Remote workers

WJA96 said:
Office 365 might be a great idea but the actual execution isn’t ready and you’d need your head looking at if you put your faith in a Microsoft to run your business systems.

Your experience might vary but that doesn’t make my point of view any less valid.
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Have to say we've had the opposite experience at work with O365 which kind of surprised me as these days I've very little faith in MS to execute well. Aside from the odd account issue like you mentioned (we just created another account and AFAIK the original ones are still ***** even today and I don't believe there has been any problems with actively used accounts) which is quite bizarre to my knowledge there hasn't been any downtime or missing data, etc.

I think the account problem is down to some kind of truncation somewhere of the username or similar which really should have been ironed out by now.

Personally though I think there has become a bit of an over-reliance on cloud platforms for day to day operation without enough fallback - its been a bit of luck that there hasn't been serious service disruption so far.
 
Sharepoint and OneDrive for Business - Gives you your cloud storage and mapped drives within Windows Explorer if you so wish.
 
Cloudchat: People may have anecdotal (this isn't meant in a dismissing way, it's just an accurate description) evidence of the systems failing, but let's put it in context. This is a company of less than 10 people - they aren't going to build out two data centre locations and sink a load of capital into hardware and software licenses just to run Exchange themselves. If you're a multinational and you have a data centre investment and a private WAN and all that good stuff then sure, run everything yourself. For your sub-200 employee company though I couldn't make a good case for sinking all that cash into facilities and hardware that is on a 3-5 year replacement cycle, especially with the mobile workforce that we seem to have now.
 
Caged said:
they aren't going to build out two data centre locations and sink a load of capital into hardware and software licenses just to run Exchange themselves.
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For a company of 10 people you can implement that kind of system on a far smaller scale - I'm not saying that is the best choice just you don't need to go to the lengths you are describing to support a small business with that kind of functionality like you would a larger one.
 
Rroff said:
Have to say we've had the opposite experience at work with O365 which kind of surprised me as these days I've very little faith in MS to execute well. Aside from the odd account issue like you mentioned (we just created another account and AFAIK the original ones are still ***** even today and I don't believe there has been any problems with actively used accounts) which is quite bizarre to my knowledge there hasn't been any downtime or missing data, etc.

I think the account problem is down to some kind of truncation somewhere of the username or similar which really should have been ironed out by now.

Personally though I think there has become a bit of an over-reliance on cloud platforms for day to day operation without enough fallback - its been a bit of luck that there hasn't been serious service disruption so far.
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Absolutely - I have no issues with using the cloud for data storage and sharing however the thin client model of Office 365 has problems in my experience. I would not trust even a 2 person business to Office 365 thin client because there is just too much risk. If your internet connection goes offline, you’re stuffed.

With a PC running full copies of the software you can still work offline. With your own VPN you control the access, how many authentication factors you need, how often and where your data is backed up. Because as you say, when it goes wrong, it’s going to take out entire companies. And that’s going to get people sacked.
 
On our setup I can locally install office apps - might depend on the license a company has dunno I don't work on that side of things. Though for some reason today I'm getting a message:

"Please contact your admin. It looks like they haven't assigned you a license for the Office desktop apps."

When I actually have been assigned a license so that would be an issue if I actually needed to update/install for productivity reasons LOL (can still use them online though at the moment).

Obviously there is some weak points there in terms of access to data, etc. as well if things go wrong.

I have kind of mixed feelings about it as I do kind of like being able to get fully connected with what is going on at work with 2 button presses while sitting at home on the other hand it is easy for it to creep into your home life if you let it :s
 
Nobody actually uses the online versions of Word as anything other than a quick way to preview files from SharePoint though do they?
 
Nobody actually uses the online versions of Word as anything other than a quick way to preview files from SharePoint though do they?
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Large organisations who determine staff requirements and need to keep licensing costs under control will be using the Online version of the product against E1, F1 and K1 licenses...
 
Caged said:
Nobody actually uses the online versions of Word as anything other than a quick way to preview files from SharePoint though do they?
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Absolutely. The aforementioned MASSIVE food company (50,000 plus employees worldwide) has almost everyone is on a Wyse or HP thin client terminal box with the web version of Office 365. Only the senior management and sales people have laptops with the actual applications installed. It saves a fortune on licensing. It’s not a good system though.
 
Caged said:
Nobody actually uses the online versions of Word as anything other than a quick way to preview files from SharePoint though do they?
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Depends on the company structure - probably only 20-30% of the staff where I work have licenses for the desktop apps the rest won't be using things like Word for day to day use but will be using it now and again to knock up the odd notice, etc.
 
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