Microsoft Online Services
Customer Solution Case Study
Consulting Firm Chooses Microsoft over
Google for Better Collaboration with Customers
Overview
Country or Region: Denmark
Industry: IT Services
Customer Profile
SaaS-it Consult is a leading European
business enablement consultancy. It works
with ISVs, value-added hosting and service
providers, and others to optimize their
Software as a Service business
capabilities.
Business Situation
SaaS-it wanted to use more messaging and
collaboration services than it had been
using, but it also wanted better local
support than it had been getting from its
overseas service provider.
Solution
SaaS-it turned to Copenhagen-based
dezyples, which migrated SaaS-it from its
Hosted Microsoft Exchange-based service
to the Business Productivity Online Suite
from Microsoft Online Services.
Benefits
Enterprise-class messaging and
collaboration capabilities
 Rapid deployment
 Low monthly subscription fee
 Ease of collaboration with clients

“We ultimately decided to stick with the applications
that we were already familiar with...and that we know
our customers use. That makes it much easier to
collaborate.”
Anders Trolle-Schultz, Principal, SaaS-it Consult
Danish IT firm SaaS-it Consult, Ltd. wanted to expand the portfolio
of messaging and collaboration services it was using—both to work
more effectively and to better advise its customers about how best
to promote Software as a Service. SaaS-it considered subscribing to
more services from a U.S.-based service provider, but SaaS-it
executives wanted local support services. SaaS-it originally looked
at Google Apps, but its executives found them confusing and not
very conducive to collaboration with clients working with Microsoftbased applications and services. Then SaaS-it met Copenhagenbased IT service provider dezyples, which introduced it to the
Business Productivity Online Suite from Microsoft® Online Services.
Microsoft Online Services provides access to all the messaging and
collaboration services that SaaS-it wanted, with local support from
dezyples for any needs that might arise.
“We were up and
running with the
Business Productivity
Online Suite in less than
36 hours. I was amazed
at how quickly it all
happened.”
Anders Trolle-Schultz, Principal, SaaS-it
Consult, Ltd.
Situation
Solution
For more than a year, the consultants at
Copenhagen-based SaaS-it Consult had been
using an e mail service based on Hosted
Microsoft Exchange and supported by a
service provider based in the United States.
While SaaS-it executives appreciated the
features and functionality of Exchange, they
were eager to expand their knowledge of
other messaging and collaboration products.
SaaS-it is in the business of helping
independent software vendors, value-added
hosting and service providers, and others
enlarge their own Software as a Service
practices.
dezyples and the Business Productivity Online
Suite enable SaaS-it to gain access to a full
range of enterprise-class messaging and
collaboration services without having to
procure or maintain an in-house
infrastructure for those services. Microsoft
Online Services enables access to
collaboration tools and shared workspaces,
workflow, desktop and mobile e-mail,
calendaring and contacts, instant messaging,
presence, audio/video conferencing, and
Web conferencing. Yet because the
applications supporting these services—
including Microsoft SharePoint Online,
Microsoft Exchange Online, Office Live
Meeting, and Microsoft Office
Communications Online—run on servers
residing in state-of-the-art Microsoft data
centers, none of the organizations using
these services needs to invest in on-premises
infrastructure to take advantage of these
services.
SaaS-it could have expanded its existing
service plan to begin using the collaboration
features of Hosted Microsoft SharePoint®,
which its Hosted Exchange provider also
offered. However, SaaS-it executives knew
they might want some local support in
developing a SharePoint environment—both
for themselves and for their customers—and
that posed a bit of a challenge. The provider
they were using in the U.S. did not have any
support staff in Denmark, and SaaS-it
consultants had occasionally called the
provider’s U.S. support lines with a question
about Exchange only to find that they were
calling outside of business hours.
SaaS-it executives wanted to start working
with a service provider in Denmark that would
be more readily accessible if they had
questions or problems. They also wanted to
avoid building their own internal
infrastructure to support the additional
messaging and collaboration services they
wanted to use. By turning to Copenhagenbased IT service provider dezyples and the
Business Productivity Online Standard Suite
from Microsoft Online Services, SaaS-it
achieved both goals.
Indeed, Microsoft Online Services hosts and
maintains the servers supporting the
Business Productivity Online Suite with its
own staff of hardware and software experts.
It supplies patches and security updates in
real time, and guarantees 99.9 percent
uptime with a financially-backed SLA so
SaaS-it always has access to the latest, most
up-to-date versions of the applications to
which it subscribes.
Pay as You Go
The Business Productivity Online Suite fits
neatly into a small business customer’s
budget. Instead of having to purchase
separate server and client licenses for
infrastructure components such as Microsoft
Office SharePoint Server or Microsoft
Exchange Server, SaaS-it can simply
subscribe to the applications its employees
need on a per-user, per-month basis. This
eliminates up-front licensing costs and
enables SaaS-it to cover the nominal expense
of accessing these services using operational
rather than capital budgets. If some of the
users at SaaS-it need access to only one
service—Microsoft Exchange Online, for
example—Microsoft Online Services makes it
possible to subscribe to a single service for
an even lower monthly fee.
“I can’t walk out my door
and shout, ‘Google, I
need help!’ and expect
anyone to come running.
But if I walk out and yell,
‘Microsoft, I need help!’
I’m pretty certain that a
Microsoft partner will be
there within five
minutes.”
Anders Trolle-Schultz, Principal, SaaS-it
Consult, Ltd.
The Business Productivity Online Suite offers
other advantages, too. If SaaS-it finds itself in
need of training, customized coding,
SharePoint Online application development,
or anything else related to the capabilities of
the Business Productivity Online Suite, it can
always call on its partner dezyples, which
essentially plays the role of an external IT
department to SaaS-it. “We don’t have any
internal IT personnel at all,” says Anders
Trolle-Schultz, one of the principals of SaaS-it.
