Day by day current business requires employees to be more mobile and information technologies to be more available and flexible. Speed of information exchange increases at en exponential rate and specialists’ work on different projects requires efficient tools for both internal communications and interaction between organizations.

To help up-to-date dynamic business Microsoft corporation in 2011 had presented its new adapted to existing pace of living cloud solution Office 365 that significantly facilitated life of companies of any size and made co-working of all departments more efficient and decreased aggregate cost of IT-infrastructure to the large extent.

The main advantage of cloud solution Office 365 is reduction of expenditures and risks related to IT-infrastructure. This reduction is provided by the following special aspects:

1. Now allocating main funds for perchasing own equipment is not required:
1. Procurement of servers is not required – all infrastructure of Office 365 is located in Data Centers (DCs) of Microsoft company;
2. Secure access to the organization’s data is performed via Internet by using encrypted network connections.
2. Expenditures for software licenses can be minimized to large extent:
1. Invoices for using Office 365 are issued for every user upon using the product monthly or annually;
2. Licenses are paid for only for products and services which are really required – variety of licensing plans is very wide.
3. The most cost-effectiveness is achieved when work has seasonal behavior and number of employees is continuously fluctuating and if the work is project-structured;
4. It is convenient to purchase required number of licenses for contractors included into projects teams just for the period of project duration.
3. Staff or labor inputs of expensive highly-skilled specialists can be reduced:
1. Administrating Office 365 services is much more simple and easy – the most of management functions can be performed by an employee without special technical qualification.
2. Management is performed with management web-panel available in many languages and having detailed instructions and recommendations.
3. It is not necessary to manage and maintain operating systems, updates, server and network hardware –Microsoft’s specialists maintaining DCs do all that 24 hours a day 356 days a year.
4. Problems of data security, anti-virus protection and server infrastructure are solved by professionals of Microsoft Data Center.

Besides, Office 365 is an efficient tool for business management solving the following tasks:

1. Estimating employees’ activity and volume of works performed by them and giving tasks to employees and control of their proceeding;
2. Planning shared events and maintaining calendars for conference rooms, tracking using presentation equipment and shared resources of company.
3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
4. Creating information portals for internal communications.
5. Quick creating public online business card using various SharePoint templates. This site will tell your customers and partners about your company.
6. Facilitating work and communication with external participants working over the projects.
7. Tools of internal social networks – Yammer.
8. Tools for project management – Microsoft Project Online.
9. Protecting sensitive commercial information from loss by the means of Windows Azure Rights Management Services.
10. Tools for engineering, technological and process graphics on the basis of Microsoft Visio.
11. Your employees will always stay connected wherever they are and whatever devices they use – personal computer, tablet or smartphone not only based on Microsoft Windows but for Apple products and Android systems.
12. Management and inventory of your employees’ mobile devices and computers using Windows Intune.
13. Possibility to integrate tools for instant messages and video-conferences of Microsoft Lync with fixed phone network.

Features of Microsoft Office 365 are not limited to the list mentioned above and can be extended owing to tools of automating business-processes and document flow included into SharePoint Online and Dynamics CRM Online.

Office 365 is convenient for company’s employees and they will appreciate such capabilities as following ones:

• to edit documents and tables in collaboration with colleagues including remote ones;
• to store important documents of surely actual state and not to spend time trying to find the required version of document;
• to create information portals for internal communications;
• to access to e-mail, calendar, corporate files and contacts from any place all over the world;
• to communicate with colleagues and partners by using voice, video and web-conferences.

A set of Microsoft Office 365 programs and services consists of modules which complement each other and can be both sold separately and combined into packs. The most common packs of Office 365 programs and services are the following:

• Office 365 Home Premium
• Office 365 Small Business
• Office 365 Small Business Premium
• Office 365 Midsize Business
• Office 365 Enterprise
• Office 365 Education
• Office 365 Government

Detailed information about several of the most popular and common packs is given below. Also you can compare these versions on the official site of Microsoft company: http://office.microsoft.com/ru-ru/business/FX102918419.aspx

Office 365 for Small Business

You can purchase and flexibly deactivate user licenses according to current requirements, e.g. when the number of employees changes. Major investment is not required. Also you can use technologies which were previously reserved for large and midsize business since they required high investment cost.

Office 365 for Midsize Business

Investments into new software and servers mean high sunk expenditures and also brings maintenance expenses. With Office 365 you always get the latest program versions available upon monthly subscriptions. You do not incur any expenses for investment, upgrades or maintenance.

You can also stop worrying about seasonal fluctuations or capacity limits: Microsoft corporation always provides you with the required computing power anytime.

Office 365 for Large Business

Companies working at domestic and international market significantly simplify their IT-processes. The multilingual design optimizes communication with colleagues speaking a different language. If you want to involve temporary users (e.g., contract employees) to your work, you can benefit from monthly billing according to the number of users. The capacities available in cloud technologies are quickly adjusted to your real needs and requirements.

