Hi All,
Was hoping I could get some feedback on Office 365 as I'm looking at it for mail hosting. I'm currently working with CDW but don't have the highest of confidences in the sales/setup/support process and was hoping to get some honest feedback. After my call with CDW's tech expert my confidence is pretty low when he directs me to the website with my questions. I'm a little leary putting my companies lifeblood with another company that can't answer the most basic of questions. Here's what I'm looking to do: Our exchange server 2007 is due for a refresh as well as an upgrade and think this is a good time to put it in the cloud. Also, my spam company (Postini) is getting folded into Google Apps and am generally unhappy with there service/support lately so I feel it's a good time to switch providers as well. We are a 50 person company. I was looking at Exchange Online with Rackspace but am leaning towards the Office 365 E1 plan as it comes with Lync (looking to deploy that to) and the price is right at $8/ user. A few questions for discussion:
Is Exchange Online and Office 365 the same product? I'm not interested in Office Apps or anything like that and I get different answers whenever I ask people.
What kind of support is available? The MS technical expert directed me to the website but I would prefer phone support. He didn't sound that knowledgeable either.
Does anyone have any issues with speed? Since it's up in the cloud if, say 5 people try to d/l the same 20MB e-mail that's a lot more bandwidth then with an onsite exchange server. Just curious if this will be a big issue or if others have problems with it.
Public folders - How do people handle this. I know SharePoint is essentially replacing the public folders but doesn't anyone have any feedback on how users would access messages?
Sync with AD - I know this is possible. What's needed to set this up?
Overall setup/migration - My confidence level is pretty low in the migration yet high on the SLA/service provided. Is this a smooth process?
SPAM filter - Are you happy with the built in service (MS Forefront)?
Plugins - We use a third party calendaring program (AgendaX) that publishes everyone's calendar to a website. My vendor says it will work with most exchange online providers but am skeptical. Does anyone else use this or have any experience with it?
How are resources handled? We have resources created as people (long story why). I imagine they will be ok during the migration and I'll just have to pay for additional users for them.
Adding a second domain -We have a second domain of a few e-mail addresses that get directed into 3 users inbox. Is this still allowed?
Listserv - We host an onsite listserv that currently uses Postini for spam filtering. If I cancel that plan would I be able to use the Office365 spam service only for this sub domain?
Thanks,
I know most of what I want to do is allowed but don't know how. Any input users could give is appreciated.
Cheers,
Mike