“That’s why we rely on dezyples.”
Benefits
For SaaS-it, dezyples and the Business
Productivity Online Suite offered the perfect
messaging and collaboration solution. SaaS-it
officials wanted all the features and
functionality offered by the Business
Productivity Online Suite, they wanted local
messaging and collaboration expertise and
support, and they did not want to host or
support any of these services themselves.
Better than Google
Early on in the search for a new messaging
and collaboration environment, SaaS-it
executives looked at both Microsoft-based
services and non-Microsoft-based services.
They quickly realized why they used
Microsoft-based applications and services.
“We looked at Google Apps to see whether
we should have a go with that,” says Anders
Trolle-Schultz, “but I had difficulty finding my
way around Google. The Google applications
were not applications that we knew, and we
ultimately decided to stick with the
applications that we were already familiar
with, that we knew would work well with the
Microsoft Office applications we use on the
desktop, and that we know our customers
use. That makes it much easier to
collaborate. Yes, we might have saved one or
two dollars per month going with Google
Apps, but it wasn’t worth it. Selecting
software that makes it more difficult to work
is the wrong way to save money.
“Besides,” Anders Trolle-Schultz goes on to
say, “where do I turn for help if I need help
with Google Apps? I can’t walk out my door
and shout, ‘Google, I need help!’ and expect
anyone to come running. But if I walk out and
yell, ‘Microsoft, I need help!’ I’m pretty certain
that a Microsoft partner will be there within
five minutes. It seems like there’s a Microsoft
partner on every corner.”
Simplified Management
SaaS-it chose to team up with Microsoft
partner dezyples to implement Microsoft
Online Services. The two companies have a
good chemistry and they speak the same
business and technical language. Once SaaSit decided to move from its Hosted Exchange
environment to the Business Productivity
Online Suite, dezyples facilitated the
migration. dezyples set up the new Business
Productivity Online Suite accounts and
helped transfer SaaS-it employee inboxes
(each about 2.5 gigabytes) from the old
environment to the new and it facilitated the
redirection of the SaaS-it domain name
servers so that e-mail directed to the SaaS-it
domain went to the servers in the Microsoft
Online Services data center.
“We were up and running with the Business
Productivity Online Suite in less than 36
hours, says Anders Trolle-Schultz. “I was
amazed at how quickly it all happened.”
Today, SaaS-it shoulders none of the
administrative or system maintenance tasks
associated with using these enterprise-class
messaging and collaboration services.
Microsoft Online Services provides ongoing
software and server maintenance, including
backups, application and security updates,
even antivirus software updates. This leaves
SaaS-it personnel free to focus on the task of
evangelizing SaaS, which is definitely the way
they prefer it.
“If we run into any
issues when we’re
working on a SharePoint
site or trying to do
something new, we can
always pick up the
phone and call dezyples.
They’re right there.”
Anders Trolle-Schultz, Principal, SaaS-it
Consult, Ltd.
“We have outsourced everything,” says
Anders Trolle-Schultz. “Not just IT, but many
of our internal business processes, too. We
really try to focus on doing what we’re good at
and relying on other people do what they’re
good at.”
Enterprise-class Security and Reliability
Today, SaaS-it is building out SharePoint
Online sites both for itself and for its
customers, and Anders Trolle-Schultz is quite
comfortable with the levels of support his
company has. The SharePoint Online sites
are running on highly reliable servers, and he
has a high level of confidence in the ability of
Microsoft Online Services to keep his sites—
and his clients’—up and running.
“This is a Microsoft-supported service,”
Anders Trolle-Schultz notes. “Microsoft is
putting its good name and reputation on the
line, and that leads me to believe that this is
going to be a reliable solution. Companies are
depending on the Business Productivity
Online Suite, so I’m confident that Microsoft
will make sure I can access my services and
data when I need to.”
Anders Trolle-Schultz is just as comfortable
on the local level with the support he gets
from dezyples. They’re there if and when he
needs them, but they’re not in the way.
“That’s our comfort zone,” says Anders TrolleSchultz. “If we run into any issues when we’re
working on a SharePoint site or trying to do
something new, we can always pick up the
phone and call dezyples. They’re right there.”
For More Information
Microsoft Online Services
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 4269400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 5682495. Customers who are deaf or hard-ofhearing can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in
the United States or (905) 568-9641 in
Canada. Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary. To access information
using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
Microsoft Online Services is a business-class
communications and collaboration software
offering delivered as a subscription service,
hosted by Microsoft, and sold with partners.
These services help make it easier for
customers to rapidly and cost-effectively
access the most up-to-date technologies, and
are designed for rapid deployment to provide
customers with streamlined communications,
simplified management, and business-class
reliability and security.
For IT staff, Microsoft Online Services helps
reduce the burden of performing routine IT
management tasks such as installation,
provisioning, ongoing maintenance, patches,
updates, and upgrades, making it possible for
them to spend more time on initiatives that
move the business forward. These services
are backed by strong SLAs and are designed
to meet the regulatory compliance and
reliability needs of enterprise customers. On
a technical level, the services boast the
sophistication and reliability that customers
expect from Microsoft, which continues to
invest heavily in building data centers to
support these services.
For more information about dezyples
products and services, call +45 36 467
867 or visit the Web site at:
www.dezyples.dk
For more information about SaaS-it Consult
Ltd. products and services, call +45 8851
0210 or visit the Web site at: www.saasit.net
For more information, visit:
www.microsoft.com/online
Software and Services

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT
MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Document published April 2009
Services
− Microsoft Exchange Online
− Microsoft SharePoint Online