Mar 23, 2011 11:46 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft is ready to lend a helping hand to customers looking to embrace its Cloud productivity suite.

Companies looking to make the jump to Office 365 that need a little convincing can download the Microsoft Technical Fit Assessment and get details about the options available to them in the context of Office 365 in an enterprise environment.

The resource is designed to describe the technical evaluation assessment for Office 365, along with the help and guidance offered by the software giant.

“Moving IT assets to the cloud is a process which includes many stakeholders in an organization to ensure business and compliance needs are met, security concerns are addressed, and the most optimal technical solution is implemented,” Microsoft stated.

“To help you easily navigate through these decision points across your organization, Microsoft provides you with a proven methodology, the Office 365 Customer Decision Framework.

“The technical evaluation assessment is part of this framework, and will help you in a series of 3 briefings and workshops determine the best solution.”

The first step for business customers is to have a Microsoft Technical Specialist provide an overview of Office 365 in a Technical Briefing. This is a half day briefing designed to help companies get insight into Office 365.

Step two involves what the software giant calls a Solution Alignment Workshop (SAW). The workshop can last as long as three days, or as little as one, and will be focused on understanding the Office 365 Service capabilities in detail, as well as any solution gaps customers can come across.

The third step is another workshop, this time around designed to deal with the actual migration from existing productivity solutions to Office 365.

“Migrating to the cloud can be a very straightforward experience or more involved, depending on your requirements and your current IT infrastructure,” the company added.

“Based on our experience we have designed this process to set the right expectations about the solution, its lifecycle, and to include all stakeholders who need to understand how the Office 365 service will address their needs.”