Businesses on cloud 9: Thanks to Microsoft Office 365

Office 365 solution has become the latest buzz and India's leading non-profit organizations, education institutes, IT/ITES companies and manufacturing and healthcare organizations including Ascent Yarns , Bakewell Biscuits , BLK Super Speciality Hospital , Godrej Industries and iResearch, have opted for it.

Talking about how the move helped, Shailesh Joshi, Head - Corporate IT, Godrej Industries Ltd, said, "We chose Office 365 to integrate communications between our group companies across India as well as our international entities. With Exchange Online, our email is backed up with service-level agreements, performance guarantees, disaster recovery and assured business continuity. Overall, we are very satisfied with the stable performance of Exchange Online and its lower cost of ownership. We are also evaluating other services within Office 365 like SharePoint Online and Lync Online to avail full benefits of the Office 365 suite."

Further reiterating the Office 365 advantages, Yogesh Shah, Founder & Director of iResearch Services , another company that recently took to the cloud offering, is all for adoption of technology solutions to propel growth. "With Office 365, we are taking full advantage of reliable, state-of-the-art technology that helps our business run more effectively at lower costs. Most importantly, with majority of the research workforce being mobile and geographically spread out, tools like Microsoft Lync enable field workforce to host meetings, share desktop presentations, and find appropriate individuals/expertise quickly and effectively by collaborating remotely. All this helps us meet client deadlines efficiently. Microsoft technologies provide enterprise-class, reliable and robust solutions for our operations," he said.

Office 365 Personal was recently added to complement the existing bouquet comprising Office 365 Home Premium, Office 365 University and Office 365 for businesses, and Office for iPad, aiding mobile scenarios. Office 365 is growing rapidly worldwide, making it the fastest-growing product in Microsoft history. As for Office 365 Home Premium, it is already at 3.5 million subscribers, and growing.

Ramkumar Pichai, GM - Microsoft Office Division, Microsoft India, said, "We are pleased with the adoption of Office 365 amongst businesses in India and globally, which reinforces our cloud and mobile leadership. Microsoft is focused on delivering the cloud for everyone, on every device. The future lies in people focused cloud productivity that - enables individuals and organizations to achieve more with the devices and services that people love the most."