3 Major Benefits of Exchange Online and Why You Need to Move Your Email to the Cloud
The Current Email SituationIf your business is still using a free email service, or an email service based On-Prem, it’s time to seriously consider moving your operations to the cloud. Before we discuss the benefits of Exchange Online, it’s helpful to look at the way you’re currently using email.
If you’re using a free email service like Gmail, you’re likely running into the problems and complications that arise with using a personal email service in a business context. This can mean not being taken seriously by clients or partners, to lacking real and identifiable addresses. No one wants an email address filled with countless underscores and number streams, but that’s an unfortunate reality of free email services. Free personal email accounts face severe limitations within a business context.
If you do have a customized email service that’s running on-Prem, you’re also running into a range of limitations. As master of your own email server, you are fully responsible for the maintenance, upkeep, and necessary updates and improvements to your server. On top of these costs, you also have the cost of security for emails and data. As threats to data security grow more complex and expansive, the cost of protecting your server will only grow.The Cloud Solution: Exchange OnlineLuckily, there is a solution. Moving emails to the cloud. Cloud computing is offered as a panacea for all a business’s IT ills. While that is not an accurate characterization, cloud computing remains an incredibly valuable tool, especially for email. Moving your emails to a cloud service such as Microsoft’s Exchange Online brings concrete, tangible benefits in functionality, security and cost.
Functionality
One of the most noticeable benefits will be improved functionality. When it comes to simplicity and ease of use, no other email system can come close to Exchange Online. Exchange Online provides fast, intuitive, and convenient email controls. Exchange Online has smart look-ups that allow you to quickly find and place emails within your system. Searches are performed by keyword, author, or date, allowing for fast and accurate search results.
Along with intuitive searches, Exchange Online possesses a powerful spam filter. While personal emails and other systems can quickly become deluged with unsafe junk and spam emails, Exchange Online’s spam filter ensures that only legitimate emails will get to your inbox. Along with screening for junk mail, Exchange Online also actively monitors for dangerous malware and viruses.The other side of Exchange Online’s functionality is its availability and accessibility. Exchange Online is available across platforms like mobile and tablets, as well as being fully connected to Microsoft’s cloud service. Essentially, wherever you have internet, you’ll be able to access your emails. If you’re worried about up-time on the behalf of Microsoft, you can rest easy. Microsoft’s Exchange Online consistently has up-time rates above 99.9%.
Security
Perhaps the most important benefit that Exchange will bring to your business is its incredible security. Bhushan Taravade, Senior Partner Sales Executive, summed it up as “Microsoft Office 365 Secure Productive Enterprise brings together a rich suite of critical business applications with collaboration, mobility and intelligence – wrapped around an umbrella of security, identity, compliance and trust”.
Ross Chapman, Director of Infrastructure at Affirma Consulting, added with “Microsoft has doubled down on their Office 365 strategy of convenience, security and productivity. They truly are the largest IT security company that nobody talks about”
Exchange Online’s robust data security ensures that your emails are safer within Microsoft’s protected cloud than in your own server. Any attempts to secure your emails to Microsoft’s level are futile. As Microsoft regularly spends billions to constantly innovate and improve their security.
Exchange is also compliant with all major compliance standards such as HIPAA, FISMA, and ISO 27001. Exchange Online makes sense for your business, regardless of industry.
Cost
Finally, moving to Exchange Online can actually save your business on costs as well. Email servers are massive infrastructure projects requiring regular maintenance and renovations. There is server maintenance and replacement, along with the simple utility bills in keeping your servers up and running.
Migrating to Exchange Online ends all that. Instead, for the price of the subscription, all of your server issues are resolved for you. All of them.
No more server maintenance, late-night memory replacements, or installing new servers or updates. Instead, all of the costs of hosting the server, along with securing it, are covered by Exchange Online. Overhead costs are reduced dramatically, and when you factor in Exchange Online’s robust security, data loss, and disaster recovery services, the savings in cost are incredible.
Your Email and Exchange Online
If your email is hosted On-Prem, the time has come to move to the cloud. The improvements in functionality, the increased security, the reductions in costs are too great to turn down. For the price of migrating to the cloud, you’ll gain back dividends in time, money, and mental energy. No more having to delete old emails for storage space, no more nights worrying about your email security, and trying to make an On-Prem email service work.
In their report on cloud email adoption, Gartner reported that those who haven’t made the switch to the cloud “should question assumptions that public cloud email is not appropriate in their region, size, or industry“. We feel the same way.
Take advantage of a free Exchange Online/Office 365 consultation with Affirma Consulting.
