We've been using Office 365 for about two years now, and it is a big improvement over self-hosting an Exchange server. No organization should host their own email anymore. The amount of effort required to keep an email server running properly is ridiculous. There is no way a small organization, or even most large ones, can operate their own email server as effectively and securely as a large service like Office 365 can without overspending. If you are currently using a private Exchange server that someone in your organization is responsible for (or a volunteer or a contractor), then moving to Office 365 is something you should seriously consider.
If you are already using managed Exchange hosting through Microsoft, then moving to Office 365 is something you will probably be forced to do eventually.
If you haven't already, you should consider investigating Microsoft's grant program for non-profits. You can get a lot of software and services from MS for free once you go through the grant application process. The grants sometimes take a long time to be approved, but I am frankly amazed at how much we get from them. It was worth the effort.
As for adapting to the service, there was a short period of time during the transition where we had some hiccups. It was nothing worse than you would experience upgrading an email server, frankly, and a lot of it was due to complications specific to our Exchange setup. If your current Exchange server is configured normally, you shouldn't have any problems.
Users really don't notice a difference. You still use Outlook, your address is the same. The only difference is that there is now also a much better web-based interface for email and calendars. Most of our users never see the web interface because they use Outlook, but it is nice to have when you need it (some of our staff prefer it to Outlook). There are some new features of Office 365 email that our older Exchange server did not have, and we have started using a few of them, but most users should not notice any difference at all unless they go looking for the new toys.
If anything, it's a little too easy to just move over without changing anything. We have access to many tools now that we did not have before we moved to Office 365, and most of our staff don't even know those tools are available. There are great project collaboration tools, instant messaging, scheduling, and other applications available through Office 365 that you don't get from just buying Office licenses or using an Exchange server. We're trying to slowly introduce more of these tools to the people who would benefit most from using them. The availability of some of these tools depends on what level of Office 365 licensing you have, but getting a grant from Microsoft can offset (or completely pay for) the cost of the better licenses.
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Matt Popke
Denver Art Museum
Denver CO
Original Message:
Sent: 12-07-2016 09:31 AM
From: Kate Sullivan
Subject: Use of Office 365
We are a small foundation of 9 supporting the programming of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
On Monday of this week, we received notice that the platform for our Exchange account has been designated a legacy platform and will no longer be available on 2/28/2017.
The offer we received is to migrate our mailboxes to the new platform and install Microsoft Office 365.
Is anyone using Office 365? What is you experience with the application? And how well did you and your colleagues adapt to the functions of Office 365?
Thank you, Kate
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Kate Sullivan
Development Associate
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation
Springfield IL
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