Formerly known as Office 365 (or Microsoft Office 365), the cloud-based subscription service includes all of Microsoft’s classic enterprise apps, such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, while also offering a host of new and niche applications to meet the needs of every organization.
Most recently, the communication and collaboration tool, Microsoft Teams, was launched, soon amassing 75 million active users thanks to the tie in.
But if you’re on this page, it’s probably safe to assume that you’re already familiar with the basics of Office and Microsoft 365. The question this blog looks to answer is about the benefits of Microsoft 365 for organizations.
Orbus Software are well positioned to answer this, having been a long time Gold Microsoft Partner. Indeed, our own application, the Enterprise Architecture suite iServer, has been built from the ground up to integrate seamlessly with Microsoft 365. Thus, what are the main Microsoft 365 benefits?
- Leading Productivity Software
A fairly obvious benefit is simply that Microsoft’s offerings are simply the best applications available in the majority of cases. Even without the overall advantage of Microsoft 365, organizations would still seek out Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or Visio simply because they are a lot better than the alternatives. Free options like OpenOffice are fine for poor university students, but an organization has no excuse not to invest in the best they can get.
- Unparalleled Integration
As mentioned above, the iServer suite has been designed to integrate with Microsoft 365, but it’s not just third-party applications that benefit from integration like this.
All the Microsoft applications work together perfectly. Need to collaborate on a Word document? Send a OneDrive link through Teams, and edit it within the app, or open it on your mobile app, or even in Outlook. Do you need to add spreadsheet data? Simply paste directly from Excel into Word and you’ll have a real time embedded spreadsheet that updates when the Excel does.
This is just one example of how seamless it is to work across a range of applications within the Microsoft ecosystem.
- Full Mobile and Web support
Furthermore, Microsoft 365 is perhaps the best option when it comes to support for mobile and web versions of their applications. Every user can access all of the key apps through major web browsers, or through their mobile device. In fact, this very blog has been written entirely with the web app for Microsoft Word, with no need to switch to a desktop version.
- Cloud Technology
When it comes to cloud support, few do it better than Microsoft 365. All subscriptions come with 1TB of OneDrive storage and access to SharePoint. Combined with the support for web and mobile versions of the app, staff members can now work from anywhere and use any device, as long as you have an internet connection.
Cloud storage provides more advanced security as well. Security measures such as two-factor authentication and cloud backups mean that breaches do not need to mean disaster.
- Microsoft’s Roadmap
Signing up to Microsoft 365 guarantees that your organization will always have access to the latest versions of Microsoft's applications. What is more, issues such as application lifetime or replacement become irrelevant; Microsoft's applications will always be at the cutting edge. Organizations can essentially future proof their tooling capabilities with almost no effort.
- Simple Cost and Time to Value
In general, subscription software services like Microsoft 365 offer far simpler financial considerations. There's no need to spread application costs out over an estimated lifetime, while mix and match plans enable organizations to pay for their exact
usage requirements. In addition, Time to Value (TTV) calculations become far easier, since organizations only need to compare monthly productivity to monthly subscription cost.