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Office 365Productivity is key to any business as building documents, presenting them, and sending them are where Office 365 comes to help support your business. What's great about Office 365 is that the full suite of Office is installed, including the Android or iPhone apps, OneDrive cloud storage, Skype, access to the latest updates, and of course, Microsoft support. Office 365 is the backbone to editing your way to the next step. Our Experience QPC engineers have migrated over 30,000 mailboxes. We have performed all types of Microsoft-related email migrations including:
Our Insights Virtually all email migrations require that the client environment be cleaned up and modernized before any email migration will be successful. If the on-premise, WAN, perimeter security appliance, network layer, endpoing layer, internal and external DNS are not correct before attempting an email migration, then the email migration will fail.
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Skype for BusinessSkype is the best way to connect people; either those in the same office, or the ones across the globe. Skype for Business takes Skype to a whole new level of communication and networking. Skype for Business includes messaging, meetings, calls and videos with up to 250 people. Integration with Outlook enables contact sharing to easily send an email or schedule meetings with Skype. Of course, Enterprise-grade security is also included to make sure your meetings and messages are safe from hackers. Our Experience QPC uses Skype for Business extensively and believes it is an extremely valuable business productivity tool for all Office 365 subscribers. If you are not using Skype for Business in your organization yet, we encourage you to give it a try. Our Insights Unlike Google Hangouts, Skype for Business is based upon much better constructed cloud network infrastructure than anything that Google has. As network security architects, QPC works with over 100 sites and has to manage the perimeter network traffic at those sites. We have observed that Skype for Business performed as expected and in a very consistent way at the network security layer. This means that the product is secure and reliable. In contrast, we find consistently that Google's entire infrastructure is dynamic, sporadic, constantly changing, and creates traffic that appears like reflection attacks to perimeter security appliances. This means that in order to simply get the Google services working at a site, entire mass blocks of the internet must be allowed in order to simply get the Google infrastructure working. Because we have witnessed the direct cause and effect at so many sites of how Google's infrastructure works at the network security layer, we firmly believe that organizations would be better off to choose Office 365 and Microsoft-related services such as Azure instead of using any part of Google's infrastructure. Something else that is incredibly important and not obvious is that if an organization is going to use multi-factor authentication in Office 365, the admin must separately enable MFA for Skype and Sharepoint. 99% of consultants miss this point. As security architects, QPC pays close attention to how security is handled in Office 365 and all other relevant apps, especially those that are cloud-hosted.
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SharepointWorking as a browser-based collaboration and document management platform, Microsoft's SharePoint is the best way to keep all your documents in one place. Because SharePoint is cloud based, all your documents are easily accessible anywhere around the world. Our Experience QPC regularly sets up Sharepoint sites using Sharepoint Online for many clients that need to have secure file and content sharing spaces for their employees, external vendors, and clients. Our Insights Sharepoint Online as part of an Office 365 subscription can be an extremely powerful tool. An organization can easily setup an Intranet site that is cloud-available. When coupled with MFA, Sharepoint Online access can be extremely secure. Sharepoint libraries can be attached to OneDrive for Business client that can enable Sharepoint content to function just like any files available to your team via Windows Explorer. Sharepoint hosted data allows for simultaneous editing by multiple individuals collaborating on the same content. If you are considering using Sharepoint document libraries as a replacement for your on-premise file server, be aware that you need to thoroughly consider how your data in Sharepoint will be backed up and what the restoration process is.
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OneDriveOneDrive is another cloud-based collaboration tool from Microsoft that enables sharing of documents throughout the workplace. What makes OneDrive very useful is that it works as a stand-alone application without much customization to get it to work. Another great feature is the automatic synchronization amongst folders that happens whenever a file is saved. Our Experience While QPC strongly advocates for the use of OneDrive, we do not see it as a replacement for an on-premise file server for the SMB market. The biggest reason for this is because if OneDrive stored data is going to be the authoritative copy of some data, then you have to subscribe to services that will back up that data. That is going to cost you more than an on-premise solution. However, if your organization wants to take full advantage of AIP (Azure Information Protection), EMS E5 (Enterprise Mobility Suite), DRM (Digital Rights Management), and Microsoft Cloud App Security (MCAS), then it is necessary to put data into OneDrive and Sharepoint where your cloud managed security solution can see the data and control it. Our Insights If you want to make best use of OneDrive and OneDrive for Business (yes they are two different clients), you really should be using Windows 10 as your endpoint operating system. As of Build 1607 Windows 10, OneDrive personal, OneDrive for Business, and OneDrive for Business for Sharepoint libraries all works extremely well even in multifactor authentication scenarios. If you are considering using OneDrive or OneDrive for Business document libraries as a replacement for your on-premise file server, be aware that you need to thoroughly consider how your data in OneDrive will be backed up and what the restoration process is. The part we find left out of most consulting solutions by other providers is leaving out how the client's OneDrive and Sharepoint Online data will effectively be backed up.
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Exchange OnlineA line of messaging and collaborative software from Microsoft, Exchange is a way to keep communications together. Frequently used in large corporations, Exchange brings e-mail, voice-mail, instant messaging, and SMS messages to desktops, websites, or even phones. Our Experience QPC has been delivering hosted Exchange solutions since 2004. Hosted Exchange and now Exchange Online as part of Office 365, is an extremely mature and extremely powerful email hosting platform. Our Insights QPC is often contracted to audit the security of organizations, and as part of that, Office 365 is audited. We often find that other consulting firms have missed major portions of what we believe is SOP (standard operating procedure) for how Office 365 tenants should be configured such that they are secure, effective, reliable, and behave in a way that the users' expect. Please be aware that the size of the consulting firm that did your Office 365 migration has NO relevance to the qualify of the migration. In many cases, large firms hire underqualified technicians to just blast through your migration and close the project capturing the largest margin on the project. QPC's approach is completely different. We put our best assets on your project and work directly with your team in a comprehensive way in order to deliver a long-term valuable solution that you will be happy with. An Office 365 confguration audit can be done in as little as 4 hours. If you are interested in finding out gaps in your current implementation and ways in which you could be taking advantage of features already available to you, please contact us for an audit project.
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