Page 60 - MS Office 365 for Dummies 3rd Ed (2019)

And because Exchange can be located anywhere, a whole bunch of possibilities open up around who is responsible for managing the fairly complicated server software. If Exchange is running on a server under your desk, then it is highly likely you are the lucky person responsible for it. If it is in your company data center, then you probably have a person, or team of people, responsible for admin- istering Exchange. When you sign up for Office 365, you are letting Microsoft take on all the responsibilities of managing Exchange. Microsoft has Exchange running in its data center, and you simply connect to it with Outlook and use all the functionality.
In this chapter, you find out why letting Microsoft take responsibility for Exchange creates a flexible and reliable option for your email, calendaring, contacts, and task needs. You discover that you can access your corporate Exchange system from almost anywhere at any time and on any device. You also find out about some of the protection and compliance features that take some of the risk out of letting Microsoft take the lead by managing its Exchange product.
Gaining Flexibility and Reliability
Key traits in any good relationship are reliability and flexibility. You look for these same qualities in computer software. When you deploy software, you want the process to be flexible and predictable. After the software is deployed, you want it to be reliable and dependable. Exchange Online falls into the category of service- based software. With service-based software, you don’t have to develop, install, or manage the software. You simply sign up and start using it.
Deployment flexibility
When it comes time to roll out software, you have a number of options. You can pay someone to develop software from scratch, which is known as custom develop- ment. You can buy software, install it, and manage it yourself. Or, you can sign up to use software that is installed and managed by someone else. This third option is called software as a service (SaaS). You sign up to use the software and pay for it as a service on a monthly basis. (See Chapter 1 for more on SaaS.)
Microsoft Office 365 is a SaaS offering by none other than Microsoft. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars building state-of-the-art data centers all over the world. These data centers are staffed by Microsoft employees whose entire respon- sibility is managing the Microsoft products offered in the Office 365 product.
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