Collaboration tools have been generating a lot of interest among corporate and enterprises. With its curiosity piquing with each and every foray made into its corporate social media, any software that can ease communication, increase worker productivity etc., is bound to generate interest. Microsoft, with its desire to address this segment of the market, came up with its own set of collaboration tools in the form of:
- SharePoint: This in its upgraded SharePoint 2013 version has made it all the more easy to collaborate when working in the Microsoft environment. Some of its upgraded features include:
- The ability to synchronise SharePoint 2013 and Outlook 2013 lists thereby enabling the user to access both easily. This can be done with the help of a simple configuration.
- The ability to create site mailboxes in Exchange 2013 with the help of SharePoint. This facilitates better collaboration between the two and enables Outlook 2013 to behave like a SharePoint client.
- The new Exchange 2013 which is easily available through Exchange Online Plans helps to further tighten its integration with SharePoint.
- The e-discovery features of SharePoint 2013 makes it all the more easier to mine data in the Exchange Server.
- Manual migration of public folder data from the Exchange to SharePoint.
- Office 365 Cloud: This is the hosted online version of immensely popular Microsoft Office software. It seeks to create a master tool in collaboration which is unrivalled in reliability and unmatched in flexibility. This is done by combining the power of SharePoint, Lync and Microsoft Exchange. In fact so powerful is this combination that no other argument can stand against people converting to this cloud server from Microsoft. The advantages of this tool lie in the fact that:
- It is able to cater to the demand of a single collaborative tool for communication capabilities of both setup and hosted facilities as it makes fiscal sense for the corporate and organisations concerned.
- It offers corporate and business organisations a choice of having Exchange 2013 which is an on-premise tool and the Hybrid setup for Exchange 2013. They can thus weight the advantages and disadvantages of both with respect to the needs and wants of their organisation and choose what the best option.
- It is also available now for people using Apple devices like iPad and iPhones in the form of the Outlook web application. This is of great advantage for those users who prefer to keep updated by configuring their emails on their mobiles and tablets.
- It offers an uptime of about 99.9% which according to O365cloudexperts is by itself a very powerful tool.
- Lync: This is another collaboration tool introduced by Microsoft which has absolutely and totally caught the fancy of corporate, business houses and organisations alike. It is a platform built to cater to the needs of unified communications. This tool thus delivers an infrastructure which has the capability of integrating business channels at the same time working with Microsoft Exchange, Outlook Web application and office 365. Some features which keep Lync functioning at its peak are:
- It has video and audio capabilities which are future ready and hence able to service almost all the requirements of the enterprises.
- It has a host of other features like
- Conferencing or enabling online meetings ,
- Sharing content in the form of file transfers and also instant messaging,
- New and added voice features to communicate specifically with external enterprises and organisations,
- Choosing new endpoints and
- Supporting branch offices.
- It also facilitates tight integration of this software with the Office suite, MS Exchange and SharePoint. In short it has now become the new Skype for Business Pricing for being able to deliver all that Skype has to deliver and much more.
There have been many arguments for and against the collaboration tools introduced by Microsoft. But all are unified in the view that it has a great future and almost all enterprises, organisation etc., are looking forward to getting introduced to them.