Many organizations seeking to consolidate resources and save money on their infrastructure and email storage need to balance the benefits of moving to the cloud with assurances on how data is secured and accessed from the cloud.  

Microsoft today announced new academic institutions that are adopting Microsoft Office 365, to improve communication and collaboration across campuses while meeting security, privacy and other regulatory requirements mandated by the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Office 365 is the first and only major cloud business productivity solution to address the rigorous HIPAA requirements.

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For a number of years, we tried to get by with an email service called SquirrelMail, which ran on a Linux server in our office, but it just wasn't as reliable, scalable, or easy to manage as we needed it to be. One of the major headaches was how difficult it was for people to access email remotely. Staff could only log on to the system from their work computer, which restricted their mobility. And the service didn't offer a built-in feature for sharing calendars. Figuring out staff availability and scheduling meetings usually meant sending a series of email messages back and forth. It's hard to believe, but we actually kept our office calendar on a dry-erase whiteboard.

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Renowned, Belgian university Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (EPHEC) wanted to prepare its student body of over 4,700 for a work environment where businesses are embracing a more mobile, collaborative setting. To fulfill this goal and keep costs down, the university turned to Microsoft Office 365 for education as the solution of choice. Before Office 365 for education, EPHEC relied on one aging server that only provided the university's staff and administrators with email - its students...

As part of the Real World with Cloud Services series, we spoke to David Seah, Senior IT Manager at Hersing Corporation, about why Hersing chose to manage its messaging and collaboration environment with Microsoft Office 365 instead of Google Apps. Here's what he had to say: Q: Please tell us about Hersing Corporation. Seah: Hersing is based in Singapore, and we provide real estate brokerage, property management, money transfer, and brand management services for global brands such as ERA, RIA, Coldwell...

The world's top facilities management and construction group VINCI recently made the decision to offer Microsoft Office 365 to its 183,000 employees spread over 2,500 subsidiaries across almost 100 countries. The move is inspired by the positive response of one of its subsidiaries - VINCI PLC - who switched its 1,400 employees to Microsoft Exchange from Google Apps in 2011. The company expects the move to the cloud to allow employees across continents and time zones the ability to work together in...

Today Adrienne Hall, general manager, Trustworthy Computing shared in an RSA Europe keynote that Microsoft has released a new free Cloud Security Readiness tool . Microsoft developed the tool, in part, to help organizations address two critically important business questions: Where are we - in terms of our current IT state? Where will we be - if we adopt a particular cloud service? The new free Cloud Readiness tool ( www.microsoft.com/trustedcloud ) helps organizations better understand their systems...

Today, Toyota Motor Corporation announced the company will provide Microsoft Office 365 to more than 200,000 employees of Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc. and other affiliates in North America to streamline its communications and collaboration capabilities.

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Forrester Research, Inc., has named Microsoft as a leader in the cloud collaboration market in its August 2012 report entitled "The Forrester Wave^TM: Cloud Strategies of Online Collaboration Software Vendors, Q3 2012."

Among eight vendors, Microsoft's Office 365, which includes SharePoint Online, earned the highest score for "Current Offering." Recent Microsoft acquisition Yammer landed the top score for "Strategy."

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Two Italian nonprofit organizations - Oxfam and Emergency - have turned to Microsoft Office 365 for a secure and reliable cloud service, allowing them to expand the scope of their international initiatives of combatting poverty, providing aid and promoting human rights across the globe without putting an increased burden on IT.                                           

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In 2009, department store chain Lojas Renner was one of the first companies in Brazil to embrace cloud computing by deploying Google Apps. While moving from an on-premises deployment to a cloud solution helped reduce IT costs, that system didn't sufficiently meet the company's needs. Renner migrated to Microsoft Office 365 in early 2012, and is now enjoying better functionality, higher productivity, and improved employee collaboration.

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