Well, it looks pretty exciting and looking at some of the quotes coming out from the Executives at Microsoft, they seem pretty excited too! John Case, corporate vice president of Office Marketing for Microsoft was quoted in an interview after his keynote:
“We think what that (E5 Office 365 SKU) does is more than double the available market for Office 365…“we will price it aggressively relative to all the individual components. People will look at it and they think, Power BI, we’ve priced it at $10 per user. For Advanced Threat Protection and things like Lockbox, other providers are charging a significant amount of money for those services on a standalone basis. Cisco’s price points on things like WebEx are significant. Those aren’t free services. So when you add all that up, we’ll be able to give a significant advantage to those that buy from one vendor for something like E5”.
So with this latest SKU Microsoft has made it pretty clear to the market – they want your entire core business environment in their cloud and E5 is how they are going to do it!
So what do we think here at Nexon Group? We thought we’d take the chance to go through the main E5 feature, what we know (and don’t know!) about it and how we see it adding value to your business.
The biggest feature from our perspective is Cloud PBX/PSTN Calling. Anyone who has experienced the rich collaboration experience that Lync delivers out of Office 365 on their desktop/tablet/smartphone has wondered why they can’t use it to replace their desk phone in order to make and receive external calls. Well, the good new is, with E5 they will be able to. This represents a great opportunity for businesses to streamline their communications by:
- Replacing all of their disparate communication solutions (Voice, Video, Document Sharing, Desktop Sharing, Audio Conferencing, Voice Mail etc) with one single, integrated solution that allows an employee to access it where ever they are on whatever device they want – including a simple handset for those of us who are nostalgic!
- Removing the requirement for costly hardware, software and professional services that are required for a traditional on premise communications solution.
- Minimal touch for rapid deployment of the solution.
Despite the announcement it is still early days for Microsoft for this service and questions such as the following are still to be answered:
- “What features are available?”
- “Can I run my contact centre?”
- “Will I be able to port my 100 indial range or even connect my own carrier service?” and
- “When will it be available in Australia?”
The good news for Australian businesses is this solution already exists in Australia and Nexon has been providing Cloud PBX services to Office 365 customers for nearly 2 years now. Nexon Absolute is the leading Cloud Lync managed service in Australia and provides:
- Full access to Microsoft Lync features, including Enterprise Voice
- Built in Nexon’s Data Centres using Nexon’s virtualised environment
- Offered on a per-user per-month basis so you pay only for what you use
- Simple access to licensing (either inside or outside an EA/Office 365)
- Flexibility – design a solution based on your business requirements
Office 365 has been the fastest growing product in Microsoft’s history for a reason and the new service offerings with the E5 SKU will offer even more business benefit to Australian businesses.
As John Case said:
“I think a very sizable percentage of the Office 365 customer base will find E5 very attractive from a price perspective and an-end-to-end functionality perspective. It won’t be 100% percent, but it will be a sizable percentage. When E5 becomes available in Australia I think this statement will be as true for us as the rest of the world.”
Well, folks – it’s already here in Australia so make sure you talk to us about Nexon Absolute by visiting www.nexonabsolute.com.au or call Nexon on 1300 800 000 or by email Nexon at sales@nexon.com.au
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