Overview of Office 365 and Exchange Online
Office 365 is Microsoft's latest online services offering, often described as their answer to Google Apps. With Office 365, services are provided through a subscription-based model and hosted by Microsoft in the cloud-in datacentres managed by them in locations across the globe, providing high availability and allowing the administration and maintenance to be left to the experts.
The service is offered with a number of options, ranging from the small business offering suitable for small organizations ranging from 1 to 25 users, options for larger organizations allowing access to the full range of integration features, and for education with reduced pricing.
A big advantage of Office 365 above licensing Exchange Server 2010 is that the product can be bought with the desktop version of Microsoft Office 2010 included, combining the costs of the server and client software into a single monthly cost.
Before Office 365 was launched, Microsoft offered a number of different online service options; for business users, the primary option was BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), which combined hosted Exchange Server 2007, SharePoint 2007, Office Communications Server, and LiveMeeting. BPOS had a minimum requirement of a five user subscription and scaled to solutions for large enterprises. As a product, BPOS never received the acclaim Office 365 has been given, and the service suffered a number of widely publicized failures.
Education customers were catered for by Live@EDU, which started live as "Exchange Labs" and was effectively a beta version of the Exchange Online component of Office 365. The Exchange Online features of Office 365 were first offered through Live@EDU and as Exchange Server 2010 hit key stages in its development these features were brought to this platform before Exchange Server 2010's general release. With over 92 million mailboxes, the service provided an environment for proving the reliability of the Exchange Online component of Office 365 to a demanding group of customers.
The Exchange Online service provided by Office 365 is based upon Exchange Server 2010 and both products share many features. An administrator of Office 365 doesn't retain the fine level of control and management associated with an Exchange Server 2010 on-premises environment; all management of the underlying service is performed by Microsoft, including high availability management, patching, maintenance, upgrades, configuration, and maintenance of the underlying Windows environment.
However, on an organization and user level, most features and control are retained. Administrators have access to configure Exchange policies such as those related to Exchange ActiveSync and on a per-user basis Administrators can manage the settings and features for each mailbox.
For the enterprisers among us, full PowerShell access is provided to Exchange Online allowing experienced Exchange Server Administrators the ability to capitalize on existing Exchange Server 2007 and 2010 skills to manage users, and write and execute scripts in almost the same way as they would with Exchange Server 2010.
Finally, Exchange Online utilizes the same role-based access control model provided with Exchange Server 2010, allowing larger organizations to delegate administration to different IT groups and change the ability of users to perform actions such as changing personal information or creating and managing distribution groups.
Complementary features
As a comprehensive product, Office 365 includes a number of products. Managed through a central administrative portal, a subscription includes the following:
- Exchange Online
- Lync 2010
- SharePoint 2010
In combination, these products work well together to provide a complete communications and collaboration suite.
The following image shows the Office 365 central management portal, and illustrates how Microsoft attempts to present the products together as one offering:
So, let's have a look at the other products included, apart from Exchange.
The second product included is Microsoft Lync Online, which is the successor to Office Communications Server and LiveMeeting. Lync is a real-time communications tool which contains instant messaging, voice and video call, group chat, screen sharing, and conference call facilities. The version of Lync included in Office 365 is similar to the version that can be deployed on-premises; however, it has a number of limitations. For example, Lync Online doesn't support full PBX facilities, such as connecting to the PSTN phone network or support for IP phones, or PSTN dial-in conferencing facilities without the use of a third-party provider.
Lync Online integrates well with Exchange and SharePoint, allowing end users to schedule conference calls directly from Outlook and start calls and conversations directly from Outlook Web App, SharePoint, and the desktop versions of Office.
The following image shows the desktop Lync client. You'll notice it looks very similar to a typical IM client:
iPhone and iOS users, along with their Windows Phone, Android, and Nokia counterparts, also benefit from access to the Lync Mobile client. This complements the mobility features of Exchange Server to provide access to availability, instant messaging, and conferences directly from the iOS device.
The final product included in Office 365 is SharePoint Online. SharePoint is a web-based document management system providing the ability to manage web pages and office documents, and can even be used for project management, blogs, and wikis. Office 365's version of SharePoint allows Administrators to set up a staff intranet, share documents with external partners, or even use the system as a content management system for a company's external web presence.
SharePoint Online's complement to Exchange's Outlook Web App is the suite of Office Web Apps, including Word Web App, Excel Web App, PowerPoint Web App, and OneNote Web App. These provide a similar feature set to the desktop versions of the product along with the ability for multi-user-collaborative editing.
From a mobility point of view, Office 365's SharePoint facilities allow iPhone access including mobile site views and access to Office documents through the Office Web Apps suite.
The following image shows access to a Microsoft Word document using Word Web App on Office 365:
Integration with on-premises systems
If you're already running your own Windows Servers and Active Directory, it's logical that you may wish to use the existing usernames and passwords in use when deploying Office 365. With the exception of the basic version of Office 365, it is possible to synchronize the local Active Directory information up to Microsoft's data centers using Microsoft's DirSync tool, and by utilizing a server running ADFS 2.0 (Active Directory Federation Services) your users can log in to Office 365 using their normal Active Directory username and password.
The integration becomes more interesting if you're already running Exchange Server on-premises, or wish to run a mixture. With the addition of atleast on Exchange 2010 server in your perimeter network, Calendars can be shared between On-Premises Exchange and Exchange Online along with Free/Busy information. It's also fairly straightforward to move mailboxes to and from Exchange Online using the same techniques you would use to move mailboxes between On-Premises Exchange Servers.
If you are looking to migrate an existing system to Office 365, there are other options available. Staged Exchange Migration allows setup and management of migrations from Exchange 2003 and later, and any IMAP mail system. These can be managed either through the web interface or through PowerShell.
Versions available
Just like Exchange Server 2010 there are a number of options when it comes to licensing Office 365. Thankfully, it's a lot simpler as there are just three main products:
- Office 365 for professionals and small businesses: The most basic plan is for 1 to 25 users. It includes Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync but doesn't include desktop Office or allow integration with on-premises systems.
- Office 365 for midsize businesses and enterprises: Ranging from very cheap to quite expensive, the "full" version of Office 365 has access to all the integration and advanced management features, with add-ons to allow larger mailboxes, licensing for desktop Office, on-premises servers, and integration with your existing PBX for voicemail facilities.
- Office 365 for Education: Live@EDU's successor is very similar to the midsize business and enterprise version, except for the pricing. Starting at free for students and basic staff facilities, the 'paid for' versions add in similar enterprise features.
Before purchasing, all versions are available as a 30-day trial.
If you've not currently got access to an Exchange Server and want to try out most of the techniques demonstrated in this book without additional expense, the Office 365 trial may be of interest.