Formation and maintenance of IT infrastructure is one of the most important business objectives. It is one of the most costly and time consuming, especially in companies with a distributed or branch structure. The existence of cloud services has greatly facilitated the life of IT services, since it is possible to assemble several services, not to spend money on the server and hardware PBX, to use open-source solutions.
But even with this approach, sooner or later you can come to a dead end: the systems are scattered, not updated, not integrated with each other, disappear from the market, etc. And in such cases, the infrastructure is going through not the best of times, but the productivity of employees is falling, because you have to return to the methods of work adopted prior to automation. To avoid this, the virtual office should work as a clockwork: all the gears are coordinated and reliable. We, as a system integrator, were able to find such a solution.
When you do not want to The term “virtual office” has several interpretations. One of them is a common cloud environment (service) for all employees of a particular company, ensuring personal and teamwork of all team members. A virtual office is good because it allows you to immediately focus on work and business development, leaving behind the problems that arise in the course of deploying your own telecommunications infrastructure. ')
The advantage of such work is the possibility of scaling up your business without the need for significant investments in telecommunications. The cornerstone of the IT infrastructure of any type of business is communication: you need to communicate with each other, with clients and contractors, go online, hold webinars, teleconferences, and so on. If a company has a distributed team working remotely, the question becomes a priority. “Office in the cloud” allows geographically dispersed employees of the company to interact with each other without any problems, using a single system for the exchange, storage, processing and transmission of information and coordination of joint actions. All financial and labor costs for the maintenance of telecommunications equipment, hardware upgrades, scheduled work are the concern of the virtual office operator. Let us consider in more detail what advantages such a system gives.
By the way, let's make a reservation right away: sometimes a “virtual office” is called a cloud PBX, which provides reliable communication between company employees and customers and management. But in fact, this term is much broader, cloud PBX is just one of the elements of a virtual office.
Usually, the “office in the cloud” service is used by fast-growing companies, for whom it is crucial to integrate remote offices or subsidiaries into a single infrastructure. They also work with this type of service and companies that have an extensive network of sales agents or freelancers. A virtual office helps to significantly increase the effectiveness of communications with the central office or even organize remote training.
The service is also suitable for those companies who need to constantly communicate with partners or customers, as well as hold regular meetings and online presentations. The most relevant such solution is for companies with a distributed branch network. Cloud office is suitable for business of any size - small, medium or large.
Softline Virtual Office
One of the most reliable services of this type is Softline’s virtual office . It is a cloud platform with a monthly payment. The service was developed as part of the Microsoft Cloud OS Network Russia program with the participation of Microsoft engineers .
Softline's virtual office offers a range of business opportunities that are in demand by most companies in any field of activity.
Corporate mail based on Microsoft Exchange Server. This is a proven solution that has a user-friendly interface and is familiar to system administrators. The use of this mail ensures the safety of correspondence, conversations and all attachments.
Unified Communications (IM, video and audio calls) - Skype for business. Thanks to this service, company employees will always be in touch, wherever they are.
The ability to access the telephone network via SIP. Connection is made either to the customer's PBX, or to a SIP provider. This means that the company will be able to use all the advantages of SIP-telephony, such as conferencing, call distribution and redirection, IVR, number substitution, and so on.
Antivirus / Antispam. Malicious software is securely blocked - the service does not allow the appearance of viruses. Similarly, mail spam is also cut off.
Rent a full package of local Microsoft Office applications for working with documents without an Internet connection (additional service). Until now, Microsoft Office is ahead of other solutions, especially in terms of tables and presentations, which, by the way, are most often in demand by business for calculating and presenting results, results and preparing materials for demonstration.
The main advantages of the service are the possibility of a quick start (the introduction of a virtual office into the working system of a company takes only a few hours), an increase in the efficiency of employees, a reduction in financial costs and security. Together with the service, the customer receives a free basic setting of the service, as well as the ability to move his email to the cloud.
Work efficiency increases due to several factors.
