In the last few decades enterprise IT has undergone some incredible inventions. These are the contributions from major as well as small to medium organizations. No doubt, Microsoft 365, formerly Office 365 has radically changed business workspace with its state of the art enterprise IT environment. Maybe one of the most significant features of it is cloud-based support, which most companies can utilize at their best. It provides 1TB (1024GB) OneDrive cloud storage that helps in ransomware detection, file recovery, and safely managing documents in the drive.
Office 365 components overview:
Outlook – Outlook Mail, Outlook Calendar, Outlook People, and Outlook Tasks
Hosted services – Exchange, Skype for Business, SharePoint, and the browser-based Office Web Apps suite.
Collaboration tools – OneDrive for Business, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Outlook Online, Yammer, Skype for Business, and Delve boards
Office 365 education – Office 365 Education, Microsoft Live@edu
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What are the advantages of moving to Office 365?
1. It gives you the opportunity of the pay-as-you-go model, which is flexible and predictable for any business. Unlike an on-premise server, you can buy as many licenses as you want. In addition to that, you can scale up or scale down as per the requirement. So, it saves a lot of time and up-front cost.
2. Backed by Microsoft’s trusted name, the Office 365 product is a robust infrastructure that leverages extended uptime, disaster recovery geo-redundancy, and robust security.
3. It gives you the flexibility to buy the licenses you need for each user. This is extremely helpful for small to medium level businesses who have a limited requirement to expand their business.
4. Unlike Microsoft exchange, you no need to upgrade or update patches regularly for Microsoft 365 manually. Instead, for Microsoft 365, the upgrades happen automatically, which significantly reduces your IT management costs and ensure security.
5. Another significant advantage of automatic patch update is you don’t need to take your server offline for long hours. Additionally, unlike the manual patch update, there is no chance of error in the case of Microsoft 365. So, your email server always remains up, whereas the updates work parallel.
6. Single sign-on (SSO) is one of the significant advantages of Microsoft 365 from the users’ perspective. This helps users to avoid multiple user ids and passwords. Instead, you can use the same login credentials for your email, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Office apps access.
7. Another significant advantage of the Office 365 platform is with your email plan, you can get the entire Microsoft Office suite.
8. You can get excellent customer support from Microsoft if you need to scale up your business. Whether it is related to a new user set up or a need for more licenses, you can get it done with a phone call.
9. The new feature of Skype for Business in Office 365 makes connection easy and even better for organizations. With PSTN Conferencing, it is more flexible to dial into a meeting using a traditional phone. Also, one can join a meeting using a PC or mobile device with just a single click.
10. Office 365 provides security features for customers through its Customer Lockbox. Using it, a customer can control the access of other users opting to access their confidential data.
11. Skype Meeting Broadcast is another superior feature of Office 365, making it easier to produce virtual meetings where 10,000 meeting attendees can join. It can be done from any browser or device. Furthermore, it supports every type of meeting.
How Small to Large Businesses get benefits from Office 365?
The new plans of Office 365 for Business have several benefits for small and large businesses:
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic
- Microsoft 365 Business Standard
- Microsoft 365 Business Premium
- Microsoft 365 Apps for business
Features included in the plans
Office 365 Business Basic
Best for businesses that need easy remote solutions, with Microsoft Teams, secure cloud storage, and Office Online (desktop versions not included).
- Web and mobile versions of Office applications
- Email and calendaring
- Teamwork and communication
- Support and deployment
- File storage and sharing
- Secure cloud services includes Teams,Exchange,Onedrive,Sharepoint
Office 365 Business Standard
Best for businesses that need full remote work and collaboration tools including Microsoft Teams, secure cloud storage, business email, and premium Office applications across devices.
- Web and mobile versions of Office applications
- Email and calendaring
- Teamwork and communication
- Support and deployment
- File storage and sharing
- Published and Access for PC only
- Secure cloud services includes Teams,Exchange,Onedrive,Sharepoint
Office 365 Business Premium
Best for businesses that require secure, remote work solutions with everything included in Business Standard, plus advanced cyberthreat protection and device management.
- Web and mobile versions of Office applications
- Email and calendaring
- Teamwork and communication
- Support and deployment
- File storage and sharing
- Security and compliance
- Published and Access for PC only
- Secure cloud services includes Teams,Exchange,Onedrive,Sharepoint, InTune, Azure information protection
Office 365 Apps for Business
Best for businesses that need Office apps across devices and cloud file storage. Business email and Microsoft Teams not included.
- Web and mobile versions of Office applications
- Email and calendaring
- File storage and sharing
- Security and compliance
- Published and Access for PC only
- Secure cloud services includes Onedrive
Benefits:
As per the feedback received from the SMBs, the plans mentioned above of Microsoft Office 365 provide several advantages in terms of choice, value, and flexibility.
As a small business, you can opt for Office 365 at a low price to get familiar with. Microsoft offers one month free trial for Office 365 to get users familiar with the features.
Migrating to Office 365 from an Exchange server or one Office tenant can provide you many benefits. However, the process may seem a bit unusual, and no doubt should be error-free as it is related to confidential information. A managed service provider leverages this solution to make this transition hassle-free. Whether you need a third-party migration tool or migrating bulk mailboxes, we are competent enough to perform this seamlessly.
Final thought:
Office 365 is a highly efficient collaboration solution for your business! However, transitioning everything on to Office 365 and making users used to with the entire suite needs will be a lot of work. But with the support of a good service provider, it may turn into a value-based project for your business. So, why late? Migrate to Office 365 and get the best benefits in the cloud!