With Office 365, Microsoft has attempted to bring its ubiquitous desktop office suite into the Cloud. Pupul Dutta looks at the online suite’s success in India to date
When it comes to office productivity suites, Microsoft remains unconquered on the desktop. However, when it comes to online suites, it has been a toss-up between Google Apps and Zoho Docs for a while now.
With its launch of Office 365 in mid 2011, Microsoft finally entered the fray with an online office productivity solution. The suite consists of online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook along with a few other components. It can be used by companies on a pay-per-use model. The plans begin at $2 per month for basic e-mail going up to $27 per month.
Sanjay Manchanda, Director-Business Division, Microsoft India, said, “Office 365 is an enterprise class software that has Exchange for mail, SharePoint for collaboration and document management, Lync for instant messaging and PC to PC calling coupled with our Office applications and this entire portfolio is available on Cloud as a service so that customers of any size from SOHO to large enterprises.”
Why Office 365?
So, it is a question any company would ask that why should one opt for Microsoft’s Cloud offering when there are almost similar suites available in the market. In fact, Microsoft’s arch rival Google has had a similar offering called Google Apps that’s been around longer than Office 365. Google Apps includes Google Docs and Gmail.
One of Google’s loyalists, while comparing the two offerings, commented, “Office 365 is for individuals. Google Apps is for teams.”
While working on Google Apps, a user is able to create, collaborate and share files in real time. Team members can have live online discussions, thereby enriching the document further and no additional licenses are required for doing all this.
Manchanda said, “With Office 365, an SMB that lacks a skilled IT workforce or monetary resources, can still gain access to enterprise class software. The company doesn’t need any servers or any kind of special IT capabilities. There is no additional CAPEX required. Therefore, SMBs would opt for a software that has cost saving advantages and at the same time gives them access to world’s leading productivity solution.”
Manchanda said that while Google Docs had some capabilities it didn’t offer the same experience and capabilities. “Secondly, if you are using Office as your primary way to create and do productivity tasks then you want something that has the best integration and seamless experience with e-mail and collaboration. Office 365 provides this, arguably, in the best way,” he said.
Thirdly, the suite is the most secure software any company can ever offer. “Microsoft brought its enterprise software to the Cloud and we know what kind of security they want and what are the features that they are looking for. We are the only one who can give customers a choice to give a hybrid environment wherein you can run some features on premise and others on the Cloud and you can mix and match. Google only provides an online offering,” he said.
CIOs & the Microsoft Cloud
FMCG major, Dabur India wanted to consolidate its Microsoft Exchange setup for its entire geographical footprint, which would bring the organization and its global subsidiaries under the common domain of Dabur.com. This involved auxiliary servers at each location, relevant infrastructure and administrator support, backup facilities, leased lines, and firewalls, in a phased operation across the globe.
Given the challenges involved in dealing with multiple locations and the enormous cost, Dabur began investigating alternate ways to leverage technology to meet this immediate need without having to spend a fortune.
According to Anil Garg, Chief Information Officer, Dabur India, Cloud computing was not on the roadmap for Dabur but one introductory session to the benefits of the technology, changed that for him and his organization.
Similarly, Infiniti Retail, a Tata Enterprise that operates a national chain of multi-brand electronics stores under the brand name Croma,has about 64 stores with new ones opening regularly across the country. The company that has two Exchange servers and maintains them on premise. Both these servers were about five years old and were running Exchange Server 2003. With around 2,700 employees, of whom 700 were e-mail-enabled, e-mail was seen as a critical function. As the number of stores and employees both were on the rise, approximately 10-25 e-mail IDs had to be created every month. To safeguard against disk failures, backups were taken on tape, which is again a cost. At times, there were backup job failures, which required manual intervention to troubleshoot, which was a time-consuming task. Another significant challenge was setting up a disaster recovery server.
With such serious challenges as these, the company evaluated a couple of on-premise, hosted, and leading Cloud-based messaging solutions. After a proof of concept, Infinity decided to go with Microsoft Exchange Online. The solution gave the retail major business rich capabilities without the need to deploy and maintain software and hardware on-premise. “The POC showcased how cloud solutions can reduce costs, improve agility, and enhance global consistency,” said Nadeem Malim, Senior Manager – IT, Infiniti Retail.
Guaranteed productivity
Manchanda said, “CIOs have communicated to us that their savings have been up to 50% after they started using Office 365 over what they used to spend on delivering the service themselves.”
“From a customer satisfaction standpoint, the business case is satisfying to a CIO as they can reap the Cloud’s benefits and save time making more optimal use of their resources. A CIO in a telecom tower management firm said that rather than having your IT staff run around to fix problems with the mailbox, none of this is now needed and he is able to redeploy the staff’ on more important tasks,” Manchanda explained.
“From an end user stand point, regardless of where you are you have constant access and you don’t have to worry about corporate VPN, you can do PC to PC calling and manage documents online,” he said.
Talking about the management of the Cloud, Manchanda said that the solution that Microsoft provides on Cloud is exactly what customers can buy on premise. So, banking customers who operate under strict guidelines can choose to opt for services from the Cloud to on-premise without any change in the experience. “We provide a hybrid environment which is suitable for everyone,” Manchanda concluded.
Microsoft continues to emphasize its on premise offerings. The online versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint lack functionality when compared to the offline versions or even to Google Apps for that matter. However, the compatibility with the existing on premise solution is a big selling point for companies that are already using Microsoft Office in a big way.
