Here is How Microsoft Will Win in the Cloud

A recent story in Network World shows one way that Microsoft will make future wins over to its cloud-based Office offerings, now called Office 365 and still in beta: with favorable enterprise pricing for Exchange Online.

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Yes, that old war horse. The story has some intriguing analyses that were done for two government accounts that were considering both Office 365 and Google Apps. The city of Winston-Salem North Carolina had 2,700 Groupwise seats that they wanted to upgrade, and when took stock of what they had to buy from Google, plus that they really wanted to continue to use the rest of Microsoft’s Office suite, it made sense to choose Office 365. The same decision was made last week with the city of San Francisco and its more than 23,000 users spread across seven different email systems. San Francisco plans on recouping its million-dollar investment in Office 365 within two years.

While cost was a factor, Winston-Salem’s IT staff liked the archiving features and the ability to customize smartphone support that Microsoft offered.

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