Office 365 Customer Title365Editor's note: Today's post comes from Office 365 customer Ryan Jaeger, Vice President Systems Engineering, Title365 Company. Read more customer stories at our website http://bit.ly/Ndqwkl. 

By Ryan Jaeger, VP Systems Engineering

After we spun off from our parent company in 2011, our goal at Title365 Company was to hit the ground running with a commitment to delivering an industry-changing combination of centralized product fulfillment, fast turnaround of services, and breakthrough technology solutions. Title365 Company provides a full array of real estate closing and settlement services. Based in Newport Beach, California, we serve residential real estate brokers, mortgage and financial institutions, asset managers, and independent escrows. We knew we needed to have a standardized communication and collaboration system, since our team is nationally distributed, which can sometimes make it hard for team members to find each other. To spark innovation, we needed team members to stay connected.                                                                                          

As we searched for a solution, we didn't find the "bricks-and-mortar data center" approach very attractive-we would have had to build everything from scratch. Rather than make a sizeable investment to support a new infrastructure, we opted to go to the cloud. We looked at several options, including Google Apps, but they didn't support what we needed for our day-to-day work. Instead, we went with Microsoft Office 365. One of the biggest reasons we chose Office 365 was the flexibility to mix and match plans to meet our employee needs. We chose to provide contingent staff with access to Microsoft Exchange Online-while providing full-time staff with access to Exchange Online and Lync Enterprise voice. The key component for us was Microsoft Lync voice integration with our email. We had been using Cisco Call Manager, but we needed to "future-proof" our communications infrastructure and Lync was able to meet our needs. Our IT partner David Bleecker, Managing Partner of The Bleecker Consulting Group, became a vital asset during our Lync implementation and our deployment went very smoothly.

Office 365 is a great fit for us, the email and calendaring capabilities make all the difference. Shared calendaring-for teams and individuals-has become vital. We can easily schedule meetings by viewing each other's availability and, because of presence, we know exactly who's available or away, from minute to minute. I can just bring a USB headset and my entire office follows me. I still have the same visibility from anywhere I am working so if I'm traveling, I am able to function as effectively as if I were at my desk. 

We've set up training rooms with the Lync presentation capability that enables videoconferencing and whiteboarding functionality. In fact, due to their effectiveness, Lync presentations are becoming increasingly popular. But, if you can imagine, Lync voice is helping us better utilize resources. For instance, if our primary operator receptionist in California gets sick, someone in Florida can seamlessly fill in for her so we don't have to duplicate resources.

We now have the ability to actually operate from anywhere. We can select staff throughout the country that are good at what they do, without being limited by area. We didn't want to host IT infrastructure and we're really happy with the way Office 365 handles it all. That leaves us free to focus our money and resources on other more value-driven tasks, rather than things like server and infrastructure maintenance. Without those distractions, we're spending more time on design and innovation.