Office 365--Microsoft's Web-Based Suite--Launched A Public Beta, But Will Advisors Switch? Hot

Not yet. I doubt advisors are ready to switch to using Word and Outlook online. But Office 365 represents a big step forward.

The benefits are getting to be significant. Collaboration with colleagues in SharePoint, easy online meetings from your calendar, and running Exchange online.

But many of these features are already available from other specialty apps. Advisor are already getting some of these features from specialty apps that make it easier to set up meetings online (Tungle), make it easy to run online meetings (GoToMeeting,Mikogo), and support online document management.

Advisors are slowly shifting to the cloud one step at a time right now. So moving everything at once would be overwhelming. 

Plus, Microsoft faces stiff competition from Google's cloud based productivity suite.

While I am all for advisor moving to the cloud, I don't see a lot of reason for advisory firms to adopt Office 365 at this point. What do you think?

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