I just met up with one of our customers the other day who is just loving Office 365. His exact words were “if I only knew a couple years ago what I know today I would’ve hopped on office 365 that much sooner”. Office 365 is an incredible scenario for most small businesses and law firms. It offers so many features in one nice package but for now let’s forget about that
Let’s consider what it really is: a Business Continuity plan. Many of you are probably asking yourself “what do you mean, business continuity”. It means when everything hits the fan your business will be able to keep working; or at least communicating or accessing your docs and files (maybe even more). When your servers crashes (this is inevitable), when the Internet goes on the blink (like that never happens), when your PC crashes (sorry Charlie), when your lights go off (someone hit a power line; can you say “law suit”), when air-conditioning goes off (call the landlord), when all else fails Office 365 and the things that you use on it will still be there working and ready for you to use.
I’m not telling you that Microsoft cloud is infallible. I’d be crazy to suggest that it is! One certainty of the universe that I have learned (through difficult trials in life) is that everything WANTS TO BREAK. It is unnatural for things to work without failure. However in the five years that we’ve been working with office 365 it has rarely disappointed. Businesses that have major outages lose a bunch more money from lost billable time, lost customers and unproductive staff time than those that do have Office 365. Not to mention the reduced level of stress knowing that when your server crashes that at least you have email (or more; remember Office 365 is much more than just hosted email).
Here’s something to chew on: how much money do you spend in your firm to keep your technology running and reduce your SPOFs (single points of failures)? Multiply that by more money than you can imagine (just kidding of course) and that’s how much Microsoft spends to keep your stuff accessible from anywhere, all the time.
So when my law firm customers come to grips with the ethics of storing your data in the cloud (see my post: Is Office 365 Safe For Law Firm Use ) and they get Office 365; when everything else around them is failing, without exception they always say “Office 365 is the best decision we ever made for our law firm”.
Make the same smart decision for your law firm.