What is included into the pack?

Separate programs of Microsoft Office 365 can be deployed exactly according to your needs and integrated with your own servers. You directly decide which applications run locally and which ones are accessed through external services.

Exchange Online provides secure access to e-mail, calendar, contacts and tasks in a familiar environment through computers, mobile devices and browsers via Internet. The reliable, powerful and familiar functions of Microsoft Exchange Server are available as cloud services. Providing IT-services through the cloud also considerably simplifies IT-management, and enhances data protection with features increasing security and reliability.

Office Professional Plus is a powerful tool for your employees regardless of location and access tool being used: computer, a mobile device or a web browser. Office Professional Plus contains such programs familiar to user as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, SkyDrive Pro and other. These programs being included into Office 365 provide a comprehensive, intuitive application environment for continuous online connectivity with your company and efficient work. Moreover their functioning is not limited to Microsoft Windows; they are also available for Apple MAC.

SharePoint Online creates a centralized access point in the cloud where your employees can exchange ideas and expertise with members of workgroups, develop customized web-sites for work or project groups, use resources of the whole company and find important information more quickly. They also will be able to invite external users to collaborate on the internal or external web-sites.

Lync Online provides employees with up-to-date communication features allowing showing presence information, instant messaging and performing live video meetings just on their computers. Such professional communication capabilities increase employees’ productivity and business efficiency. Instant messaging together with presence information allows much more flexible response to business processes.

Microsoft Yammer is a social network expanding capabilities of collaboration and discussions and providing high security and control over information distribution within only your organization. Customary capabilities of social networks, such as discussions, exchange of files including documents, photos and links. Substituting mailing lists and organizing small workgroups for projects, creating expert groups – this is not nearly complete list of business tasks and problems being successfully solved by corporate social network most.

Dynamics CRM Online is a full-featured system for customer relationship management (CRM) providing all required by up-to-date business tools for interaction, planning and managing customer relationship. Capabilities of this system begin from simple contact database and expand to tasks of counting potential deals, maintaining a lot of price-lists, counting discounts, man-hours, contracts, invoices and acts and customers’ service requests upon contracts as well. All these (but not only) capabilities of count and management customer relationship are accompanied by wide range of capabilities of creating reports and analyzing.

Windows Intune is an all-purpose tool for inventory and management of computers and mobile devices in small and medium organizations. Tasks of this tool include installing updates, monitoring key parameters of devices (computers, tablets and smartphones) including such security parameters as saving corporate documents on the mobile devices, length and complexity of password and/or PIN, possibility of saving data of different types to removable drives. Also the task of this cloud tool includes monitoring means of anti-virus protection on computers and mobile devices and remote connecting to desktop to support users of Remote Assistance.

Windows Azure Rights Management Services is one of key tools for protection from leakage of sensitive business information in current context; it is created on the basis of reputable Microsoft Active Directory Rights Management Services technology. Just this solution allows authorized employees to have permanent access to information. From the other hand even if they illegally or accidentally forward files protected by RMS to persons who are not authorized to have access to this information, sensitivity of the information will be kept. Finally, this technology allows defining level of access to information for authorized employees, e.g. read only, print, edit, delegate rights to work to third party in your organization.

Other tools and capabilities

Also Office 365 includes additional tools and utilities, for instance, the following ones:

• For synchronizing user accounts and enabling capabilities of SSO in your local infrastructure (DyrSync, Active Directory Federation Services);
• For backup all electronic mail of your organization;
• For integration with fixed city and international phone system (PSTN)
• For interaction with program components of Microsoft .NET and of other developers: Graph API, Access Control Service 2.0 and other API for integration with products and solutions of third party developers.

Available from anywhere

• Use Office on any device – PC, Apple MAC, tablet PC, smartphone;
• Connect to your Office account to access the latest versions of documents and personal settings;
• Synchronize files at your devices with SkyDrive Pro to access them off-line, to synchronize and save them automatically;
• When using guest computer connect to your Office account via browser and download full-featured Office applications allowing full editing and viewing to the computer for the period of your work.

Work together

• Perform efficient online meetings using multipoint videoconferences with high resolution of video, notes recording and real-time sharing documents.
• Create group mailbox and share documents and comments avoiding overloading mailbox by mailing large files.
• Exchange documents with customers and partners by using SkyDrive Pro or SharePoint, setting and managing access to the documents.
• Create company’s site using templates.

Facilitating IT

• Easy-to-use web-interface of administrating panel for adding/removing users, configuring mail and setting policies of files exchange;
• Installing Office to the device using streaming of applications which are ready to use just after you press “Install” button;
• Perfect protection from spam and malware; being sure that you documents are protected and saved automatically;
• Financial guarantee of services work during 99.9% of time.

Optimal profit

• Professional tools dedicated to small and medium business;
• Services being always updated; easy user-based licensing with possibility to install product to 5 computers and 5 mobile devices;
• Predictable cost of subscription;
• Easy adding/removing users.