Our office is considering moving from an Exchange server environment to an office 365 subscription environment. We're a small architecture firm (10 – 14), however, a lot of the time some of the guys are out in areas where there is no internet access. here's what we currently have.
Exchange server 2003, MS Office 2003 with Outlook, running on approx 10 systems.
MS office is stored locally, and I've setup outlook to use cached exchange mode, they have access to everything with respect to document creation and editing as well as viewing email that is currently in the inbox and various other mail / calendar / scheduling aspects of Outlook.
Now then, onto the questions:
1) if we utilize the Office365 as our email service what happens to all the MX records and such currently configured?? We currently own two domains, how is that information changed in order to work with the Office365 servers?
1b) …Are MX Records even needed anymore?
1c) …. Also, what happens to our domains and our internet "identity"?
2) in order to facilitate cold call communications, most users here have as many as 4 to 6 email addresses. Will I still have the ability to do this with an Office365 email system?
3) In looking at plans we’re leaning toward the E1 or E3 plan. Just to double check with the E3 plan, my users will have copies of Office on their systems and able to read and create documents *WITHOUT* an active internet connection. Is this correct?
4) Is there a time limit on client / server communications. For example say my users are doing a work session somewhere without internet connection (which happens often) How often must their software communicate with the server to remain functional?
OK Let’s talk deployment.
We’ve heard many times of this myth called “Seamless Deployment” and I know it just doesn’t exist, there’s always some kind of “got’cha” when deploying any type of email system. Ideally we’d like to be able to simply flip a switch and boom be on the new system but this isn’t realistic, let’s talk “nuts and bolts”
I’d like a “broad brush” overview of the process of switching from an in-house Exchange system, to the subscription based Office365 email system. I realize you can’t give absolute specifics due to the fact that no two networks are exactly the same, but a general “these are the steps” would be nice so I can see how they may apply to our system.