Over the past few years, productivity suites have become more and more popular with businesses of all sizes, in a wide and varied range of industries. It’s the type of solution that has something to offer everyone.
Cloud-based technologies, in general, are changing the way users like you view the capabilities of their technology – especially Microsoft Office 365.
Interested?
Good, but – if you’re not already using Microsoft Office 365, then you have to figure out how to migrate to it, which you may think you can handle on your own.
And to be honest, it’s possible that you can. But before you dive in, make sure you have answers to the following questions…
Keep in mind – these are just a few of the plans that Microsoft offers, but they provide a good idea of what to expect when looking for a cloud productivity suite that’s intended for businesses.
With Web and mobile versions only it provides:
It includes access to Office applications and online productivity services, as well as business services such as web conferencing, hosted email, and online storage. You’ll get the following when you sign up for Office 365 Business:
This plan offers access to:
All three of Microsoft Office 365 Business plans have a maximum of 300 users.
But what about Enterprise plans?
You may have heard that Microsoft Office 365 has a number of other plans for you to choose from, but the fact is that these Enterprise-level options offer a range of add-ons and modifications – in short, they can be quite complicated to parse on your own.
If you’re interested in finding out more about Enterprise plans, you would be wise to consult with Microsoft or an IT company directly.
Not necessarily.
It would make sense – if you’re already using a Microsoft solution anyway, you don’t want to lose that data in the transition, right?
Moving your current Microsoft data to Office 365 is possible, but you should be aware that it’s not always an easy process. There a number of ways you can encounter obstacles when it comes to extant data in the transition.
The templates you’ve been using for a long time may not work with Office 365 – that means you have to rebuild them or figure out to convert them to a new format.
Furthermore, ensuring that nothing gets missed or lost during the migration requires close supervision of the entire process (your IT company will make sure of that if you’re at all worried).
Security should always be a top priority and must be on your list when considering a change in your IT.
When it comes to Office 365, this is one worry you can cross off your list. Microsoft’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution may be hosted on a public cloud, but security and reliability are the primary focus of their engineers.
Designed around the principals of the Security Development Lifecycle, Microsoft has made embedding best-practice security requirements in everything they create a mandatory part of their software development process.
Data security and industry compliance requirements have been taken into consideration, influencing the safeguards Microsoft has in place.
Using Azure Active Directory, Office 365 has built-in security features including authentication tools, access control, and identity management in addition to their own top-notch network and system security.
As a cloud-based platform, all of the data you access in Office 365 is backed up to a secure off-site location. This occurs simply by the nature of a cloud solution like Office 365.
Many businesses believe that just because the program already exists in the cloud, all of their important information is being backed up automatically to a secure location, but this is not the case. Office 365 can be easily integrated into your Business Continuity solution.
By doing so, your critical data can be:
The rule of thumb is that any cybersecurity solution will include a primary and secondary data backup to make sure that should something go wrong with one backup, there is still another to restore from.
A non-Microsoft affiliated cloud platform or an on-premise server are recommended options for a secondary data backup solution.
Again, it’s possible. But if we’re honest, it’s unlikely.
As you can see, there’s a lot to consider, and this doesn’t even take into account the time and money you would spend on handling the process independently.
It’s much wiser to simply enlist the assistance of an IT company. They will be able to offer the experience and skills necessary to manage the migration end to end and avoid the common pitfalls.
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