Does your workplace make use of cloud computing? (1 Viewer)

[Christo]

Office 365. Checks all your boxes. Lots of different plans based on needs. 1 TB One Drive storage per user. Login from anywhere and all your stuff including email is there. Email is encrypted too which is nice. Collaborative as well with coworkers as needed. Some plans give you Office (up to 5 devices) and you have Cloud versions of Office too which is great for using better-equipped versions from your phone, iPad or other browser device. 

This is what I use.

 

[Michael Brown]

My company is a master agent of a couple dozen cloud providers (also UCaas, security, basic telco bandwidth/voice type things), so if you were looking to set up discussions with a few different vendors just to get some answers in these arenas I would be happy to help. FYI, it is a sales organization so just want you to be aware up front that they'll be attempting to sell you services. Lemme know either way if you think it'd help

 

[Hawks64]

It’s pretty easy to do all forms of math equations and expressions with Google.

I have a hard time imaging something less “technical” than the Google suite.

If they know Office already there is zero learning curve. Moving to Google suite introduces a learning curve. Keeping things the same for end users if possible always makes a happier end user.

 

[Hawks64]

Work for a pretty big company ($40B annual revenue globally), we use Office 365 with One Drive. While I hate M$ in general, it works extremely well. Collaboration, remote access, etc, is all seamless. 

For smaller companies I guess Google apps could work but From what I understand they’re not on the same level as the full featured MS Office suite. Not a fan. No way our company would operate on them. If they work for you, though, cool  

Accessing any of my files from phone, or any browser is no prob. 

The only thing I don't like with One Drive and really most of the cloud storage is that it's a pain to share. My preference for cloud storage with the ability to share if ShareFile.

 

[Doug B]

Well ... I am seeing today that every time we open a Windows Office program in the office, it reads "Office 365" under the program name on the title screen.

Sheesh ... I wonder if we are already semi-set up over here, just that no one knew what was up. I know One Drive is not being used ... everything is stored on a server housed in the breakroom 

 

[Jobber]

We are heavy into both private (Mesos/OSO/OSE/Azure) and public clouds (AWS/Azure) at my company. Admittedly, I’m still getting up to speed on a lot of it but yeah, the cloud really empowers business and developers. At first it sounds like black magic but really, once you understand the fundamentals it’s a piece of cake.

 

[Doug B]

... and, there is a One Drive icon in everyone's startup menu. When I click on it with my work laptop, it opens a setup window.

This implementation might be easier than I originally thought.

 

[GroveDiesel]

The company I work for stores all project files on cloud servers. It's super convenient as long as you have an internet connection.

We also use Office 365, and again, it's super convenient as long as you have an internet connection.

A bunch of our apps are hosted in the cloud too. Frankly, I kind of hate that. It forces you to have an internet connection to get work done and, unlike most everyone else here it seems, the lag is very noticable. There are times where my productivity is easily 5-10% lower simply due to lag. It's especially the case when using intensive computing software with larger files. But it's possible our IT department simply isn't great at managing the loads as well.

 

[E-Z Glider]

... and, there is a One Drive icon in everyone's startup menu. When I click on it with my work laptop, it opens a setup window.

This implementation might be easier than I originally thought.

Pretty much every office is already using "the cloud" in some capacity (email, storage, apps), but they also have a local network for apps/storage/security/sharing/etc. The dumb buzzword for this is "hybrid-cloud". Very few companies are completely "in the cloud" where they run everything from virtual desktops with no local network.

 

[Doug B]

Office 365 has the same thing as well, and being less technical without IT it might be more beneficial to stick with Office and go to O365.

Looking further into this ... I am now informed that we do, indeed, want cloud-based apps as well as the desktop applications we already have (viz the MS Office Suite).

My firm, last fall well before I started, listened to a presentation from a local company offering a cloud-computing package that came in as $2K/month. That gave the CEO a case of sticker shock -- he was looking to spend maybe $1000-1500/month.

