Microsoft Office 365; what’s it all about?

What is Microsoft Office 365?

Microsoft Office 365 is essentially the same suite of Microsoft products you’re familiar with - Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook etc. - but instead of being installed locally on your individual PC or laptop, is stored in the cloud.

What does Office ‘stored in the cloud’ actually mean to me?

Effectively by having your Microsoft Office products hosted ‘in the cloud’ rather than being installed directly on your machine you can benefit from things like having more storage available for your files and documents than you would be likely to have on the computers and servers in your office.

You can also share documents and save your settings between home and office computers. For example most people have their own preferences on which toolbars are showing in Excel or the particular views they see when typing in Word – Office 365 stores this information in the cloud and therefore automatically knows your preferences when you login, this allows you to pick up where you left off.

Are there any other benefits of Office 365 for businesses?

In addition to being able to work on your documents from virtually anywhere, some of the other features which could be worth considering include being able to access your business email and calendars remotely from your phone and other devices more easily. There are other business tools which allow you use web-conferencing and even to build a new website.

Importantly Microsoft claims that Office 365 provides lots of control for system administrators which will allow your IT manager or company to set up the relevant permissions to make sure your data remains safe and secure.

Is Office 365 compatible with Evolution?

We are currently in the process of testing Evolution’s compatibility with Microsoft Office 365 so if you are considering upgrading to the new version please let us know.