Can I do that with Office 365? (So many questions. So little time. Part 23.)

Alex M asked several questions about Office 365 at our TechNet Event in Kansas City:

“Do we need to purchase Office 365 for resources (for example: conference rooms)?”
”Can the user access Office 365 from work PC as well as his personal PC from home?”
”If we are using cloud services, why do we need any servers (including virtual servers)?”

And my initial answers are: “No”, “Yes”, and “Because”.  

“Can you address these more specifically?”

Whoa.. pretty demanding there, Alex.  Okay…

—

Your first question was…

“Do we need to purchase Office 365 for resources (for example: conference rooms)?”

The Exchange Server running in Office 365 is no different than if you have Exchange in your datacenter.  But I think what you’re really asking is: Do I have to pay for a user license if I’m creating a mailbox that represents a room resource or some other schedulable resource?  And the answer to that is still NO.  According to the first paragraph on page 34 of the Microsoft Exchange Online for Enterprises Service Description document…

Conference room mailboxes represent a company’s meeting rooms or other facilities. Users can reserve rooms by adding the conference room email alias to meeting requests in Outlook or Outlook Web App. Conference rooms appear in the Global Address List in Outlook and Outlook Web App, and administrators can create conference rooms in the Exchange Control Panel or through Remote PowerShell. Administrators can also use the Directory Synchronization tool to synchronize conference rooms from on-premises Active Directory. The mailbox quota for conference rooms is 250 MB. Conference rooms do not require a user subscription license. Custom resource properties cannot be added to conference rooms in Exchange Online.

So that’s good news.

—

Your next question was…

”Can the user access Office 365 from work PC as well as his personal PC from home?”

And my answer is absolutely YES, if you’re talking about accessing Office 365 e-mail and documents from a browser.  You can do that from anywhere you have connectivity.  However, if you’re asking about the subscription levels that include the desktop installation of Office 2010 Professional Plus, and whether nor not you have the right to install it onto more than one PC… Well, what do you think?  Would Microsoft give you the ability to install more than one copy of Office?  And if so, how many should we let you install for a subscribed user?

“Um.. I dunno… in the past you gave us some home use rights for some licenses.. so, maybe 2?”

How about FIVE?

“Seriously?”

Yep.  Check out the Office Professional Plus description page, where it says right there:

(Highlighting and smiley-face added for extra emphasis and fun.)

So, yes.  Each subscribed user can install Office Professional Plus on as many as 5 devices.

—

Your final question was…

”If we are using cloud services, why do we need any servers (including virtual servers)?”

And my answer is simply “Because”.  Because you might want Active Directory in-house for local authentication and policy application for your managed computers.  Because you might want local file services in some cases.  Because you have other applications besides the productivity suite that is Office 365.  There are lot of “becauses”, but it’s all going to depend on your situation.  Sure, if you’re a professional or business that can do everything they need using Office 365 and managing user accounts entirely in the cloud, then you may not need servers at all.  Just a good Internet connection.

—

Did I answer your questions sufficiently?  Have any more?  Care to share some comments/criticisms/sarcasm?  It’s all fair game!  Enter a comment and let’s talk!