Starting to look like Microsoft's Office Enterprise E3 package is going to be a player here. Priced at $20 per month per user, and we'll have 25 users ... $500/month? Anything I'm missing here? There are A LOT of features we'll never use, but this plan offers unlimited cloud storage space and both desktop and cloud versions of the MS Office Suite available to all our users (up to 5 devices per user).

Also, anyone ever go through a third-party middleman to set this stuff up? Just Googling around, I found this company that sells (resells?) the same Enterprise E3 package for $20.16/month/user. I guess that 16 cents x months x users is their profit on these kinds of subscriptions. Any reason NOT to deal directly with Microsoft?

While we don't have an IT person on staff, there is an IT freelancer we use for various things ... might could throw that guy a few bills if the Enterprise E3 set up would get hairy for any reason. But I feel like I can copy files to the cloud from our own server with no issue. After that, I guess it would be setting up each user for the various cloud apps on their devices of choice. If snags were to arise, and things were to get complicated enough to require experienced IT help, where would the most likely trouble spots be?

 

[Hawks64]

Looking further into this ... I am now informed that we do, indeed, want cloud-based apps as well as the desktop applications we already have (viz the MS Office Suite).

My firm, last fall well before I started, listened to a presentation from a local company offering a cloud-computing package that came in as $2K/month. That gave the CEO a case of sticker shock -- he was looking to spend maybe $1000-1500/month.

Starting to look like Microsoft's Office Enterprise E3 package is going to be a player here. Priced at $20 per month per user, and we'll have 25 users ... $500/month? Anything I'm missing here? There are A LOT of features we'll never use, but this plan offers unlimited cloud storage space and both desktop and cloud versions of the MS Office Suite available to all our users (up to 5 devices per user).

Also, anyone ever go through a third-party middleman to set this stuff up? Just Googling around, I found this company that sells (resells?) the same Enterprise E3 package for $20.16/month/user. I guess that 16 cents x months x users is their profit on these kinds of subscriptions. Any reason NOT to deal directly with Microsoft?

While we don't have an IT person on staff, there is an IT freelancer we use for various things ... might could throw that guy a few bills if the Enterprise E3 set up would get hairy for any reason. But I feel like I can copy files to the cloud from our own server with no issue. After that, I guess it would be setting up each user for the various cloud apps on their devices of choice. If snags were to arise, and things were to get complicated enough to require experienced IT help, where would the most likely trouble spots be?

I don't see any reason to go with a 3rd party for the licensing. And I'd talk to your IT freelancer just to get an idea of cost for him/her to do the implementation/migration.

 

[E-Z Glider]

Looking further into this ... I am now informed that we do, indeed, want cloud-based apps as well as the desktop applications we already have (viz the MS Office Suite).

My firm, last fall well before I started, listened to a presentation from a local company offering a cloud-computing package that came in as $2K/month. That gave the CEO a case of sticker shock -- he was looking to spend maybe $1000-1500/month.

Starting to look like Microsoft's Office Enterprise E3 package is going to be a player here. Priced at $20 per month per user, and we'll have 25 users ... $500/month? Anything I'm missing here? There are A LOT of features we'll never use, but this plan offers unlimited cloud storage space and both desktop and cloud versions of the MS Office Suite available to all our users (up to 5 devices per user).

Also, anyone ever go through a third-party middleman to set this stuff up? Just Googling around, I found this company that sells (resells?) the same Enterprise E3 package for $20.16/month/user. I guess that 16 cents x months x users is their profit on these kinds of subscriptions. Any reason NOT to deal directly with Microsoft?

While we don't have an IT person on staff, there is an IT freelancer we use for various things ... might could throw that guy a few bills if the Enterprise E3 set up would get hairy for any reason. But I feel like I can copy files to the cloud from our own server with no issue. After that, I guess it would be setting up each user for the various cloud apps on their devices of choice. If snags were to arise, and things were to get complicated enough to require experienced IT help, where would the most likely trouble spots be?

