Is it a Good Fit, Office 365 | Hybrid Exchange / Office 365?
Those familiar with Exchange have long considered Office 365 to be at the forefront of any consideration about the future of email. Key to those considerations has been the long list of favourable indicators like affordability and ease of integration. Today we’ll look at several factors that may help your organization decide if 365 is a good fit for your organization.
Size does matter apparently. Generally speaking, Office 365 appears to be ideal for small companies, due largely in part to its affordability. Additionally, with typically fewer 3rd party systems integrating with Exchange On-Premises there is less potential for any downtime. For larger organizations Microsoft offers a 99% SLA but there is the issue of the possibility that not all services can be available at the same time. For example, they will not guarantee that ActiveSync, Outlook Web App and mailboxes will have 99% up-time cumulatively so organizations need to determine what is an acceptable amount of downtime for their company.
In terms of security and compliance, Microsoft has done an excellent job and Office 365 meets many security and compliance regulations. In addition to utilizing Information Rights Management and 2-factor authentication, Microsoft also offers compliance features such as eDiscovery and auditing/retention and its security model also meets specifications for both Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPPA. Dirsync is also an option, using SSL to synchronize with your Active Directory environment.
There are quite a few 3rd party products that have the potential to integrate with your On-Premises Exchange implementation including: Blackberry, Goodlink, system-based relays, 3rd party systems that deliver voicemail to your mailbox, and 3rd party paging systems to name a few. However, it would be wise to suggest that organizations work closely with Microsoft when attempting to determine if integration of the 3rd party applications your organization actually uses, are in fact possible.
If none of this is feasible for your organization another option remains and that is Office 365 | Hybrid Exchange. Organizations can keep their Exchange On-Premises and still be able to archive older email to the cloud. An Exchange Hybrid server would be required onsite and a thorough review of the organizations auditing and retention policies from a legal perspective would have to be taken into consideration but it remains a potentially desirable option for some organizations.
Finally, there are other 3rd party vendors out there. It’s incumbent upon the organization to do a thorough job of their research. Is Office 365 | Hybrid Exchange / Office 365 right for you? Will it meet your organizations requirements, compliance and regulatory guidelines? Microsoft has done an excellent job of ensuring there is a shoe size good for many different feet, now your organization has to make sure it’s “ a good fit” for you!
One of our partners Enow has a great On Prem or Hybrid Exchange solution which would assist with managing your Hybrid Exchange Environment. To learn more about our Office 365 | Hybrid Exchange Monitoring Solutions , please click here or you can find more e-Mail Management and ediscovery and information governance resources on our web site www.flexnetsoftware.com and we look forward to answering any questions you may have; please contact us at 1 (800) 263-8733
Please share this information with your colleagues and send us your questions, comments and feedback to: waynes@flexnet.com .
Office 365 | Hybrid Exchange / Office 365