Office 365 is a fantastic product, however in Australia up until next year at least when purchasing options are changing, Office 365 down under has needed to be purchased through Telstra and their T-Suite offerings.
Being that this is Microsoft’s fastest growing business ($1.5B) having a single reseller for this can make it difficult for many resellers in the country to recommend Office 365 to customers.
That aside, the biggest gripe (outside of the increase in price for Aus) I have with this is the need to have an ABN, or an Australian Business Number.
This is not an Office 365 requirement, but rather a Telstra requirement and one that was confirmed with one of their consultants on the phone.
In our case we have our family/hobby email domain. To save power at home and get away from running that Trial Exchange 2013 server with two accounts I decided to move them to Office 365 – but wait I need an ABN!
There appears to be no way around this until Microsoft Partners are able to resell this next year, and who knows what margins will be placed on the product then. In every country across this planet you can sign up, direct with Microsoft and pay via credit card month to month with no other questions asked – just not in Australia.
So for me I am “trialing” this product and just happen to be residing in New Zealand… From there, in the Office 365 portal I can then change my location to Australia.
Sorry Telstra, I was willing to work with the ever so slight price rise and purchase through you, but not with the need to have an ABN.
onthe365 