Last month I had two calls with two of my favorite Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud providers, Microsoft and Nintex, and both were along the same line of discussion: “My colleague is asking me: Why does it cost more to go to the online solution? I’ve already paid for the on-premises, shouldn’t I be reducing my cost for going to the Cloud?”
And both providers gave me an answer that I already knew: “Because going to the cloud is not the same as staying on-premises.” For most software companies that offer both on-premises and SaaS, what you have on-premises is typically only a small portion of the functionality that you are going to get by moving to the SaaS offering.
In the case of Microsoft, if you are on-premises with any or all of the Office 365 workloads (Exchange, SharePoint, Skype for Business), taking advantage of Microsoft E3, E4 and the newly released E5 SKUs for Office 365, gives you far more benefits than what you have on-premises:
- 5 copies Office for each licensed user, with access to the most current version
- Office Web Applications (OWA)
- 50 GB Exchange mailboxes
- 150 MB email attachments
- 1 TB/per user of One Drive for Business + 10 GB File Storage and Sharing.
- Unlimited web calls, conferences and Instant Messaging with Skype for Business
- Personalized search and discovery with Delve
- Corporate video portal that provides you with full control and complete privacy
- Management, upgrades and new functionality
And lest you have concerns about security, I ask you to consider: All the known breaches that have been so public – were all executed against the in house data center. Check out Microsoft’s Trust Center at https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-trust-center-welcome
It’s a similar story for Nintex. You may have workflow on-premises, but maybe not forms? What about Software Assurance or some level of support? When you go to Nintex for Office 365 you get:
- Nintex Workflow
- Nintex Forms
- Nintex Mobility
- Management, upgrades and new functionality
Now is the time for you to be thinking about how the Cloud is part of your overall data center strategy. Would love to hear what your plans are!