The People’s Choice — Office 365

The results are in! Last month, Microsoft partnered with Wired Magazine to survey its community regarding what its key criterion were for choosing a cloud productivity solution, and how Office 365 and Google Apps stacked up against those needs. The results showed that familiarity, easy access, being business-ready, and security were top considerations, and Office 365 became the people’s choice!

Customers choose Office 365 for many of the same reasons that Wired readers prefer Office 365 over Google Apps. We hear that the transition to Office 365 is smooth from many of our customers. No wonder why.  Microsoft tools are familiar. This customer used Google Apps and switched to Microsoft and Office 365 for easy access broader capabilities, and familiarity:

“Office 365 encompasses all the capabilities that we currently use with Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite and takes them to the next level by making it even easier to work from anywhere. We are looking forward to using it… Because Office 365 has the same look and feel as other Office products, which everyone is familiar with, our employees will be very comfortable using it. It really eliminates the learning curve and the amount of training needed.”

-- C.J. Allen, System Administrator, Santa Margarita Ford

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The workforce is mobile today, with people using a variety of devices, and while workplace boundaries have relaxed, people want to be productive whether they access tools at their desktop or remotely. Easy access was important for this software provider in Ireland:

“We previously evaluated Google Apps as a potential solution for our corporate email and document needs. Google Docs is not really suitable for business use due to limited functionality and the lack of offline capabilities… The Office Web Apps are fantastic. They do not have all of the capabilities of the rich client, but they have most of the frequently used features, so they are perfect for working from home.”

-- Paraic Nolan, Finance Director, Big Red Book

No other cloud provider has the depth of experience in providing productivity tools to businesses. As a result, many firms use Microsoft tools and many Office 365 customers enjoy how Office 365 is business-ready, complementing their existing environment, working with their existing tools. This company used Google Apps and Google Docs. In switching to Office 365 they told us…

“Our new document-sharing capabilities are particularly helpful. We use Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010 to sync documents directly from SharePoint Online and create a copy that we can work on even when we’re offline. Any changes we make to documents in those offline workspaces get automatically uploaded as soon as we’re back online, so the minute we have an Internet connection, we have up-to-date information.”

-- Paul Lovette, Vice President, D & L Representative Payee Services

Police bureaus guard personal and time-critical information which concerns people’s safety. Day-to-day work for the Dutch National Police means being on the move, and security is of utmost importance. They needed a way to share classified documents securely from a variety of locations. Not only do the Dutch National Police handle sensitive and classified information internally, but they also need to be able to pass that information on to other government agencies. After considering Google Apps, they couldn’t verify the safety of that solution, and they chose Office 365.

”Nothing is more central to our data needs than security… Our information is often extremely sensitive. Office 365 helps us maintain strict controls around the documents we share within our organization."

-- Alice Zoethout, Project Support at a foundation working for the Dutch National Police

Office 365 satisfies critical requirements for so many companies and organizations. No wonder why Office 365 is the people’s choice.