According to Microsoft, it is “the easiest way to work together”: Office365 has taken numerous entrepreneurial hearts by storm. The flexible system from Microsoft promises a mixture of online applications, cloud storage and professional e-mail solutions for companies and private individuals. But criticism is pouring down: Are Microsoft's servers really safe from domestic and foreign access? We have compiled the advantages and disadvantages of Office365 and will help you to find the ideal service provider for your company with SharePoint consulting services.



What is Office365?

Flexible and always up-to-date: Managed cloud services give entrepreneurs more freedom in the IT area. Of course, the big players want to play along. Office365 is Microsoft's answer for small and medium-sized companies that want to build an affordable office infrastructure.

The offer includes all known Office programs such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access or OneDrive. At the same time, it offers practical opportunities for collaboration: documents can be edited together, all colleagues have access to the online storage and the entire office is networked with Skype for Business.

This means you don't have to set up your own IT with expensive servers and storage systems. All data traffic runs over the powerful hardware from Microsoft. All you really need is a power socket, an internet connection and a laptop to work. This saves money, resources and time with Al Rafay SharePoint Consulting.

The 5 big advantages of Office365

Flexibility and growth opportunities

You can simply book additional bandwidth or flexibly expand your storage space. A new employee starts with you? With just a few clicks, you set up a workplace and company account for him. And: it also goes backwards. Temporary resources are not a problem with monthly billing.



Absolute price transparency

With Microsoft Office365, you only pay for what you use. You pay a monthly subscription fee that depends on the workstations and features. There are no upfront costs or large sums to invest in maintaining the hardware. You will not incur any additional support costs.

Known product portfolio

Really everyone knows Word, Excel and other Office products. This makes the training pleasantly uncomplicated. In addition, Microsoft offers numerous additional features that make your everyday work easier. In addition, you do not have to download and install any updates - this happens fully automatically.

Secure email archiving

Microsoft's servers are significantly better protected than your corporate hardware would be. This means that a crash with the resulting loss of data is unlikely. Office365 also scores when it comes to archiving: The integrated mail program offers you a secure storage location that complies with German data protection law.

Trust in Microsoft

Microsoft has experience. There are now even many schools that rely completely on Office365 and thus introduce new, potential customers to the offer. The company enjoys a good reputation and has built up a lot of trust over time. But does this apply to the cloud-based solutions?

What about data protection at Office365?

You must be aware that with Office365 you are putting your company data in the hands of Microsoft. Of course, the servers are well encrypted and meet all security standards - and yet there is a big problem:

American servers and programs are subject to the Patriot Act. This allows American law enforcement agencies access to all data stored there. At least since the NSA scandal, it has also been known that many accesses would not be legal under German law. A catastrophe for German data protection law: the disclosure of sensitive information hangs over the company like the sword of Damocles. Legal proceedings are currently underway before the Supreme Court, in which the USA is asking Microsoft to release data from European data centers. For its part, Microsoft is fighting for a secure solution for European customers.

Office365 Germany is available as an alternative: This Telekom service works on the basis of the Office365 technology stack. With Office365 Germany, however, there are limitations: Parts of the usual Office365 portfolio do not work and, in our experience, the service is less reliable than its international counterpart. Overall, Office365 Germany gives the impression that it is not quite finished yet.

Conclusion: Safe alternatives to a comprehensive service

While the benefits make Office365 an attractive proposition, ongoing disputes between Microsoft and the US government create a risk. If the US authorities were to gain access to Microsoft's European servers, Office365 would no longer be sustainable from a data protection perspective.

Managed exchange hosting from regional providers has proven to be a good alternative for German companies. An exchange service is provided on the basis of cloud resources, which offers the full functionality of an in-house server. With this variant, the additional functions of Office365 fall by the wayside, but legal uncertainties and the associated risk of high migration costs/turnarounds are avoided.

Ultimately, the decision rests with the company. All variants have their advantages and disadvantages as well as their risks. We therefore consider a blanket recommendation to be dubious. Companies with high protection criteria – especially those where personal data is processed by email – are well advised to take a comprehensive look at the risks. Well advised in the cloud: We will show you the way!