9 Reasons Your Organization Should Migrate To Office 365

Office 365 lets you innovate without interruption. It supports a wide range of productivity tools that will increase your ability to reduce capital expenditures, keep your data safe, and keep your business agile.

 
Not convinced? Below are 9 reasons why you should migrate to Office 365 in 2020.

1. Eliminate Capital Expenditures and Overhead

Virtually everyone is budget conscious in today’s business environment. When you host a business-wide application, your costs are substantial. You have expenditures for:

• Servers
• Software licensing
• Maintenance costs
• Power to run equipment
• Employees to run data centers

When you use Office 365, all costs and overhead are included. You don’t need to worry about licensing costs for individual applications, which typically require a significant effort to track and manage, in addition to the overall cost. The single payment ensures that you’ll never run into surprises or hidden costs.

2. Eliminate Patching and Bug Updates

Patching your systems is a vital task. In 2019, cybercrimes resulted in approximately $2 trillion in losses. That startling number isn’t just a concern for large enterprises; small businesses were the target of approximately half of all cyberattacks. In addition, research has shown that 60 percent of data breaches were in situations where a patch was available, but not installed.

You can’t afford to ignore the requirement for completing patches on a timely basis, but you can reduce time and your exposure by using Office 365 in place of on-premise systems such as SharePoint and Exchange. Office 365 handles all patching, for everything from bugs and performance patches to those for security and compliance. You can eliminate the race to get patches installed before a costly cyberattack. You will be able to focus on the critical task of innovation without interruption.

3. Only Pay for What You Need

Office 365 has three tiers of licensing, which offers two advantages. First, you only need to pay for the capabilities you currently require. Second, Office 365 grows with your business giving you the flexibility to meet changing demands. For example, three tiers are available depending on your needs:

• Business email and services including OneDrive, SharePoint, Exchange, and Teams
• Office applications like Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint; file sharing with OneDrive
• Business email, Office applications, file sharing, and other business services

4. End Migrations and Upgrades

You’re probably familiar with the fire drills caused by end of life software. Sometimes just identifying the equipment that you need to update can be a problem that requires a lot of time and frustration to solve.

With Office 365, you will never have to worry about end of life software, version updates, or whether to patch or replace servers. You can end concerns over limited rack space and lack of power. Once you transition to the cloud, you’ll never face these issues again. You can focus on empowering your organization, rather than updating your environment. Your migration to Office 365 will be the last one you’ll need to complete.

5. Take a Step Toward the Digital Office with Anywhere Access

The days when all employees worked at a desk with a supplied PC are behind us. Today, employees work from home, on the road, or while on trips to other company locations. When you use Office 365, your employees can work from anywhere, using any device.

In addition, there will be no data silos standing in the way of getting work done. Employees can securely access any application, document, or data source to keep your business operations humming. It doesn’t matter where your employees are, if they have internet access, and a device to use it, they’re connected.

6. Use Applications Made for Mobile

Unlike many applications, Microsoft built Office 365 for mobile access. That means you don’t need to think about whether applications are easy to use on mobile devices. All web pages and other content are responsive; the display of content automatically adjusts sizing, proportions, and layout to ensure that it is legible on a variety of mobile devices.

Not only is content easy to read, but it’s easy to use Office 365 applications on mobile devices. Each application has a mobile app, including SharePoint, Outlook, Microsoft Forms, Microsoft Planner, and other office applications. You can create new Word documents or Excel spreadsheets on the go, just like you were sitting in the office.

7. Reduce Costs with a Vast Toolbox of Applications

Gone are the days when you need to pay a subscription fee for every capability you want to offer your organization. You save money with an Office 365 subscription that offers over 20 applications. And, everyone will get access to the same applications at the same time. You can eliminate the task of tracking licenses on a per employee basis. Office 365 covers you whether you need content management, project management, or forms. You’ll have the ability to automate workflows to save time and reduce errors.

Could you use onboarding videos for new employees? You’ll have access to a video portal that will make creating and distributing videos a breeze. And, these are just a few of the capabilities included in your Office 365 subscription.

8. Stop Worrying About Backups and Data Loss Prevention

Your employees know how important it is to back up their work. If they ever had to redo all the work they accomplished in a day, they’d lose their minds. But, if you ask them if they ever forget to back up their work every day, many would admit that it does happen.

You can stop worry about backups with Office 365. Each employee will have a terabyte of cloud storage, and you can increase that to five terabytes if you need to. You won’t worry about employees initiating backups because the system will do that for them. Just think, no more tape drives or backup storage arrays. Office 365 backs up all your critical data in real-time. OneDrive and Office 365 SharePoint provide a variety of version control options, allowing you to create a data retention strategy that will work across the entire organization.

9. Improve Security and Compliance

Office 365 has a whole host security features to ensure the integrity of your data and the security of your organization. Mobile Device Management is just one example. Most companies today are dealing with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). With so many employees using mobile devices, the odds are that your employees are using iPhones, iPads, Androids and other devices to access organizational resources.

Mobile Device Management can help you establish and manage device security policies and review detailed device reports. If a device is lost or compromised in some way, you can even wipe the device to protect your systems.

Other security features include Multi-Factor Authentication, Advanced Threat Protection, Encrypted Email + Data Loss Prevention, Azure Identity Protection, and Privileged Identity Management. You’ll have a variety of security features at your fingertips that can contribute to meeting your business’s compliance requirements.

How a Managed Services Provider Can Help

Migrating to Office 365 offers many benefits, but the migration itself requires time and talent. In most situations, it’s not reasonable to hire additional employees to complete the migration. Many businesses are partnering with managed service companies to make the migration as seamless as possible. They’re getting the support they need and getting their employees back to work.

When you work with Datavail, you’re getting support from a Microsoft Gold Partner that can help ensure you get what you need from your Office 365 installation. Our solutions include:

• Migration support
• Custom application development and integration
• Enterprise-grade implementation and service
• 24/7 monitoring and support

Our support and training will help you avoid downtime, increase engagement, and improve adoption rates. With a staff of over 1,000 people we can make sure that your technology aligns with your long-term strategic goals and gives you the results you’re looking for.

Contact us today for more information.