Full automation of business processes. In any company, the number of routine, standard processes prevail over individual ones. And it is precisely in these processes that the human factor can play a cruel joke: the timing of the agreement is broken, the documents are lost, the performers shift the blame on each other. When the process is automated, the negative phenomena are leveled and the processing speed of each of the business processes increases significantly.
A single administration and user management console and services. The number of licenses can be changed depending on the needs of the business. This is especially important if the business is at the start - the number of personnel can change dramatically, new equipment, representatives and branches appear. Such an expansion usually requires huge financial and labor costs. With a cloud office, things are different - scalability is no longer a challenge.
Ability to upgrade. Keeping the software up to date is a guarantee that the functionality of the software will bring the maximum benefit. In addition, a convenient and fast upgrade facilitates the work of the IT service, makes the processes transparent and increases its efficiency.
As mentioned above, a virtual office can reduce operating costs and reduce licensing risks. Thanks to the service, the company can focus on its work, communication and ensuring their work - the care of Softline employees. There is a cloud service from Softline 24/7, around the clock and year-round.
All user data is secure, because all this information is stored in the data center companies of Tier 3 level. A plus is a completely transparent service level agreement ( Service Level Agreement , SLA ) with a guarantee of service availability. In order to guarantee uninterrupted operation, all system components are duplicated. The data centers Softlne provides duplicate fiber inputs. Together with other precautionary systems, this scheme guarantees customers seamless communication with each other.
Which companies are suitable virtual office
Solution "Virtual Office" - a set of services that are delivered to the client in the cloud. Depending on the size of the customer company, the implementation technology is determined. So, small and medium businesses get a multi-tenant solution: a single infrastructure where there are many small customers, and they receive service at the level of best practices. This approach is limited in fine-tuning and integration with client systems, policies that are common to all apply, any changes are general and are managed by us as a service provider. This is a cost-effective unified communications technology specifically for small companies. Although there are exceptions - for example, when a company plans to deploy powerful telephony, from the point of view of administration and economic benefits, it makes sense to use a dedicated server.
For large users (both in the number of employees and in the scale of business tasks), a separate installation on a dedicated architecture is provided. The client receives more services from Softline, can provide all the needs: apply the most subtle settings of the security policy, include additional services, gain flexibility when integrating into the already existing IT infrastructure.
Accordingly, there are different different infrastructure service management. In total there are two types:
For customers in Hosted mode (small and medium-sized companies), consolidated subscription management via the Website Panel interface in the Softline cloud is less functional than on a dedicated server. Customers can not make significant changes in order not to break the decision that other companies use with them.
For large customers, a web interface of service management consoles with direct access for setting security policies, user management, and so on.
At any time, the company administrator can view the current set of services, employee statistics, change access levels for individual users.
Financial benefits when acquiring a virtual office is obvious. This is, firstly, a reduction in operating costs. Secondly, reduction of expenses on software (problems of piracy are solved, etc.), reduction of licensing risks. Finally, the cost of cloud services does not fall into the capital costs of the organization. All software that is included in the service is updated almost immediately after the update of the developer of the software platform. All software is licensed. This applies to both Microsoft products and products of other partners. Softline will come to the aid of all users who work with Office 365, but are forced to transfer to the Russian cloud due to the entry into force of the Federal Law.
Working with the “Virtual Office” fully complies with the legislation of the Russian Federation in the field of personal data protection. According to the Federal Law No. 242 dated July 21, 2014 “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation regarding the clarification of the procedure for processing personal data in information and telecommunication networks”, as of September 1, 2015, in the Russian Federation a provision on the localization of storage and individual data processing processes. This provision obliges almost any company to store and process Russian data on servers that are physically located in Russia.
We should also note the work of the technical support service. Guaranteed reaction time to user inquiries is 15 minutes. Support - around the clock, 24/7/365. If a problem occurs, the support service solves it in a clearly defined time frame. The support team employs only qualified specialists who are able to effectively resolve any issue or problem.
Application for service connection can be left here .
Well, it remains only to wish you all successful work in the cloud. And now the work should not be virtual, but quite real!