Whether working for a large or a small company, today's employees often work from multiple devices and locations during the day – perhaps checking e-mail on their phone over breakfast, catching up on the news on their tablet or collaborating with partners or suppliers from their laptop in the office.
Given these trends, small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are increasingly adopting cloud-based services and applications like Office 365 to improve productivity and compete more effectively with large enterprises. A couple of years ago it was prohibitive for SMBs to invest let alone keep up-to-date with new technologies. It was time, effort and budget that SMBs simply did not have. Now with Office 365 even small businesses can use the same technologies as large enterprises enabling them to use voice, video and IM to collaborate with customers, suppliers and staff and ensure their employees have access to company data from any mobile device while at the same time protecting their wallets.
A Forrester Total Economic Impact study commissioned by Microsoft shows that Office 365 provided immediate relief to the technology growing pains of small to mid-size businesses while increasing mobile worker productivity totaling $76,000 over a three period 1.
An IDG Unified Communication and Collaboration Study 2015 further shows that Unified Communications (UC) applications are a priority for SMB. According to the survey 66% of SMB organizations plan to implement or upgrade UC&C solutions within the next year.
As the workforce becomes increasingly mobile, the reliable delivery of Office 365 to the end user is increasingly important. Most Wi-Fi networks aren't up to the task and need upgrading to handle the surge of mobile users and voice applications. They can't detect or prioritize, Office 365 over non-business critical applications like social media or Facebook traffic and very few offer Quality of Service for Office 365.
Aruba Instant the perfect match for Office 365
To keep up with the increasingly mobile world, SMBs need a simple, powerful, and cost-effective Wi-Fi solution, which is exactly what they get with Aruba's Instant Wi-Fi. The Instant 802.11ac APs deliver gigabit speeds and a high-performance wireless network that customers can rely on to improve productivity and stay competitive. With embedded controller functionality, Aruba Instant APs deliver an enterprise-grade Wi-Fi solution that is affordable and requires no onsite IT and little setup.
With Aruba Instant, SMB customers can also take advantage of Office 365. It is uniquely tailored for Office 365 and unified communications and can apply Quality of Service to ensure a reliable delivery of Office 365 traffic.
To ensure the best experience for end users, the Instant features Adaptive Radio Management (ARM) for RF optimization and interference mitigation, as well as AppRF technology, which automatically identifies and prioritizes Office 365. Aruba's unique ClientMatch technology further ensures that roaming devices are always connected to the best Wi-Fi access point to enhance mobility and avoid dropped connections.
Implementing QoS for Office 365 has never been easier. Simply identify your Office 365 web policy in the AppRF Module and the Instant will do the work for you.
Click to learn more about Aruba Instant for SMB.
