Office 365 - Microsoft Cloud Services

by Doug Hafford, VP of Consulting Services

 

More and more businesses are looking to the cloud for solutions to their IT needs.  The cloud offers significant features for any business, but also includes challenges - especially for law firms.  Microsoft offers a hybrid solution (both local and cloud) that can solve a number of common issues law firms face, while also eliminating many of the problems the cloud creates.

The challenge for law firms in the cloud is integration.  Most true cloud based systems do not integrate with local or other cloud based software and features.  Law firms use a wide variety of software, often specific to certain users or practice areas which means that even full cloud based firms have significant local software installs - and thus IT challenges.

What Office 365 does is to provide network services from a strong, massively redundant cloud platform, eliminating the need for local servers, storage and related support.  At the same time, Office 365 still offers full integration with locally installed applications.  Thus the firm enjoys both the unmatched performance of a local network, and the elimination of significant onsite resources.

In its most basic form, here is how Office 365 works:

• Microsoft hosts your email in the cloud. 
• Microsoft Office is installed on your local PC or laptop and Is set up to use Microsoft as its email host.
• Anti-spam and virus prescreening features are built in so there is no need for additional services.
• On the road, you can access your email from any web browser using Outlook Web Access.

Upgraded versions of Office 365 can add other features:    

• Microsoft Office Professional Plus Licensing
• Lync chat and video chat services
• Microsoft SharePoint services
• Visio and Project online
• Microsoft Office Web Apps - which are slimmed down web versions of the office applications
• SkyDrive data storage

With Office 365 you can move significant portions of your internal services to the cloud and depend on a massive provider to give you 99.9% up time and access from anywhere.  Even if your local network is down, say from a power outage, major portions of your system are still live and working.

Where it makes most sense is for email.  Most of the common legal applications do now or soon will support Office 365 hosted email.  iManage for example - the clear leader in law firm document management -- fully supports Office 365 email hosting in version 9.x of their system.

From the user standpoint, there is little if any difference, but for the firm there are significant cost savings.  In fact, Office 365 hosted email costs about the same as some of the common anti-spam systems, so for most firms it is simply shifting cost from one thing to another while eliminating the need for an email server, the requisite storage and backup costs.   So for less money, you get an email system that is up 24x7, works anywhere and is backed by a tech giant using common technology. 

Office 365 is the first step towards eliminating costly portions of your network.  At the same time it offers the outstanding performance and reliability of locally installed systems.  Integration continues, the flexibility for users to have specific applications remains and mobility is improved.  Overall Office 365 is the answer for almost any law firm's services need.