With over 1.2 billion users, it’s no secret that organizations of all sizes rely heavily on Microsoft’s trusted set of applications for business efficiency and reliable productivity. What makes Microsoft so successful is their consistent ability to stay relevant, incorporate innovation, and promote collaboration – to say the least. With revolutionary enhancements comes inevitable new branding; say goodbye to Office 365 and hello to Microsoft 365.

What’s the difference? The name change is reflective of the range of features and benefits in the subscription, with no price or feature changes for small and medium business plans. Microsoft 365 includes everything you know in Office 365, including best-in-class Office apps, intelligent cloud services, and advanced security.

M365 Business

Microsoft 365 Business is designed specifically for small-to-medium sized businesses with up to 300 users. This offering acts as a great turnkey solution for smaller businesses who want a more integrated and secure way of using Windows 10 and Office 365 (formally two separate items). Microsoft 365 Business Premium plan is considered an upgrade from the Office 365 Business Premium plan. Formerly a cloud services platform that offered familiar productivity tools such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, either online or on-premises, has now evolved into an all-in-one bundle that includes:

• Office 365 suite
• Windows 10 Pro
• Enterprise Mobility + Security

For a complete, interconnected experience; these integrated solutions bring together best-in-class productivity tools, security, and device management capabilities for small to medium-sized businesses.

M365 for Lloyd’s Clients

During 2021, we are moving all appropriate Lloyd clients in our community to the Microsoft 365 Business Premium plan to lay the foundation for them to take advantage of additional services. We live in a world that is rapidly moving towards Software as a Service (SaaS). Solutions that are within a company’s infrastructure (on-premises) are being deployed to the cloud to accommodate efficient collaboration, mobility, and maximum security.

Collaboration

The main purpose of Microsoft 365 is to empower businesses to collaborate in a secure way. Besides email, Microsoft 365 information will be stored either in SharePoint Online or OneDrive:

• SharePoint Online: the heart of collaboration in Microsoft 365 and where shared information in your organization should reside
• OneDrive: based on the same technology as SharePoint, it is a private space that allows each employee in the organization to store their personal documents. Each employee gets from 1 TB to 5 TB depending on your licensing model

Additionally, with real-time collaboration and co-authoring, each Office application (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, OneNote) has a corresponding web app that allows you to collaborate on documents directly from the browser.

Mobility

One of the strongest advantages our clients will benefit from after migrating to Microsoft 365 is mobility. You will be able to access your documents, emails, and business processes from any device and from any location.

Below, are a few examples of what you can do directly from your mobile phone or tablet:

• Access your email and contacts using Exchange Online and Outlook Mobile App
• Open and collaborate on shared documents in SharePoint Team Sites using Office mobile apps (there is a mobile version for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.)
• Share and access important news with your team using SharePoint Communication Sites
• Access your organizations dashboards using Power BI
• Access important business processes using PowerApps
• Join a meeting directly from your phone using Microsoft Teams mobile app
• Access relevant corporate information using the mobile SharePoint app

Security

The opportunity for organizations of all sizes to have their data compromised grows as the number of devices that store confidential data increases. For organizations to be able to share content from an On-Premises SharePoint installation, it involves some complex IT configurations to be set in place. If you migrate to Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online, it gets much easier to share information with external users in a secure way. Microsoft 365 ensures the encryption of data in transit and at rest. All files are segmented (in small pieces called chunks) and each segment is individually encrypted, and encryption keys are securely stored in a different physical location. Microsoft’s security efforts also include data loss prevention, this allows organizations to create policies to protect their most sensitive information. For example, you can prevent documents with credit card information from being shared outside the organization. Microsoft has made a very strong investment in security which provides users and system administrators with several features to address these needs and apply a set of best practices in security, privacy, compliance, and transparency.

Contact Lloyd to learn more about how the Collaboration, Mobility, & Security (CMS) approach can work for your organization.