Value of Adding a domain to Office 365 (way more than you might think)

Adding a domain name to your Office 365 is a key part to making your People Centric Enterprise work.  Its pretty simple to do, but it will give your firm a unified email domain while still working with Office in the Cloud.  No more having to either maintain a an on-site Exchange Server or have to give people a gmail or hotmail address for your business.


Its technically easy to do, as the video shows, but its worth thinking about how this all fits in the new People Centric Enterprise.

Your domain name is more than just a company name, it should be a brand, a personality and identity that reflects something about what you want to tell the world.  By being able to assign all your users names with your domain, the same domain as your web page, you create a Cloud based identity.  Users can see that your web page, your Office 365 and your email and Lync are all part of a single surface that they can contact from any device anywhere.

Having a single domain that for the web site and the internal messaging and collaboration builds a sense of unified working, where the people are not being made to fit in to boxes.  Rather your domain becomes a large tent where your workers, your partners and your customers can find ways to communicate, learn and share around your business.

Office 365 brings it all together, finally

SharePoint Online as part of Office 365 is the Enterprise product I have been waiting for since 1999.  Finally all the benefits of web, single location, access anywhere, shared community standards and online storage along with security and resiliency are in one place.

Make no mistake about it, this is going to be the Microsoft's biggest impact on the economy since Office and Windows 95.  With Office 365 it now possible for any firm, no matter how small, to start, on day one, with Enterprise level content management, VOIP, IM, and collaboration. (I wrote this in 2014 and clearly stand by it now)

The cost of starting a new business has just gotten a great deal smaller, and the ease that existing businesses can reconfigure themselves, collaborate with outside organisations, and to bring in contractors and prosumers is now a fraction of what it was.

Office 365 beta, Microsoft finally makes it to the Cloud with SharePoint

UPDATE: Since I wrote this original post in 2011 Microsoft has released the mature ready to go Office365 for the Cloud.  And it is a vast improvement and a real game changer.  

It has a simpler new layout which works well with tablets, not just Surfaces.  I use my Office365 on my iPad and it is great.  It also has  a wonderful new App Development model which will make it much easier to add SharePoint to the entire Enterprise.  Things are just getting better and better from the Cloud.

Office 365 beta is here. And the wait is almost worth it. Almost. First the good news. You get SharePoint and Office Web Applications in a Cloud solution. And this is real SharePoint 2010. You even have the ability to start workflows, edit page layout, set site properties and even open the page in Designer 2010. Everything with the same ribbon and SharePoint 2010 because it is SharePoint 2010.

With a basic under 25 user Office 365 beta you get Outlook Web Application, which looks and feels like the real office. You get a basic web site which frankly is terrible. But the real killer app is, or will be, Cloud based document Management using Office Web Apps and SharePoint 2010 Team Sites!

Now on my computer I could not create document using the Web App, but I would imagine they will fix that soon or I will fix my machine. Oh and you get Lync too but frankly anyone in a small business who needs another cloud based IM service must be living under a rock.

Frankly for a 25 person of less business Lynch will be useless give Skype and other basic IM services. But the ability to use SharePoint and Outlook in the Cloud is pretty cool.

And I am going to be clear about this: Office 365 beta is not kind of SharePoint 2010, or something that looks like SharePoint 2010; it is SharePoint 2010. This is Microsoft breaking in to the Cloud in a massive way. Good job folks, now get the phone to sell.

What is Office365?

Office 365 is Microsoft in the Cloud. They are selling IaaS services via Lnyc IM, SharePoint collaboration, and Exchange Server in the Cloud. The solution works both with Office in the Cloud or you can connect and collaborate via Office 2010 on your desktop.

It seems idea for smaller Enterprises that would like to have a full Enterprise information management solution but can't afford a data centre I really don't see existing data centres moving to Office 365 in the near future.

I have signed up for the Beta but Microsoft has not replied yet. A word to the wise, Microsoft has tried and pulled other Cloud solution in the recent past. I had a small business using Windows Live a few years back only to find it became a much more limited SkyDrive. Not cool. I also made dozen of PopFly Microsoft MashUps only to have them vanish one day. You are going to want to give Microsoft a year or so to prove this.

But I am pretty confident that this product will be a major part of Microsoft future.

Office 365 video from Microsoft: Warning this is an ad

Office 365 brings all collaboration and comms to the Cloud

Office – WebApps much like Google Docs – for a preview see the current version of online Web Apps at Office Live.

Sharepoint – online collaboration and document sharing

Exchange – email and personal information management shared online and between multiple machines

Lync – enterprise networking and communication tool