What is BPOS? What is Microsoft Online? These are questions that a number of businesses seem to be asking in their search for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, CRM Online and the other Microsoft-hosted cloud services. 

Microsoft Online is Microsoft’s “cloud” or “hosted” or “SaaS” versions of their popular products such as Exchange and SharePoint. You can use the Microsoft Cloud instead of buying hardware, licensing software and paying for configuration backup and maintenance. There are consulting fees to switch to Microsoft Online – it is not something you want to do completely alone, but they are far less than an on-site deployment. 

BPOS is an acronym for Business Productivity Online Suite which is a packaged offering from Microsoft Online.  In the BPOS package you get the benefit of buying power to lower the price of a group of products and services that if purchased separately would cost significantly more.

In the BPOS standard package you receive Exchange, SharePoint, OCS and LiveMeeting for about $10-$20 per user per month.  There are other add-ons such as Blackberry messaging and CRM which knock the price up slightly per user. The mailbox sizes for Exchange blow away any other third party provider so there’s not much use making a comparison there.

To make using all these hosted services easy and turnkey Microsoft has built a SSO client (Single Sign On).  This is a program that runs on each users’ computer and automatically signs them into their different hosted services and helps with password resets.  This lightweight, easy to use SSO client is another BPOS advantage over other services.  For example, once the user or IT installs the SSO client, all the user has to do it sign in and it will automatically configure Outlook and OCS messaging.

Microsoft Online and the BPOS package have been around since late 2008.  Microsoft provides reguarly quarterly updates to the service that are seamless to end users.  Hopefully this gives you a better idea what BPOS is!

Creating resources such as projectors, conference rooms, or training areas helps reduce double booking and other conflicts.  Exchange Online Services through your BPOS account by Microsoft Online Services allows you to create a shared resource such as a conference room or projector.  Doing so is easy and once created these resources can be seen in both the Outlook desktop client in the calender area as well as in Outlook Web Access (OWA) by setting up a new meeting, adding the resource as an attend and checking the associated free/busy information. 

Here's a short screencast on how to create the resource object in Exchange Online Services.