program. Starting with a single department or moving a smaller organization onto Office 365 will provide a chance to work out the kinks, test new workflows, and discover bugs before committing the entire enterprise to the platform. Fortunately, Microsoft has created tools and policies designed to help users establish pilot programs. Data from pilot groups can be preserved and integrated with wider deployments afterwards.

12. User Training. Another key step to consider before deploying Office 365 is developing a communication and training plan to educate end-users about the changes they will encounter on their desktops. These changes are due to the fact that Office 365 automatically upgrades the 2007 versions of Exchange and SharePoint Online to the 2010 versions. Also, users accustomed to collaborating with colleagues through BPOS's Office Communicator and Live Meeting tools will have to learn to use Lync Online, which will become the suite's primary tool for messaging and video and voice conferencing. Users will also need to create new, stronger passwords. A number of other user experiences will change too, so it's important that training is ready and available.

13. Post Installation. Once the transition to Office 365 is made it doesn't mean the job is finished.  There are some last steps IT administrators must take at their end to fully complete the Office 365 deployment. Among other things, admins must sign in to a new Administration Portal with new credentials, review the status of the transition, and create or assign a billing administrator.

Office 365 marks a major step in the evolution of Microsoft's Office franchise and should deliver significant value to organizations that can leverage all of its cloud-based potential. So it's worth taking the time to conduct a solid evaluation and put a well thought out transition plan in place.