Office 365 allows you to use a pure cloud environment or integrate cloud services with your local data. While you perform Office 365 deployment you can migrate some users to the cloud and keep others on-premises. The best thing is that your workers most likely will never see the difference. MS Office is the only cloud services vendor that offers a seamless integration of your cloud data with on-premises files and folders. And you are the one to make the choice.
If you want to deploy the hybrid Office 365 solutions you can do it in 2 different ways:
- You can split your local and online users to Exchange and SharePoint.
- You can have each of your workers set up to any of the workloads (Exchange, SharePoint, or Lync) in the cloud and use the other workloads locally.
Lots of businesses use Active Directory and it may become your choice as well.
Office 365 gives you such tools as Active Directory Sync (DirSync) and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) that allow you to integrate Office 365 into your local Active Directory infrastructure without any issue and have a single sign on tool for both users in the cloud and on-premises.
If you decide to delegate the configuring of your Office 365 infrastructure to one of Office 365 partners pay attention to the following tips:
See if they offer on-premises, cloud-based, and hybrid options, or will they force you to choose just one of them.
Will they offer a solution that will totally work for your current situation.
See if they can migrate all your users at once.
Most of all see if they offer any automated Office 365 backup tool to provide the security of your cloud data.