14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft Office 365 is enjoying increased adoption around the world, with Hong Kong-based conglomerate Emperor Group being one of the latest companies to choose its capabilities.
Microsoft’s productivity solution is now being provided to over 300 users primarily within Emperor Watch & Jewelry and more of them are expected to take advantage of it in the near future.
In fact, the company says that it expects to expand the migration through increasing the number of users to 1,000 over time.
Through the adoption of Office 365, the company expects increased reliability and flexibility, as well as scalability with the business.
Before adopting Microsoft’s solution, the company evaluated another option for cloud services as well, namely Google Apps, looking into the functionality, connectivity and speed that both of them had to offer.
In the end, it decided that Office 365’s complete suite of solutions, which include email and collaboration options, was the best fitted for its long-term business growth, and that it also provided the wanted security capabilities.
“After evaluating Office 365 and Google Apps, we decided on Office 365 because it offered the most compelling solution for Emperor Group’s business and IT needs,” Gary Choi, chief information officer for Emperor Group said.
“It had the ability to support multiple domains, work seamlessly across geographic boundaries and function in hybrid mode together with our current on-premises solution.”
The company has already completed the first phase of the transition to Office 365, and it is now planning the next two phases, which will extend the unified communications platform to mobile and collaboration applications.
Emperor Group says that it is already ripping the benefits from the pilot of Exchange Online. Some of these include: Significant savings in IT costs and labor. Within just a few months of deployment, Emperor Group saw reduced upfront IT costs. The greater capacity and reliability has reduced the number of help requests the IT department receives by more than 50 percent.
Rich functionality and dependable technology. Employees now have access virtually anytime, anywhere, and on almost any device, meeting the increased demand for speedier and tighter collaboration across geographies.
Get started straight away. Office 365 uses the familiar, intuitive Microsoft user interface, which means users require little or no training to switch over from existing applications.
According to Choi, the company is satisfied with the performance and stability that Office 365 is already offering to them. The company is already evaluating other services within Microsoft’s productivity application, such as Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Lync Online and Microsoft Lync Mobile.