As long as you plan to stay under 300 users, you can go with O365 Business Premium. It's only $12.50/mo and has most of the same apps.

The setup of users and copying of files to the cloud is fairly straight forward. The big question is, what are you currently doing for Email? Assuming you have an on-site Exchange server, or are using anything other than O365 right now, you will probably need someone to help you transfer your existing email to O365. Your IT freelancer should be able to give you direction on this.

ETA - Microsoft is trying to get out of the direct sales model, so your best bet will be purchasing through your reseller. They should be able to match advertised prices (we get a 15% discount on subscriptions).

 

[snogger]

Work for a pretty big company ($40B annual revenue globally), we use Office 365 with One Drive. While I hate M$ in general, it works extremely well. Collaboration, remote access, etc, is all seamless. 

For smaller companies I guess Google apps could work but From what I understand they’re not on the same level as the full featured MS Office suite. Not a fan. No way our company would operate on them. If they work for you, though, cool  

Accessing any of my files from phone, or any browser is no prob. 

The only thing I don't like with One Drive and really most of the cloud storage is that it's a pain to share. My preference for cloud storage with the ability to share if ShareFile.

I use the sharing functionality a lot. Not only with OneDrvie for business, but also my personal OneDrive. I share Folders, individual items, etc.

Click file/folder, click share and either grab a link, or click "Email" and send it off.

 

[Doug B]

As long as you plan to stay under 300 users, you can go with O365 Business Premium. It's only $12.50/mo and has most of the same apps.

The choice between Business Premium and Enterprise E3 comes down to:

a ) Available cloud storage per user -- limited to 1 TB per user with Business Premium vs unlimited storage with Enterprise E3. However, I see that licenses can be mixed per business customer ... so if not all of our users need unlimited storage, we could maybe have, say, five Enterprise E3 licenses and 20 Business Premiums.

b ) Business Premium does not come with an online version of MS Access. But again, though I know some of our people live in Access and would need it available to work remotely ... I don't think it would be all that many folks. Less than ten.

c) Enterprise E3 comes with extra data-loss guarantees and, it looks like, encryption of e-mails, IMs, etc. Doesn't appear Business Premium offers those items, or else I am missing it.

 

[Doug B]

The big question is, what are you currently doing for Email? Assuming you have an on-site Exchange server, or are using anything other than O365 right now, you will probably need someone to help you transfer your existing email to O365. Your IT freelancer should be able to give you direction on this.

Forgot to answer this -- all but a very few of us have Outlook via Office 365 licenses right now.

That's something else I have to mix in when considering the final cost of a comprehensive cloud solution to the firm: If we go with Microsoft, we can subtract the current cost of our Office 365 licenses.

 

[snogger]

Our company has over 18K employees and have both O365 and MS apps. All mail files are in O365 Exchange now.

I am currently leading a team to increase User adoption/usage for OneDrive, MS Teams and other O365 applications.

Our current usage rate of OneDrive is about 1/4 of our users and the VP is not happy with the under utilization.

We are also now setting up all new PC's so their "Libraries" (Documents, Pictures, videos) are actually links to their OneDrive.
Users no longer need to worry about their computers getting stolen, or crashing and losing their data. With 1TB of space for each user, they have plenty of space to save their data.

Our next big project is to work on moving all Department File shares off on premise servers to MS Teams/SharePoint. again, cost savings will be tremendous as we will no longer need to pay for servers and backups of the data.

 

[Doug B]

However, I see that licenses can be mixed per business customer ... so if not all of our users need unlimited storage, we could maybe have, say, five Enterprise E3 licenses and 20 Business Premiums.

Hmmm ... now I'm reading a nearly-two-year-old article that recommends against mixing MS Business licenses and Enterprise licenses under the same business customer. I wonder why, and if that is still a concern today? The author gives no real detail:

Upgrading all users to Office 365 is your best opportunity to get everyone running a like version of the Office Software. When you’re budgeting you should plan on getting everyone in your organization an Office 365 plan, they may use a different license version, be it an E3 or E5, but having everyone on board with Office 365 will help increase adoption, acceptance and improve your company’s collaboration efforts.

