Office 365 Pros / Cons

[Hay11Mac]

Hey

 

We currently use MS Exchange 2013 hosted in school - but I have been given the task of looking into Office 365 for both Exchange and Office. I need to compile a list of pros / cons of Office 365 to present to our Leadership Team to hopefully convince them this is the direction to go in.

 

Do you recommend Office 365 and if so why? are you able to give me a few pros / cons??

 

Thanks in advance

 

Hay

[Sylv3r]

I don't think you'll have many problems moving to Office365 for your mail. If your intending on not installing Office on your clients and expecting everyone to use Office365 for their simple word processing, spreadsheet type needs you'll come across some obstacles - running reports on SIMS, not fully feature rich as the normal client version, loss of everything if your internet connection fails etc.

[Edu-IT]

Pro is that it's free, feature rich and is one less server to have to worry about in school.

[JonThompson]

Pro is that it's free, feature rich and is one less server to have to worry about in school.

 

Whilst I agree with some of that, one con is that the Admin console is awful.

 

And it seems to take an age to synch accounts.

 

I've personally found that I miss our old 2010 exchange server, and if it wasn't for BSF we'd still be using it.

[FN-GM]

Whilst I agree with some of that, one con is that the Admin console is awful.

 

And it seems to take an age to synch accounts.

 

I've personally found that I miss our old 2010 exchange server, and if it wasn't for BSF we'd still be using it.

 

 

You can change the Sync so its more often. Ours is 40 mins. The admin console for Exchange Online is just the same as Exchange 2013.

[Hay11Mac]

Does everyone have to use the online versions of Office etc, does it mean the installed Office on the machines won't work? How do you get around running reports in SIMS etc that output into word / excel

[JonThompson]

Does everyone have to use the online versions of Office etc, does it mean the installed Office on the machines won't work? How do you get around running reports in SIMS etc that output into word / excel

 

Nope. Office 365 integrates with Office Pro quite well.

 

We use Office 2010 Pro and Outlook connects to exchange online as normal.

 

With Office 2013 onwards MS have integrated One Drive and Sharepoint connectivity into the main product.

 

Even if you move to 365, you will still need the full fat offline version installed for SIMS etc. The online versions are quite light feature wise (at least they where the last time I looked) and are mainly for occasional viewing of files etc.

[Marshall_IT]

Does everyone have to use the online versions of Office etc, does it mean the installed Office on the machines won't work? How do you get around running reports in SIMS etc that output into word / excel

 

No you can use the local versions of office and 2013 & 2016 support office 365 as direct locations to open and save. (Not sure about 2010)

[psydii]

Here's a related question. Can you keep mailboxes on premisis while enabling the sharepoint/Lynx etc element of office365, while also using dirsync for account/password synchronisation?

[Marshall_IT]

Here's a related question. Can you keep mailboxes on premisis while enabling the sharepoint/Lynx etc element of office365, while also using dirsync for account/password synchronisation?

 

You can setup the sharepoint t and lunch dns records while keeping you my records pointing to your local server I think, you can at least setup a hybrid scenario.

[JonThompson]

No you can use the local versions of office and 2013 & 2016 support office 365 as direct locations to open and save. (Not sure about 2010)

 

2010 does not have that feature. It was introduced in Office 2013 onwards.

[FN-GM]

Here's a related question. Can you keep mailboxes on premisis while enabling the sharepoint/Lynx etc element of office365, while also using dirsync for account/password synchronisation?

 

Yep thats possible, nothing special has to be setup.

 

The Sharepoint, Exchange Online and Skype for Business (Lync) are treated as separate components.

[sonofsanta]

Pros: I need never administer the Exchange box again. Free installs of Office for all users through Student/Faculty Advantage. For you: migration from 2013 is about as straightforward as migration can be; I had to do it from 2007, and to be honest even that wasn't too bad.

 

Cons: Microsoft occasionally add "features" like changing the default Reply button in Webmail to Reply All, or adding a new Clutter folder that starts hiding everyone's email. That's a delight.

 

Office365 and your install of Office applications aren't really related, to be honest. Office 2010 is licensed through EES for us, we've just carried on using that; 365 is only used for Exchange Online.