How to Start Moving to Office 365 - Four Guidelines to Follow

Are you scared to move into the cloud? Well so is every other business owner. Changing technology can be scary, but an adventure depending on how you look at it. Moving to Office 365 allows any company to utilize the best suite of office productivity tools all for less than a dollar a day; less than a cup of Starbucks. Who by the way uses Office 365 to connect it stores back to the corporate office.

How do you start to move into Office 365? Here are some simple steps.

First, look at your business, it is important to know the laws and regulations regarding the storage of the type of information that is created with your business. Two examples that come to mind are Patient Health Information and export compliance could be roadblocks for moving to Office 365. Office 365 has computers that run across the entire world that enable the fault tolerance that is needed to provide the service level that is provided. With that in mind, I would suggest bold moves to bring your company in the Cloud and adopt an exception based decision instead of a total no go decision.

Second, begin to experiment with Office 365. Go out and get a trial and find an Office 365 partner to help you get set up to learn about how Office 365 can help. The idea here is to get your feet wet, to see that it is not difficult to use these tools. Lync is the premier and best computer communication software out there. Guarantee that if you move everyone to Lync Online you will be a believer in Office 365. Microsoft looks to make the cloud based servers the same as the on premise servers. Take two departments use one as a control group and one move totally to office 365. Once set up, work for 90 days, yes Microsoft will let you try Office 365 for up to 90 days. You will see a decrease in IT costs and employee benefit will go up.

Third, Do your next project on Office 365, Get your trial, Set up SharePoint Online, set up a workspace, and add the users and allow them to collaborate on SharePoint online to do their next 3 month project. They can connect with data sets, store documents, produce charts and graphs that will help show progress. Most businesses are utilizing some sort of Cloud Project Management. SharePoint Online is the most customizable and Project Server should be moving to the cloud soon; allowing companies to use portfolio management to ensure that projects increase value.

Forth, talk to me, an Authorized Office 365 Partner that has spent the last 4 years thinking breathing, and utilizing Cloud based applications to run his business. Beginning last year when Office 365 I transformed my business totally to Office 365 and several Microsoft products to keep my business running smoothly and efficiently. IT costs are now a known and budgeted line item and not some sort of nebulous costs that have a big range. I spend about 70% more time on revenue generating tasks than I used to. As a Microsoft Partner I am glad to help any company or business venture down the path of moving to Office 365.

Now that you have some guidelines, some parameters, the next step is to get your Office 365 Trial and contact me if you have any questions. Good Luck.

Managed Internet Security: Could This Be the Right Solution for Your Business?

Managed Internet security is a popular solution for many businesses, and can be surprisingly cost-effective.

For nearly all businesses today, an Internet connection is indispensable. However, an Internet connection opens up your business to all manner of new threats, such as viruses, hackers, bandwidth theft, or inappropriate internet use by insiders. There is a very real need to take steps to safeguard your firm's information security. However, many businesses, especially smaller firms, lack the relevant technical expertise and resources in-house. For them, the right solution will managed internet security, whereby their computer security needs are outsourced to a specialist security firm to be managed on their behalf.

The growth of managed Internet security is a logical extension of the outsourcing of business processes that has been known for many years, such as the outsourcing of the payroll, finance, IT or training functions. However, as a relatively recent development it lacks the high profile available to these other outsourced business processes. This is regrettable, since managed Internet security is a vital development in the on-going fight against computer threats, and can form an essential part of a firm's information risk management strategy.

There are several areas where an organisation's computer security can be outsourced to specialist firms, such as the following core aspects.

Monthly web application scanning services: Regular monthly security scanning of your web applications can be indispensable in identifying vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers. The automated scan should ideally be supplemented by a manual review by an experienced tester, as automated tools will not yield all possible data on their own.

Monthly network vulnerability assessments: In a similar way, a monthly review of your network's security can catch problems before hackers find them, so that they can be corrected. This regular scan will complement the less frequent full penetration testing.

PCI Audit: This type of testing is mandatory for all companies licensed under the Payment Card Industry (PCI) regulations. It needs to be undertaken regularly by a suitably qualified company. Your company's managed internet security solution can also be complemented by outsourcing your general information security management needs. This can be either on a permanent or a short-term basis, making use of expertise from a specialist computer security firm.

Whatever type of service is selected by your business, you will almost certainly find that it is more cost-effective than developing the same resource in-house, especially in the case of smaller companies that do not have the resources to hire their own specialist staff. The managed Internet security solution is also more flexible, in that it can be discontinued at short notice, or alternatively increased at short notice. It avoids the need to acquire specialised technical software, or to spend time keeping one's technical knowledge up-to-date. For all but the largest companies, therefore, managed Internet security is a clear winner in terms of cost versus benefit, and should be seriously considered by all companies with an Internet connection.