While it’s technically possible to blend Business licensing with Enterprise licensing my recommendation is you don’t. When budgeting and counting your users, get both a headcount and another tip, a mailbox count. Shared mailboxes will need to have their own Office 365 license.

 

 

[Doug B]

Even though we have a much smaller headcount, snogger ... your implementation sounds dam near perfect for what we seem to want.

Didn't think of setting up everyone's in-office laptops so that the Documents folders and such automatically upload to OneDrive. 1 TB per head is more than enough "personal" work file storage. It's out behemoth of an archiving system (which is actually used a lot, not just a virtual trashbin) that's going to need to be nestled away somewhere with well more than 1 TB of space.

 

[E-Z Glider]

The choice between Business Premium and Enterprise E3 comes down to:

a ) Available cloud storage per user -- limited to 1 TB per user with Business Premium vs unlimited storage with Enterprise E3. However, I see that licenses can be mixed per business customer ... so if not all of our users need unlimited storage, we could maybe have, say, five Enterprise E3 licenses and 20 Business Premiums.

b ) Business Premium does not come with an online version of MS Access. But again, though I know some of our people live in Access and would need it available to work remotely ... I don't think it would be all that many folks. Less than ten.

c) Enterprise E3 comes with extra data-loss guarantees and, it looks like, encryption of e-mails, IMs, etc. Doesn't appear Business Premium offers those items, or else I am missing it.

a/b) We dont have any clients that mix licenses, so cant speak to that, but yeah, if you need Access or Publisher, you'll need E3. 

c) Does your industry require encryption of communications? Currently, we only have 3 types of clients that are required to use encryption to be compliant. Those are medical, financial and businesses that deal with the government. Most of our regular business clients dont need it or use it. There are also 3rd party solutions (like Barracuda) to add encryption for like $1/user/mo if that's your only need.

 

[Doug B]

Does your industry require encryption of communications? Currently, we only have 3 types of clients that are required to use encryption to be compliant. Those are medical, financial and businesses that deal with the government.

Yes ... many of our projects are funded through federal and/or state grants.

 

[snogger]

Even though we have a much smaller headcount, snogger ... your implementation sounds dam near perfect for what we seem to want.

Didn't think of setting up everyone's in-office laptops so that the Documents folders and such automatically upload to OneDrive. 1 TB per head is more than enough "personal" work file storage. It's out behemoth of an archiving system (which is actually used a lot, not just a virtual trashbin) that's going to need to be nestled away somewhere with well more than 1 TB of space.

The "Move document library's to OneDrive" came out of a Senior Vice President of Development having her notebook stolen.
It is password protected and data encrypted so no worries of people getting the data.
But she lost a LOT of her Business critical data (should have been saving it in SharePoint any ways but that is for a different post) and was that we don't back up their data.
Thus the push to get them redirected to OneDrive...

We are working on a script to send to end users that will move their data for them and change the links, so they don't need to manually move it and/or wait for a new PC.
But there are complications with that and so may revert to sending instructions to users to do it themselves.

 

[Doug B]

Thanks for the feedback and considerations, guys. Everyone in this thread is going to have a part in me making the most informed decision that I can.

...

Snogger, E-Z Glider (and anyone else) ... are your shops mixed-license? That just means not all users have the exact same cloud-applications license -- some have more applications and features, others less.

 

[snogger]

Thanks for the feedback and considerations, guys. Everyone in this thread is going to have a part in me making the most informed decision that I can.

...

Snogger, E-Z Glider (and anyone else) ... are your shops mixed-license? That just means not all users have the exact same cloud-applications license -- some have more applications and features, others less.

we have many different license's running around.. E1, E4, E5.
Items like Visio and Project we only pay for a hand full of license's and so need approval to get that license assigned to you.

