Why choose Office 365 over an on-premises Exchange Server

Everything is in the cloud now, and that has al ot of benefits. If you are currently on the fence about whether you should jump to a software solution rather than an on-premises one for your emailmanagement there’s a lot to consider.

It can be scary to give up control of your private mail to another corporation, and some companies may be reluctant tocommit to a subscription service. However, there are a lot of very good reasonsto do so, and it’s almost always cheaper to use a cloud service than to host yourown solutions.

In this article, we’re going to talk about the benefits of using Office 365 over an on-premises exchange. You’ll learn how it can save you money and the added benefits you’ll get for using the service which includes awesome tools that can improve your productivity.

Security is easier

While an on-site solution gives you moreopportunities for customisation you should stop to ask yourself if that’sreally worth the hassle of managing it yourself. When you use a cloud-basedsolution like Microsoft 365 all of your security concerns are taken care of.

Your IT department no longer needs to worryabout performing updates because everything is handled seamlessly by Microsoftwith no downtime for your office. There are also better options for user-levelsecurity as these applications include easy to use and familiar 2FAauthentication to protect your accounts.

Managing a server room is a full-time job, andif you let somebody else handle that work for you then you won’t need nearly asbig of a budget for your IT staff. This allows you to cut down on a costlydepartment's budget.

It’s more affordable

An in house solution sounds great until yourealise exactly how much it will cost you to run it. First, you'll need yourown server equipment, and you’ll need a lot of experienced IT specialists torun it.

Don’t forget about the massive power billsrequired to run those machines and any service contracts you might need forthem. Servers run hard and they run 24/7. That means tons of wear and tear onthe hardware and constant power burn.

Don’t forget that technology also agesincredibly fast. If you were to host your own solution then you might belooking at replacing that expensive equipment every five years. There’s nothingto replace with a cloud solution which allows you to scratch that cost fromyour expense sheet.

It’s also much easier to budget a cloudsolution because it’s considered opex rather than capex. This allows you tocreatively shift your spending while accomplishing the same goal and preservingyour cash flow with lower upfront costs.

You get even more useful software

Office 365 isn’t just about Outlook and Word.If you go this route then you’ll also get some very useful software which couldhelp your business. This includes some excellent productivity tools that helpyou to communicate better and be more productive as a team.

The software bundle for Office 365 includes1TB of storage with OneDrive, SharePoint for collaborating on projects, Flowfor creating automated WorkFlows and Teams for helping your company’s employeesto communicate better.

If you don’t already have solutions for someof these issues then subscribing to Office 365 can be a phenomenal deal.Purchasing these software packages from competing providers separately couldcost you hundreds per month in subscription fees.

Plus, having a single software bundle for youremployees to manage and learn makes things much easier and keeps them moreorganised. They can get access to their workflows, have video conferences,collaborate on documents and more without ever leaving Office 365.

Unlimited scalability

While an on-site solution might be limited inits capabilities if you use Office 365 there are no limits to how far you canscale your business solutions. Your system can now be as complicated or assimple as you need it to be.

Cloud solutions are extremely flexible, that'spart of what makes them so great. Depending on who actually needs to use thissoftware at your organisation you can turn authorisations on and off withflexible licensing options.

Your users also have the ability to activatethe software on their own computers if they work from home so that they canhave all the tools they need available to them.

If you need to upgrade an on-premises exchangethen you’ll be looking at massive costs in both hardware and software to do so.You’ll also need to pay an army of IT professionals to handle the upgrades andupdating your server’s software isn’t cheap either.

It’s more reliable than a standalone server

All computer equipment breaks eventually.That’s just a fact of working with technology. If you don’t have a great serversetup then this could end up being very bad for your business.

Even if you have people on staff to handle theemergency it’s likely that you’ll be facing some serious downtime that couldslow you down. This could mean a lot of money lost when you’re not sellingproducts to customers or acquiring new leads.

A cloud solution which is managed by a hugecorporation like Microsoft doesn’t have downtime. They have so many serversthat if one goes down it’s barely a blip on their radar. Their system willroute that traffic to a new one and their customers won’t even know.

While you could try to build this kind ofreliability for yourself the costs would be quite large, and you can get thesame level of protection much cheaper by using a cloud-based product instead.

In closing, Office 365 offers excellent valueto its subscribers, and it’s worth a look if wasting valuable time andresources managing servers just doesn’t sound like something your company wantsto do.

It’s a particularly attractive option if yourequire the other software products that they offer with the subscriptionbecause it saves you from needing to purchase them separately from otherproviders.

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