- Osterman Research on behalf of McAfee
Microsoft Office 365 offers email, instant messaging, telephony, content management, desktop productivity, security, archiving and other capabilities delivered from Microsoft's worldwide network of cloud data centers. While Office 365 is, to some extent, marketed as something of a "one-stop-shop" for communication and collaboration needs, it is a generalist product by its very nature--consequently Office 365 cannot satisfy every requirement for every user at every organization.
This report from Osterman Research suggests that Office 365 subscribers will need to use third party offerings to supplement the capabilities in Microsoft's offering. The survey, conducted in early May 2013 with the Osterman Research survey panel, focused on capabilities, features and functions that organizations need for their communication and collaboration systems, and how well these might be satisfied by Office 365 and other solutions.
Over the last 18 months, I've seen many top tier partners work with Microsoft to introduce Office 365 as a useful collaboration solution, especially when it serves as a viable tool for SMBs. This piece does not suggest that 365 is a bad thing; in fact quite the opposite. However, it does offers some good advice coming from those survey on how it can be improved for particular vertical solutions.