Luckily we have Azure/O365 Admins who's job is deciding which license gets assigned to which users.

 

[Hooper31]

It’s pretty easy to do all forms of math equations and expressions with Google.

I won't debate that you can, but it's not as intuitive or as easy. The "boxes"  you create when making a template for some form of expression isn't easy to work with. The boxes are near invisible and tiny as can be. It's a bit frustrating explaining to students that they just need to trust that the empty spaces are there just waiting for their variables. If you haven't worked with a quality equation editor before its understandable that you won't fully get what's happening on the screen. 

 

[Ilov80s]

I won't debate that you can, but it's not as intuitive or as easy. The "boxes"  you create when making a template for some form of expression isn't easy to work with. The boxes are near invisible and tiny as can be. It's a bit frustrating explaining to students that they just need to trust that the empty spaces are there just waiting for their variables. If you haven't worked with a quality equation editor before its understandable that you won't fully get what's happening on the screen. 

I don’t use it all that often but I did notice the add-on that allowed you to just use your mouse like a pencil to write the math expressions and equations is gone. That was by far the best. It was just like writing by hand but it came out perfect.

 

[Doug B]

Luckily we have Azure/O365 Admins who's job is deciding which license gets assigned to which users.

I looked at the Azure stuff just to see ... WAY beyond us.

Hoping we are a small enough shop that Office 365 administration is just a minor-ish item on someone's plate (potentially mine), and not a full-time position.

 

[gmbacm]

The "Move document library's to OneDrive" came out of a Senior Vice President of Development having her notebook stolen.
It is password protected and data encrypted so no worries of people getting the data.
But she lost a LOT of her Business critical data (should have been saving it in SharePoint any ways but that is for a different post) and was that we don't back up their data.
Thus the push to get them redirected to OneDrive...

We are working on a script to send to end users that will move their data for them and change the links, so they don't need to manually move it and/or wait for a new PC.
But there are complications with that and so may revert to sending instructions to users to do it themselves.

If possible and not compromising any of your policies, would love to see the script once you are rolling it out?

 

[snogger]

The "Move document library's to OneDrive" came out of a Senior Vice President of Development having her notebook stolen.
It is password protected and data encrypted so no worries of people getting the data.
But she lost a LOT of her Business critical data (should have been saving it in SharePoint any ways but that is for a different post) and was that we don't back up their data.
Thus the push to get them redirected to OneDrive...

We are working on a script to send to end users that will move their data for them and change the links, so they don't need to manually move it and/or wait for a new PC.
But there are complications with that and so may revert to sending instructions to users to do it themselves.

If possible and not compromising any of your policies, would love to see the script once you are rolling it out?

Nothing really "proprietary" about it as they are using RoboCopy and a .bat file with the script.

Tried to PM it to you but FBG says you cannot except messages. Send me a PM with your email address and I'll send it out.

 

[ffldrew]

Construction management consultancy, with a good amount of grants administration work. ~20 employees with plans to scale up to 40-50 over the next 2-3 years.

No real relational database in place ... a lot of different kinds of data stored in a semi-organized system of files and folders on Windows machines. Booty load of Excel files, Access "databases", and PDFs.

I responded to Doug about his issue - thought I'd share it here

I can respond in the thread - but here is what it sounds like you need. It's one thing to have a dropbox, google drive, one Drive - that is just a place to put things - what it sounds like you need is some sort of discipline around how to store those files - some sort of Content Management System(CMS) that gives you a framework on file storage around project/jobs/proposals. Do you have some sort of project management system? Is there a Customer Relationship System(CRM like a Salesforce). You could find something that gives you those capabilities and the content management framework gets wrapped around a customer/project - in the end you would use the tools to manipulate documents - I prefer O365 - but have used them all. So there are a lot of ways you could go in the cloud - there are SaaS(Software as a Service) providers that have apps specifically for construction - this would get you say an 80% framework - but a bit of a lock in to the process they design. The next would be some sort of CMS or CRM - cloud based of course - that is more generic to any industry - that would get you 50% - then there are the things that you are mentioning in the thread DropBox, Google Drive - and that stuff gets you 10-20% of what you really need and requires your users to have the discipline to properly store things(sharing, permissions, sync with laptop, mobile access) - but the most flexibility. I would do an assessment to see what you use as your customer/project environment of record - some project management/CRM/Accounting. What is the one place you trust to know all about a thing/service you are providing. What are key documents that need to be linked together. What is common. Then start to find the parts of the puzzle that link the best and always look to the SaaS vendors first, then if it's an on prem solution how easy is it to run in the cloud(on Azure or AWS for instance)

