When it comes to business productivity applications, many authorities are in agreement that Office 365 and Microsoft 365 are one of the best suites on the market. The reason being that it provides an organisation with all the tool they need to operate on a daily basis, with a reliable infrastructure. We spoke with an IT support company London businesses have been using for years. The company, TechQuarters, use Microsoft 365 themselves, and have helped their customers migrate to it many times before.
What Is Microsoft and Office 365?
While most people have undoubtedly heard of Microsoft, the company, they might not necessarily know what Office 365 and Microsoft 365 is – this might be exacerbated by the amount of different products and licensing plans that Microsoft have. The answer is quite simple – Microsoft 365 is a plan that includes Windows, Microsoft Office, and Enterprise Mobility + Security, among other services. Microsoft 365 is the name for most of Microsoft’s plans aimed at small to medium sized businesses. Some plans aimed at larger enterprises are still known as Office 365, though most were renamed a few years ago.
Both Microsoft 365 and Office 365 are mainly provisioned to businesses through resellers, and Microsoft Partners – such as TechQuarters. In fact, they informed us that the managed IT services London businesses have been getting from them for more than a decade, has nearly always included licensing for Microsoft or Office 365.
What Are the Benefits for Business?
These products have been used by businesses for many years – some products included in the plans have been around for several decades, in fact – but what kinds of advantages can businesses expect to get from these plans? As one of the many Office 365 companies that have been working with Microsoft for years, TechQuarters were well placed to outline what they feel are the top benefits:
- Secure Storage
Nowadays, most businesses are looking to migrate to the cloud, which often means they are wanting to store all of their company resources in the cloud. With Microsoft and Office 365, this is easy to do. Firstly, you have SharePoint, which is ideal for storing shared resources in the cloud; next, you have OneDrive, which is aimed at individual storage – every user with a work or school account with Microsoft will have 1TB of personal storage with OneDrive. Both SharePoint and OneDrive are backed up by Microsoft’s enterprise level security.
- Best-in-Class Word Processing
Of course, pretty much everyone in business knows about Microsoft Word. It is the most ubiquitous document creation and processing tool in the world, and it is packed with features – such as templates for different types of documentation; support for multimedia documents; powerful automation tools (such as Macros); and accessibility features like spelling and grammar checks, and the ability to dictate with your voice.
- Best-in-Class Email Facilities
Yet another way in which Microsoft and Office has distinguished themselves is by offering one of the best email services in the business world. Microsoft Outlook is considered by some to be the go-to email client for business. Just like Word, it is packed with features that business users will find very useful. It also comes with excellent calendaring services, and it integrates with other products, including OneDrive and SharePoint.
- Great for Remote Working
In a post-Covid world, it is very important that businesses have the option to support remote work. Even without considering Covid, there are many reasons why remote work may be necessary – even if its that an employee is stuck on public transport and don’t want to waste their hours. Thankfully, Microsoft and Office 365 are entirely cloud-based, meaning users can access their apps and data across desktop, web and mobile platforms. Apps like Microsoft Teams make communication from anywhere easy and, as we mentioned earlier, OneDrive ensures that your files and documents are never tied to a single location.
- Excellent Cyber Security
As Microsoft and Office 365 are meant to be licenses that provide businesses with all the tools they need for standard work processes, it makes sense that it would include powerful security capabilities. In addition to all the apps and services in the plans being backed up by Microsoft’s robust cloud security, the plans also come with a service known as Enterprise Mobility + Security, which enables businesses to implement various important security measures – such as unified endpoint management, advanced threat protection and analytics, and identity-based access management.