The Business Productivity Online Suite is a set of Microsoft hosted messaging and collaboration solutions including Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, and Microsoft Office Communications Online. These online services are designed to give your business streamlined communication with high availability, comprehensive security, and simplified IT management. When your company subscribes to one or more of the services, it connects to the rich interactivity of on-premises client and server applications with the flexibility and scalability of Web-based services. Because Microsoft hosts the services, it reduces your company’s need to maintain IT services on site. Many organizations today are moving to this "software-plus-services" model, because it decreases the need to manage hardware and software.
Features of the Business Productivity Online Suite
- E-mail and calendar functions —
Exchange Online delivers e-mail services including spam filtering,
anti-virus protection, and synchronization of mobile devices.
Through Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and Microsoft Office Outlook
Web Access, you can use the advanced e-mail, calendar, contact, and
task management features of Exchange Online. Office Outlook Web
Access enables users to access their e-mail messages from almost
any browser—whether the user is in the office or on the road.
- E-mail coexistence and migration tools
— The Business Productivity Online Suite includes e-mail
coexistence and migration tools. If you have Active Directory
directory services and Microsoft Exchange Server, the Microsoft
Online Services Directory Synchronization tool synchronizes your
user accounts, contacts, and groups from your local environment to
Microsoft Online Services. This tool also makes your Microsoft
Exchange Global Address List (GAL) available in Exchange Online.
Use the Microsoft Online Services Migration Tools to forward copies
of your Exchange Server mail to your Exchange Online mailboxes. You
can also use the Migration Tools to copy content from your Exchange
Server, POP3, or IMAP4 e-mail server mailboxes to your Exchange
Online mailboxes.
- Document collaboration and workspaces
— SharePoint Online allows you to share and work together on
documents, maintain version control for shared documents, create
intranet sites to manage projects and project workflows, post
calendar information, and set up wikis and blogs.
- Web conferencing — Office Live Meeting
allows you to hold online meetings with colleagues, customers, and
partners in real time. Office Live Meeting participants can convene
online to share documents, ask questions, work on a virtual
"whiteboard," and talk to each other during the meeting.
- Microsoft Online Services Administration
Center — The Administration Center gives you an online
management portal to manage your services and users. From the
Administration Center, service administrators can import multiple
user accounts, use e-mail migration tools, create distribution
lists, create SharePoint site collections, and submit service
requests to Microsoft Online Services Technical Support.
- Microsoft Online Services Sign In
application — The Sign In application is a tool that
automatically sets up services and allows users to access all of
their services with no need to sign in each time they use them. The
Sign In application is available from both the Administration
Center and My Company Portal.
Note: |
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| Your services may vary depending upon the services selected at purchase. |
Other Resources
- To learn more about Microsoft Online
Services, see the Learn page.
- See how simple it is to set up and manage the
communication and collaboration features of the Business
Productivity Online Suite in this demo.
