I have worked with several clients who are moving their data from on-premises to Office 365. This usually leads to the conversation about how they want to use and the platform, security settings, and how employees will be sharing the data. I like to start the conversation covering 4 main reasons companies move to the Office 365:
1. Access any time, any where, any device
One of the main reasons company’s want to move to Office 365 is to access the files they need, when they need them. They don’t want to have to go into the office or remote desktop into the network so they can access files stored in their personal folders or in SharePoint. This is especially common for employees who work from home, sales people, project manager, basically anyone who works remotely.
It is important assess how the client plans to access access and use Office 365, especially when talking about mobile access:
- Are they reviewing documents?
- Do they need to edit documents?
- Will they be sharing documents?
- How sensitive is the information they will be accessing?
- What types of devises will they be using?
How clients answer these questions will help to determine how Office 365 should be configured.
2. Collaboration
One of the biggest benefits of moving to Office 365 is the ability to collaborate in so many ways: OneDrive, SharePoint Online, Planner, Teams, Yammer, and Skype. I always ask what is the plan for OneDrive? Will your users be sharing documents internally or is there a need for external sharing? What will they be sharing? Documents they want to work on collaboratively, or documents they may want someone else to just view?
Typically best practice, and what I recommend is to consider OneDrive the “Me” folder. It is for documents meant for me. My personal stuff, documents that I want to keep, rough drafts, things to be shared only to a small number of people.
I consider Teams the “We” folder, things that we are going to work on as a “team”. We will be making edits and providing feedback and using all the tools of Teams to work collaboratively together.
SharePoint Online is the “Everyone” folder. This is for thing we want to publish for other to consume. It is your intranet to the company where you share templates, policies, keep records, etc.
3. Security
Some companies what to make the move for Security reasons. They are looking for more security and a better way to manage their data. Office 365 tremendous security options that it hard to match such as 24/7 monitoring, a secured platform backed by one of the most respected companies in IT that is constantly being updated, a Security & Compliance center that can help a company apply its own labels to data, set up alerts, configure data loss prevention rules, and the ability to review logs and run reports on the system. With Office 365 it is much easier to keep your data secure than trying to plug holes in your own data centers.
4. Moving Infrastructure to the Cloud
Another big reason for moving to Office 365 is that companies want to get out of the infrastructure business. Managing hardware, licenses, and other resources is hard. Moving to a service like O365 allow the customer to make sure they are always running on the latest hardware, getting the most update features and options, and take the responsibility of maintaining the hardware and the resources to maintain them out of their hands and puts it into Microsoft.
Once you determine a company’s main drivers for making the move to Office 365, you can than work with them to develop strategies for getting them there and set up an environment that is configured to their specific needs.
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