SharePoint Online With Office 365 Benefits: Taking Your Business to Next Level

Advancement in technology has brought about a major change in the way of working of modern workforce. Statistics show that around 95% of information workers are using notebooks as well devices like iPad and smartphones for work. This is why today, several leading enterprise systems are being offered as Online systems and cloud computing is gaining momentum. Microsoft’s SharePoint, a part of Office 365 is undeniably one of the most powerful enterprise tools available for all business sizes.

Office 365, a suite of web-enabled (on the cloud) tools is the latest offering from Microsoft for Online system users. Microsoft products such as Office, Outlook, and SharePoint are widely used by small and medium sized businesses as well as big multinational corporations. If you are considering using a collaboration platform or planning to move your existing business to the cloud, there is no better office-productivity enterprise solution than Office 365.

Moving to a cloud based system seems to be an intelligent business decision considering the future trend. Microsoft has clearly anticipated the powerful role online systems will play in the near future. Flexibility along with reduced costs of management is one of the noteworthy features of SharePoint Online system introduced by Microsoft.

Office 365 is offered in two editions- Standard and Dedicated. Additionally, the Standard edition is offered in two versions- Plan S and Plan E. Both standard versions of Office 365 consist of SharePoint 2010, Lync 2010, and Exchange 2010. Subscription to these services is based on per-user or per month basis.

Let’s look at some benefits presented by Office 365 due to its access to SharePoint 2010 noteworthy features:

•Powerful search capabilities: SharePoint 2010 is known to have a good search engine, so searching for something in Office 365 is quick and easy.

•Optimum Security: SharePoint 2010 is known to offer superior user level security than other Microsoft products. This feature is extremely useful in an enterprise system where different users have access to read, write, and share data stored in the database. The security features included in SharePoint 2010 protects the confidentiality of the data without hampering the productivity and efficiency of the workforce, even in the cloud.

•Easy creation and collaborations: SharePoint 2010 allows easy creation of site and pages. Administrator can create a site to store documents and allow specific group of people, permission to work and collaborate on it.

•No coding to create workflow: An efficient workflow chart improves efficiency of workforce and enhances productivity. The SharePoint Designer allows creating of an efficient workflow in an easy way without use of any complex coding.

•Active directory: SharePoint allows the administrator to permit access to users by assigning username and passwords. If required external users may also be granted restricted access to the system resources by the administrator.

One of the biggest advantages of using Office 365 and its SharePoint cloud platform is smaller learning curve for people who are using Microsoft office products, as it is only transition to different working environment for such people.

Offshore Vs Nearshore Software Development Provider: Whom to Choose?

IT Managers across the states are re thinking their software development strategy, and aiming to replace their offshore software development firms with nearshoring ones.

The reason behind this growing trend, are the advantages of nearshore software development (Latin America) over offshore (i.e. India and East Europe) like the timezone proximity which enables real time communication and agile software development with nearshore teams, and thus better project control for the IT manager. Also the geographical proximity allows the IT managers to go down and visit the team for a period of time within the year, either for critical paths within software development process, or just to improve the nearshore team compromise and commitment with the cause.
 

The fact that cost gap between nearshore and offshore software development firms continues to close especially due to inflation and attrition differences is also contributing to the decision of replacing offshore software development firms.Nearshore development costs still fall between the costs of local development anoffshore development.

Declining service levels and difficulty understanding Indian accents are issues that buyers have also expressed concern over during 2011 about offshore software development.

Why to expect a growing of nearshore trend: A lot of the growth in the US is coming from SMEs that find it easier to work with similar providers in Latin American and for example, Silicon Valley startups are trusting their software development for nearshore development firms located in Costa Rica, Mexico, Chile or Uruguay, and more US companies are investigating what options Latin America can provide.

Additionally, there has been an increase in the number of Latin American companies that are opening US offices, or hiring a US marketing and sales representative.

Deloitte’s 2011 Global Shared Services research which was reviewed at Shared Services and Outsourcing Week, called Latin America the new frontier and said that Latin America was the second most popular destination for new centers, and found that companies establishing new facilities in Latin America were likely to be following the growth of Latin markets for their companies’ products.

So, what is the offshore team still useful for when it comes to offshore software development? The answer is non-critical path waterfall development: waterfall because the time difference precludes agile development; non-critical path because delays in communication add unpredictability which can upset the timeline.

IT managers looking to manage their software development projects using agile processes will continue to try with nearshore firms.

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