Office 365 Phone Home

Office 365 is largely aimed at the enterprise. That is true. It is really on-premises software for servers and clients that is hosted on big honking servers with access served up over the Internet or private lines. Big Office 365 installations are run just like on-premises, just without the wires and A/C.

If you are thinking about the Microsoft cloud service, you might want to check out a story I did based on interviews with about a dozen IT pros who used either Office 365 or Google Apps for Business.

If you don't have time, here's the Spark Notes version: Office 365 hits the mark pretty well for current Microsoft shops and the cheaper simple Google offering is sweet for individuals and seriously small shops.

One small shop -- in fact, a one-man operation -- went the opposite way. Redmond magazine (sister to Virtualization Review) columnist Brien Posey is using Office 365 not to replace a big batch of on-premise applications running on a big rack, but a little old Windows Home Server.

The move all came out due to a little crisis. While travelling, Posey couldn't get to his home network. Thanks, clumsy construction crew.

Hmm, Posey thought. Which goes down more, electric power or Internet service in his Ohio neighborhood, or the Internet itself? May be time to give that cloud a try.

Posey, a 7-time Microsoft MVP, found the migration "process to be extremely tedious."

Isn't this like Charlie Sheen getting bored at the beach? This doesn't bode well for the Microsoft migration or the beach.

Despite the grind of getting going, Posey is pretty happy ... well, mostly happy. After the transition, he got a lot more spam as he trained Forefront to spot the bad stuff that GFI MailEssentials knew by heart.

The best thing about Office 365, which is what I also learned from Redmond readers, is that all the management tools and techniques you learned for on-premise pretty much work in the cloud. Sweet.

Is this mixed though generally positive review spot on? You tell me at [email protected].

Posted by Doug Barney on 05/15/2012 at 12:47 PM