BPOS? It’s not exactly a catchy acronym, but this is one service that may well catch on. Microsoft have recently launched themselves firmly into the cloud with the Business Productivity Online Suite, a collection of familiar services – SharePoint, Exchange, Communicator etc. – which they will host for you, backed with an impressive SLA which includes rebates for any downtime.
The offering, which starts at £3.37 per user per month for Exchange Online, will be very appealing to smaller organisations wanting to access advanced functions such as shared calendars and mailboxes, without the expense of introducing an in-house server. Similarly, SharePoint Online means that an intranet is no longer the preserve of those with their own Windows server. Instead, Microsoft will host it for you, and simply charge you a fixed monthly fee. Of possible interest to some of ESP Projects’ larger clients may be the prospect of ‘outsourcing’ existing services to the cloud e.g. as a replacement for a dedicated Exchange server.
As well as these core functions, BPOS offers some neat ways to connect with existing systems. AD integration, for example, means that you can have some mailboxes in the cloud and others on the LAN, and the ‘Deskless Worker’ suite is a neat method for implementing a (limited) hotdesk function for those staff without a personal computer, who work in various offices, at home or in the community.
Speak to ESP Projects sales team on 0845 4657229 or email sales@espprojects.co.uk to find out more about BPOS.
