Office 365 For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Introduction

In the last decade, the cloud has taken the information technology community by storm. As companies have struggled with the learning curve and cost of adopting Enterprise class software on their own the cloud has created a simplified and streamlined alternative. The complexity of keeping software running has been taken out of the equation. The result is that organizations can focus on using software to drive business and competitive advantage instead of using critical resources to keep the lights blinking green.

Office 365 is the cloud offering by Microsoft and bundles popular server software such as SharePoint, Exchange, and Skype for Business, along with such consumer software as Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook into a single product that is accessed over the Internet and paid for on a monthly basis per user. The consumer products are downloadable to many different devices, including iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Android-based phones and tablets, in addition to the familiar Windows-based devices. Microsoft runs the server products in their data centers with their engineers, you can be assured that they know what they are doing. After all, who better to manage these products than the same people who actually built them in the first place? To ease the mind of the risk averse, Microsoft puts their company name and piles of cash behind Office 365 in a very attractive service level agreement.

For those who are still not convinced the cloud is the place ...