So what is Office 365?
Think of Microsoft Office 365 as a house that includes all the traditional Microsoft applications and services under one roof. It is available as a subscription service allowing you to be confident that your applications have the most up to date version of the software and saves you employing lots of IT staff to manage all the back end infrastructure, systems and security. It covers the most of the familiar Microsoft applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook but it is important to understand that Office 365 is much more. Its core applications are designed to provide:
- Instant messaging
- Cloud-based telephony
- Document management
- Cloud document storage
- Reporting
- Analytics
- Compliance
- Security
- Management of your devices
Within these ecosystems there are a wide range of ancillary services and services that Microsoft continue to develop enhancing the overall user experience. They have a multitude of plans which range from personal subscriptions, small to medium businesses and large enterprise subscriptions all of which offer a wide range of benefits. This Microsoft cloud-based service is physically hosted within Microsoft data centres and their global infrastructure, thus giving you data security, scalability, and the means to collaborate documents and communication seamlessly.
It is clear to say that Microsoft invest billions of dollars globally to refine and improve their products. They have the security, the infrastructure and reliability that nobody could build internally within their own on-premise solutions and architecture. The best way to see the benefits of Office 365 for businesses is to break them down into sections:
Office 365 for Small to Medium business
- Having the benefit of enterprise class services and security at a fraction of the costs, these solutions would cost in excess of £30,000 a year if built on premise
- No need to have hardware and servers in your offices
- Access data anywhere, anytime on virtually any device
- Full financially back service level agreements (SLA)
- Constant updates and access to the latest Microsoft updates
- Easy and flexible to budget
- Full security and compliance
Office 365 for Enterprise business
- Reduce ongoing technology spend on hardware, warranties, and updates
- Remove legacy hardware from on premise offices
- Increase agility to always on technology
- Easy to budget and forecast
- Easier and less hassle to support
- Improved security at affordable pricing
- Full financially back service level agreements (SLA)
- Improved compliance and eDiscovery
- Consolidation of multiple platforms
It is simple to say that the benefits of the Office 365 suite of services is aimed for companies of any size and here at Outbound we want to help by giving you the knowledge needed to make use of all the sections included within Office 365. All too often we have found businesses only use a fraction of the products available to them and in some cases, businesses have purchased other products not realising they already have the solutions included in their subscription. This ensures with increase your return on investment and improves employee engagement.
So how can Outbound help you to get the most out of your Office 365 services?
- We are a silver Microsoft Cloud Solutions Partner (CSP) proving our accreditation in these services
- We can provide these services direct to you on more flexible payment terms and even include add on services such as Office 365 backup services or Office 365 managed services
- We can train your staff or administrators on how to use the administration side of Office 365
- We can setup your environment from scratch and hand over when required
- We can offer regular Office 365 reviews ensuring we provide recommendations on best practises, new services, usage, security and much more
- We can show you how to get the most out of the services
- We can help integrate external solutions into Office 365 such as Dropbox for Business, Slack, Zoom
- We can even setup your Azure infrastructure environment and ensure it connects to your Office 365 environment