Office 365 E5 Lacks a ‘Total Solution’ Approach and is Expensive to Boot

Enterprises today are looking for a "total solution" for their communications requirements, not just a cloud service. Bandwidth, installation, end points (IP Phones) and 24/7 live support are all key components to a total solution. While Office 365 E5 may meet some requirements, it is far from being a total solution.

Missing key total solution components:

• No Free 24/7 Live 30-Second Support – Office 365 E5 does not offer free 24/7 ‘30 second’ live support which is critical for larger enterprises that are considering migrating their mission-critical IT services to the cloud.

PanTerra provides free 24/7 ‘30-second’ live support, guaranteeing a response from a capable support technician within 30 seconds, 24 by 7 by 365.

• No End-to-End Configuration, Installation and Provisioning of the Service – Office 365 E5 does not support a complete end-to-end solution installation including site analysis, pre-installation configuration, local number portability (LNP) management, on-site installation of any networking hardware, provisioning of the account and post-installation pro-active monitoring.

PanTerra provides a completely end-to-end "white glove" deployment solution which includes an average of 10 hours of a certified cloud specialist that will analyze, configure, install and provision all PanTerra services (including LNP porting management of all DID numbers) and pro-actively monitor the initial operation of the service until it is fully deployed and operational to an enterprise's complete satisfaction.

• No Support for Problem Resolution Management – Office 365 E5 does not support problem resolution management if there is a problem with a piece of the solution outside of the Office 365 E5 cloud service itself. Since the solution encompasses much more than just the cloud service (bandwidth, on-premises networking equipment, LAN environments and end point devices), problems can be extremely hard to resolve, especially if there is no coordination between the multiple vendors.

PanTerra takes complete responsibility for the management of the total cloud solution, not just the cloud service itself. With certified specialists in all aspects of the solution from end point hardware to LAN environments and networking equipment to WAN connectivity carriers and the cloud service itself, PanTerra is dedicated to making sure that an enterprise receives the highest performance cloud service possible.

Expensive to Implement

Microsoft implies that Office 365 E5 costs just $35 per user per month, but that's simply not true if you actually want to make calls. PSTN calling is extra and so is international calling. Of course faxing 800 numbers, contact center and auto attendant features aren't supported at all so those will have to be added on at extra cost as well. When you look at all the extra costs of implementing Office 365 E5 (both direct and indirect), it can be prohibitively expensive.

Office 365 E5 implementation costs include:

• Add-on Pricing Adds Up – The base Office 365 E5 $35 pricing doesn't get you any PSTN calling or conferencing at all! You need to add an additional $24/user/month to get PSTN calling and conferencing (which is capped at 3,000 min/user/month). Analytics is an additional $50/user/mo (and that doesn't even include contact center analytics because there is no contact center support). Thus you're looking at between $60 and $100 per user per month for basic voice features without any contact center, ACD or auto attendant features. If you add in ExpressRoute, you're talking HUGE money per user per month.

PanTerra provides its advanced CloudUC solution for as little as $14.95/user/mo and delivers all the enterprise features and security missing in the Office 365 E5 solution for less than $35/user/mon. In addition, PanTerra's SmartBand MPLS is on average less than half the cost of ExpressRoute. A comparable Office 365 E5 solution with PSTN calling and conferencing, secure ExpressRoute connectivity, contact center and auto attendant service and full analytics would cost over $200 per user per month.

• Expensive Hybrid Implementation Recommended or Required in Most Cases – With all of the limitations of the true cloud version of Office 365 E5, Microsoft highly recommends or requires the hybrid cloud/on-premise implementation called Cloud PBX with on-premises PSTN in order to actually deliver enterprise feature-sets. Unfortunately, this hybrid approach requires local Skype for Business servers and software in addition to the Skype for Business cloud service, thus incurring the worst of both worlds with respect to cost, obsolescence management, complexity, inflexibility and overall management.

PanTerra's CloudUC solution is 100% cloud, not requiring any dedicated on-premises hardware (other than the standard networking equipment an enterprise already has) to deliver all its features. This maximizes all of the benefits of a cloud deployed service, eliminating all the disadvantages of an ever obsoleting on-premises hybrid solution.

• ExpressRoute is Very Costly – Office 365 E5 strongly recommends you implement its cloud service with ExpressRoute, which is Microsoft's version of MPLS. Unfortunately, ExpressRoute is extremely costly and essentially non-competitive from a pricing and feature perspective. It doesn't support mixed Internet/MPLS content sharing, which means you have to get a separate Internet connection as well and for each location. If you want redundancy in your communications connectivity, that means providing dual ExpressRoute connections AND an Internet connection for every location! That's going to be incredibly expensive.

PanTerra offers a wide range of cost-effective connectivity including SmartBand and SmartBand MPLS. PanTerra's SmartBand product supports Internet/MPLS sharing as well as SmartBand/SmartBand MPLS intermixing on a location by location basis. This flexibility maximizes an enterprise’s ability to implement security and QoS where needed. An average 100 Mb SmartBand MPLS circuit costs $1,000/month while a 100 Mb ExpressRoute circuit can cost upwards of $2,000/month.