Microsoft 365 is Microsoft’s cloud-based suite of innovative applications, cloud services and modern, corporate email. Powerful software packages such as Word, Excel and Outlook are backed by secure, access-from-anywhere, cloud storage.
What is Microsoft 365?
Microsoft 365 changed its name from Microsoft Office 365, because there’s much more to it than the Office family of packages such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. In 2021, Canada’s Financial Post reported that a billion people use a Microsoft Office product every day, to get through their daily workload.
That’s an astonishing number, and it shows that the front runner in office productivity suites hasn’t changed since Microsoft launched its first version of Office way back in 2000. What has changed though, is the way the software is delivered, and the number and type of applications included in the suite.
Like Marvel’s Avengers, the team line up has changed over the years, and the individual members have had power boosts over their careers. Microsoft 365 includes the staple word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager and email client you’d expect, but it also includes newcomers like Microsoft Power Automate, Microsoft Forms, Microsoft Power BI and Microsoft Teams, and more.
The exact line up you receive is dictated by the type of subscription you take out. By using the subscription model your software is always up to date. No more expensive company-wide upgrades every few years to stay current and compatible with the versions your clients, partners and suppliers use. Your subscription always provides the latest and greatest version for all of your staff.
The Yin and Yang of Licensing
The good news is you’ve got great flexibility in deciding who needs what applications. You are not forced into needlessly licensing applications that some employees will never use. The downside is that identifying the licences you need and the best way to bundle and purchase them can be overwhelming.
The entry-level Microsoft 365 subscription provides email only, effectively providing you with a cloud-hosted Microsoft Exchange server. Each new level of subscription adds more applications, features, functionality and increased security options. You can add the core office packages, more applications, increased cloud storage per user, longer retention and recovery periods for deleted items, and more. No wonder the licensing gets complicated, fast.
Of course, Pro-Networks is pleased to help you with that. We can handle the ongoing administration whatever the size of your organization. You’ll benefit from our expertise, and lose the headache of managing the licenses for staff.
Subscription licences aren’t just purchased. They can be transferred to different users, taken from leavers, and awarded to new starters. With our simple billing platform, you will receive easy to understand invoices, and we can give you reports of the licenses and the staff who they are allocated to.
Access From Anywhere
Microsoft 365 is a cloud-based software-as-a-service offering. Or rather, it is for the most part. If you want to use Microsoft Access or Microsoft Publisher, they’ll run on your desktop or laptop. And in fact, you also get locally installed versions of the other applications, too.
You can use the core applications such as Microsoft Word, Outlook and Excel as apps on mobile devices or through a web interface in your browser, but the traditional applications on your own computer means you can use them even without an internet connection. By default, each user is given 1TB of cloud storage per user, but more can be purchased if required.
Microsoft 365 is designed from the ground up to provide a high-availability cloud server with multiple redundancies designed into it. If a component of their cloud provision fails, it immediately and automatically rolls over to a shadowed, up-to-date copy on another cloud server. You won’t even notice. High availability with access from anywhere allows your staff to be productive, wherever they are.
Cloud Migration Nirvana: Seamless and Painless
One thing that might not be immediately apparent is, for new subscribers, you need to get all your old email off your on-premise Exchange Server and into the hosted Exchange Server you’ve just subscribed to. Of course, while that’s happening, you still need to receive email. You can’t stop doing business during the migration period.
Maybe you’re not migrating from an on-premise Exchange Server, you might have a different email system such as IBM Domino, or different email solutions at different branches. Whatever your situation, we’ve seen it and handled it all before.
Pro-Networks has migrated multi-vendor on-premise email systems for businesses with more than twenty locations and many thousands of users. All accomplished while the systems were live, and without losing a single email.
So yes, we can migrate you safely and seamlessly.
Backing Up Microsoft 365
Just because it’s in Microsoft’s cloud, you can’t ignore backups. Your subscription will include a period of retention and recovery for emails. This can stretch from 14 days right up to full legal, or litigation, hold. Deleted emails can be recovered within the retention period. For litigation hold, that period is indefinite.
That’s great, but it’s not a backup. A backup covers all of your data, and allows it to be restored wholly or partially. It also includes versioning, so you don’t just have one copy of a file, you have multiple copies of each file so that you can restore a version of the file from a point in its history.
High availability and email retention periods are must haves, and are vitally important. But they must be supplemented with genuine backups to fully protect your data. The importance of business continuity isn’t lessened because you’re operating in the cloud. Being unable to conduct your business practices because of data loss is equally devastating for terrestrial and cloud systems alike.
Talk to us about backup solutions for your entire Microsoft 365 estate. You’ll be glad you did.
Ongoing Support
We always say that we partner with our clients. We don’t sell you a solution and leave you to it. We’re with you every step of the way from idea to implementation, and all through the product’s in-service life.
We make sure your users have somewhere to turn for fast answers to questions, and timely solution to issues. We want you to get the most bang for your buck. Pro-Networks can ensure you’re getting the most from your subscription, and not missing out on a killer feature or application.
Microsoft 365 is like a Swiss army knife of software-as-a-service cloud computing. We know which blade you should use for the tasks you face in your daily work. We make sure you know about them, and that your staff know how to use them. We can help with product familiarization and have many online blog entries describing different aspects of Microsoft 365.
Pro-Networks are Microsoft Partners for a reason. We know Microsoft 365 inside out, and have the certifications to prove it. You get all the benefits and none of the headaches.
Talk to us today, and if Microsoft 365 is something that truly fits with your business, we’ll tell you how to best adopt it.