Common misconceptions about Office 365 (as discovered at IPExpo)

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Last week I spent a few days at IPExpo talking to partners big and small about Office 365 and I wanted to cover a few of the areas that came up repeatedly.

Office 365 isn't selling that well is it? People want to own the software and service?

Office 365 has now reached a yearly run rate of over $1b so its safe to say it's being used.  Subscription services can seem a little strange to us in software and IT as its not the normal way we would buy.  That said,  over time we as consumers have become used to subscription model for a number of things from Netflix to Spotify.  Almost everyone I talked to was a Spotify user and agreed that actually subscription is a part of their life so they could see how it could become part of their IT payment structure for themselves or their customers

I don't need Office 365 as i have just rolled out Office 2013 AKA 'Office 365 is a new version of Office apps'

Not surprising given the name but a lot of people I spoke to believed that Office 365 was a new version of Word, Excel, Outlook etc.  There is still much work then to be done to explain that Office is a 'system' (i.e. clients and servers) and not a collection of desktop applications.

I don't want Office365 because I still need Word when my internet is down

Almost on the other end of the scale was the belief that Office 365 is browser based,  perhaps based on peoples experience of Google.  Many people I spoke to believe that Office 365 is a browser based version of Office, only available when you have an internet connection.  They are right in thinking there *is* a browser version of Word etc but Office 365 in some instances also includes the 'local install' Office applications on 5 pc/macs per person.  It's the best  of both worlds in that sense.

Why as a partner would i sell it?

I spoke to a number of Small Business Server partners all of which wanted to know why they should switch to selling Office 365.  I remember talking to partners about SBS years ago and although it's still a great little server,  things have progressed and now partners  need to differentiate on a different level.  Every  partner I spoke to agreed that a server running Exchange that I built would be the same end user experience as an Exchange server they would build.  We all agreed, therefore that the thing to differentiate on is the service you offer over and above the technology and not the technology itself.  Office 365 runs the server for you,  leaving you as a partner to concentrate on the more margin rich services rather than low margin IT maintenance tasks.

So what is Office 365?

To summarise I would say it is a

  • Subscription service for Office applications and servers just like Spotify
  • Includes web versions of Office applications that work in a browser
  • Includes installable versions of Office applications you can install on a pc or mac
  • Includes server infrastructure stored in the cloud including exchange, SharePoint and Lync

I hope this proves useful as clarification of what Office 365 is and what Office 365 isn't.  If you are a partner,  hopefully you can see why you should get involved.  If you are a business you can hopefully see how Office 365 might work for you.  If you are a home user,  hopefully you can see that even thought you might not need Lync,  SharePoint or Exchange,  you can get Office on subscription just like you do your music through Spotify.