 

[Doug B]

Thanks, ffldrew. Things have changed a bit in recent days.

We look like we're headed for a Microsoft-based scheme. There are already several Office 365 subscriptions floating around here, but not used by all staff. All of the e-mail is Outlook based, with everyone being covered by Exchange Online monthly subscriptions. And lastly ... I've learned that we are paying for 15 unused OneDrive subscriptions  

From what I've seen of Azure, which ain't much, it looks like overkill for our business. MS O365 Enterprise E3 gets us all the features we need and more, plus gets us both desk/laptop applications AND SaaS applications -- we're not ready to go 100% SaaS yet.

We have an internal, unenforced Content Management System that's it's pretty much "the honor system" and "knowing where to put stuff" -- no controls are in place whatsoever. Not sure where to go with that, or even if CMS controls are something I could push for.

...

I just learned, too, that we would be OK buying a smallish number of O365 Enterprise E3 subscriptions. Less than half our staff is working off of O365 subscriptions -- I think the rest have perpetual (traditional) MS Office licenses. But everyone here does have their e-mail through MS Exchange Online Plan 1. Microsoft informed me today that it would be fine to have some staff with e-mail supplied through what's bundled in Enterprise E3 while everyone else keeps their current Exchange Online Plan 1 subscriptions. We'd all have the same (virtual?) mailbox, share the same calendar, etc?

Anything about that sound weird to anyone?

 

[Doug B]

A question for the house:

Is cloud storage NOT a replacement for traditional data-backup schemes?

I ask because I am reading this article (granted, it's three years old) and I was a little surprised that they recommended keeping physical backups of your data even if you are using cloud storage. I mean, yeah, better safe than sorry, you can't be too careful, and all that. But I thought a big benefit to cloud storage was that backups and catastrophic loss recovery were automatic and essentially assured. 

Catastrophic loss recovery is a big deal for us. The firm has been worried about what might happen to our breakroom server ... do we have to worry the same way about our cloud-based data as well?

 

[Hawks64]

A question for the house:

Is cloud storage NOT a replacement for traditional data-backup schemes?

I ask because I am reading this article (granted, it's three years old) and I was a little surprised that they recommended keeping physical backups of your data even if you are using cloud storage. I mean, yeah, better safe than sorry, you can't be too careful, and all that. But I thought a big benefit to cloud storage was that backups and catastrophic loss recovery were automatic and essentially assured. 

Catastrophic loss recovery is a bid deal for us. The firm has been worried about what might happen to our breakroom server ... do we have to worry the same way about our cloud-based data as well?

IMO 10000000% yes. Sure it's in the cloud and has the redundancy of whatever that platform is but it doesn't take into account corruption or malicious users or accidental overwrites or the myriad of other reasons you need backups/data protection.

ETA I am not aware of any cloud provider to date that hasn't had any major outages/issues, while I haven't heard of any data loss occurrences because of it I wouldn't take the chance if it's that business critical.

 

[Doug B]

That makes sense, Hawks64. We've got the semi-manual backups going now as it is ... guess there would be no need to stop that process even with a cloud-storage implementation.

 

[ffldrew]

Doug B - you may want to look at this. It looks pretty flexible and has some PM/cms feature. It can also be shared with 3rd Parties

https://www.smartsheet.com/