Companies that run Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or Exchange Server 2007 face an interesting choice as they consider their future messaging platforms. The traditional option is to continue with an on-premises deployment, upgrading the organization to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010 SP1. The alternative is to embrace the cloud and move some or all of the organization's mailboxes to a hosted platform. Microsoft has spent a lot of money (estimated at up to $2.5 billion) in building massive data centers around the world and in making server products such as Lync, SharePoint, and Exchange "cloud capable"—thereby forming the basis of its Office 365 offering, due for release in June 2011.
BPOS, the Predecessor to Office 365
Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS) was released in November 2008 and was Microsoft's initial foray into the hosted market. Microsoft refers to Office 365 as the "technical evolution of BPOS." While BPOS is based on the 2007 versions of Exchange and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), Office 365 is based on the 2010 versions of these products.
BPOS includes Exchange Online, Office Communications Online, SharePoint Online, and Office Live Meeting, and it's available in standard (BPOS-S) and dedicated (BPOS-D) editions. The difference between the two is that BPOS-S uses a shared environment to host multiple companies, while a separate environment is created for each company that uses BPOS-D. Additionally, the dedicated versions of BPOS and Office 365 are intended to support businesses that have more than 5,000 users, which is the cutoff point that justifies the extra cost required to create a dedicated instance. The standard edition offers no room for a company to customize the services to meet its needs, as this is very much a utility service where you accept whatever the service provider delivers, just like electricity or water. There's more room to maneuver in the dedicated version, but you still have to accept that control rests in the hands of the service provider, and you can't customize Exchange or SharePoint as much as you can in an on-premises deployment.
Options to Buy Office 365
There's a wide range of options available to access Office 365. Microsoft breaks down the options into plans that are priced on a per-month basis. Prices quoted here are US baseline prices, which you should verify with your local Microsoft office. The plans are for standard versions of Office 365. Replacement Office 365 offerings for the dedicated and federal versions of BPOS will follow in due course with their pricing subject to negotiation between Microsoft and customers.
Options for Smaller Businesses. Plan P is designed to support small-business users (any business with five or more users). This is an ultra-competitive market because it's where Microsoft goes head-to-head with Google Apps. Microsoft charges $6 per month for a Plan P user, which includes the following:
- A 25GB Exchange 2010 mailbox (including an online archive) with access via Outlook or Outlook Web App (OWA)
- SharePoint 2010 team sites
- Office Web Apps
- A simple public website
- Lync online meetings and desktop sharing
- Multiparty IM and person-to-person calling
- Self-help, and what's charmingly referred to as "community support" (the opportunity to use your favorite search engine to look for an answer)
There's a lot of good functionality available here, and companies that run one or two Exchange 2003 servers today could see Plan P as an obvious path forward. However, these companies will have to invest in some extra network capacity if they want to move to Office 365 because their users will now depend on fast, dependable bandwidth to get their work done. Third-party resellers will also find opportunity with Plan P because they'll be able to sell services to help companies move mailboxes to Office 365 and then use some of the new features to set up team sites, create a website (if the customer doesn't already have one), train users to use Lync, and so on.
Options for Larger Businesses. Large companies are more complicated to plan for because of how many users (and types of users) need to be accommodated. Large companies often have users in multiple locations in different countries, have multiple operating units, and must meet numerous functionality requirements to satisfy their industry's regulations. Factors that can complicate planning and deployment for large enterprises include the following:
- Some enterprises might need to create a hybrid situation where some users connect to servers running in the company's own data center and other users connect to Office 365. Federation, or the ability of servers running in either environment to share information such as free/busy data, is critical to providing a single unified service for users.
- Enterprises tend to use a wider range of devices.
- Some applications might have a dependency on Exchange or SharePoint. For example, Exchange often acts as an SMTP server that allows applications to send messages as part of their processing. Office 365 doesn't support public folders, which will deter companies that still use them to distribute and share information within their Exchange deployment.
- In an enterprise, actions that affect user productivity must be minimal. For example, restarting Outlook once after a mailbox is moved is acceptable, but components such as Autodiscover have to work flawlessly after they move to the cloud and must not generate calls to the Help desk because of connectivity problems.
- Greater importance is placed on quick and accurate 24 x 7 support that is provided by competent support professionals.
These factors create a complex operating environment for Office 365, and the planning for its deployment is often long and detailed. The intricacies of federation, synchronization, security, and monitoring must be worked through to create a situation where on-premises and cloud servers work together to deliver a seamless service.
Microsoft divides enterprise users into two camps: kiosk users and information workers. Plan K is designed for employees who don't spend much of their time using a PC. Factory workers are a good example—they might need email and access to team sites to participate in company communication, but they are largely passive consumers of communications rather than generators of new information. Users in this category tend to use a shared PC in some common area to infrequently update themselves about company information. Therefore, Plan K provides the following:
- 500MB mailboxes with access via OWA; alternatively, POP3 access is available, so some mobile clients are supported
- Access to SharePoint team sites, but no storage allocation
- Office Web Apps
Two variants are available. Plan K1 ($4 per month) is suitable for workers who need intermittent access to a company email system and only need to read Office documents. Plan K2 ($10 per month) includes Office Web Apps so that workers can edit documents.