Microsoft recently made available in New Zealand the following online services to all partners and clients under the BPOS banner (Business Productivity Online Services). This offering has some real value if your organisation is a small business who do not need to worry too much about managing your IT infrastructure on premise. MS has made available SharePoint, MS Exchange and Office Communications and Live Meeting which you can pay as you go for a fraction of the cost of hosting and managing your own infrastructure.

The registration process was very straightforward and I was able to get up and running within 10 minutes of going through the online sign on process. From a cost point of view a single mailbox for Exchange start at $17 or so. Check out the online calculator.

You can trial the “Business Productivity Online Standard Suite” for 30 days without any cost with all the features. All of your management is done via an online dashboard that gives you access to all the online services you have selected.

Check out and Trial BPOS at > https://mocp.microsoftonline.com

For Enterprise customers who want to migrate from on premise Exchange to Online MSFT provides support tools and guidance. The tools available are as follows.

• Microsoft Online Services Migration Tool for Exchange - 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. This product intended for use with Microsoft Online Services only
• Microsoft Online Services Directory Synchronization - Use the Microsoft Online Services Directory Synchronization tool to maintain one-way directory synchronization of all user accounts and mail-enabled contacts and groups from your local Active Directory directory service to Microsoft Online Services. This product intended for use with Microsoft Online Services only
• Microsoft Online Migration Toolkit - Sample planning materials to help your organization migrate from on-premise Microsoft Exchange Servers to Exchange Online

Compared to Google if you are already use Microsoft software such as Exchange, Outlook and SharePoint the BPOS suite provides clear guidance and clarity on how you can move your services and reduce your overall ongoing costs of having on premise software and hardware. Would love to hear some comments on what you think how these services can benefit small to medium businesses.