Hosted Sharepoint and OneDrive for Business

Many people’s first introduction to “The Cloud” is the use of online data stores such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft’s One Drive; conveniently giving you access to your cloud data from multiple devices including your home PC, mobile and (if allowed) your work PC.

In an article in The Register, IT professionals cited one of the things that most scared them about the cloud was company employees, from the CEO downwards, saving confidential documents or sensitive personal data in public cloud based storage so they could access them from home. 

Businesses, however, want the flexibility that cloud storage can give them, especially for remote workers, so how do you provide that functionality and at the same time apply the same level of security you would apply to sensitive files on your company’s internal network without introducing expensive on premises document management systems. 

This is where Hosted SharePoint comes in.   Microsoft SharePoint, for those unfamiliar with it, is a web-based collaboration platform that includes sophisticated document/records management as one of its core features.   Hosted SharePoint is the same but rather than buying and administering your own servers you take advantage of the services of a Cloud hosting provider who may provide a site on a shared “Multi-tenanted” platform or your own dedicated SharePoint platform. 

Granular security can be applied to specific sites, folders and files at an individual and group level and full version history and audit trails can also be applied.   Document folders can be accessed over the internet using a URL and will appear as a folder in Windows Explorer enabling access from most Windows applications in exactly the same way as the likes of Dropbox.

The ability to connect to SharePoint folders over the web is nothing new, but Microsoft have introduced OneDrive for Business which enables users to connect to SharePoint folders and synchronise them to their local computer so they can be opened, edited and saved in offline mode when no internet connection is available and then synchronised back to the server once you’re back online.   “OneDrive for Business” gets installed as part of Microsoft Office, or can be downloaded as a standalone application.   It shouldn’t be confused with “OneDrive” which is a service aimed mainly at personal users.

Microsoft promote OneDrive for Business for use with their Office 365 subscription service; but Office 365 isn’t right for everyone, and many businesses prefer the benefits of the customer service and support provided by independent UK hosting providers like Your Office Anywhere.

Your Office Anywhere offer Hosted SharePoint as part of their Cloud portfolio either as a secure site within a shared multi-tenanted platform or, if specific requirements dictate it, can offer a dedicated Hosted SharePoint server giving you all the flexibility of your own SharePoint platform but we do all the hard work: offsite backups, support, maintenance, anti-virus and critical updates, as well as providing hardware failover for added resilience.

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To find out more about what Hosted SharePoint can do for your organisation contact us or call us on 01282 500318 to find out more.