Microsoft makes it easier for SMBs to adopt Office 365

Microsoft is making it easier for small to midsized businesses (SMBs) to move to Office 365. In a blog post, the company is allowing customers with 50 to 149 seats of Office 365 Enterprise and small business plans to take advantage of Microsoft FastTrack, a service that provides resources and dedicated engineers to can assist the company or the Microsoft Partner that company works with, to implement Office 365. FastTrack was previously only available to customers with 150 seats or more.

Source: Microsoft. Office 365 can be used desktops, laptops
and mobile devices.

In Asia Pacific, Microsoft FastTrack is available in Australia, India, mainland China, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Brunei, Bangladesh and Nepal. Local language FastTrack managers will also be available in Korea, Thailand and Vietnam in the first quarter of 2016.

Microsoft is also expanding the FY16 Adoption Offer to include Office 365 small business plans and adding payouts for customer deployments of 50 to 149 seats. This now makes Microsoft Partners eligible for a payout of US$25 per seat for 50 to 149 seats, in addition to the existing payouts for 150 seats and above.

Helping businesses grow

According to Gartner, which analysed cloud email usage among public companies of different sizes, industries and geographies, more companies use Microsoft Office 365 than Google Apps for Work. Matt Katzer, a Microsoft partner and principal of US-based Kamind IT, said that companies tend to reach a breaking point with Google Apps around the 50-employee mark "because it doesn’t provide the centralised management and security capabilities, nor the breadth of integrated collaboration tools, that Office 365 does.” 

According to Microsoft, 60 million people use Office 365 at work and 50,000 SMBs become Office 365 customers every month. 

Interested?

Sign up for a free trial 

Take advantage of FastTrack

Read the TechTrade Asia blog posts about how the AIA Group is using Microsoft Office 365

Read the Google for Work blog featuring Google Apps for Work customers with relatively large employee bases, including UK-based United Biscuits - the makers of McVities and Jacobs which has 7,000 employees worldwide, and the 1,200 employees at creative agency Imagination, which has offices in Australia, China, Japan, Qatar, Singapore and the UAE.