We were looking at Amazon Web Services as a viable solution. However, Office 365 at the time was the way to go. It was cheaper. It was basically a one-stop shop, whereas Amazon Web Services was a pay-as-you-go arrangement. They also didn't have the flexibility that we were looking for. Plus, the cost for the data in and data out was quite substantial when you look at the grand scheme of things. We had to not only provide a workstation for the people to work on, but we also had to create a virtual workstation for them to work on. Therefore, we would have been basically paying twice.

That was kind of what we were running into with our other service provider, Ntiva. We were paying for the virtual machines as well as the equipment for the people to do their work on. What was nice about 365 was that we could provide them a license and, with that license they would have access to whatever our tenant offered as far as collaborative solutions such as SharePoint, OneDrive, the whole Office suite, et cetera. 

We have evaluated HCL & Google Suite.

We did not evaluate options beyond Google Docs and Libre Office. Once we understood that there was no point on going against the market standard for file formats, we went straight to Office 365. 

We have evaluated other solutions and we settled on Office 365 because of the stability and flexibility.

We spent a bit of time evaluating OpenOffice, LibreOffice, but Office 365 suited our particular needs very well. However, OpenOffice and LibreOffice are themselves good products and should be reviewed/considered for productivity applications. One of the main strengths of Office 365 is it runs on the Azure platform and has Microsoft behind it, which gives me a lot of confidence.

We looked at Google at Work.

Google Apps for Work/G Suite that I have used and like as well. I just think that MSFT Office 365 is appreciably a more powerful, detailed and granular tool.

Before making the decision to purchase this solution, other options were reviewed. There were three finalists: Google Apps, IBM Notes and Domino Social Edition, and Office 365.

During the next round, we evaluated the last two options. After about five weeks of running PoCs, we decided to purchase Office 365.

We evaluated G-Suite 

Because of the significant investment we already had in Microsoft, this made the most sense; thus, I did not evaluate competitors.

I would recommend using products from the same vendor (i.e., Microsoft).

There weren't any vendors on our shortlist. We just decided to go to the cloud version. We were already using it in our desktop environments, so there were no competitors.

We did not evaluate other options.

Frankly, the features packed by Microsoft and the compatibility with Microsoft operating systems provides you the best options when compared with other options available in market. You may Google or Bing the same for more comparisons.

We looked into an onsite email server, as well as staying with Google Apps for Business.

No.

We evaluated Amazon Web Services.

We evaluated CommuniGate Pro Server and Kerio Connect Mail.

No.