Microsoft has renamed Office 365 to Microsoft 365. What does that mean for businesses? For businesses that are currently using Office 365, there’s very little visible change. For businesses that haven’t yet made the switch, it’s a reminder that the cloud-based solution is the easiest way for businesses to access vital productivity applications and achieve a high level of security.

Microsoft 365 includes the everyday applications your business relies on: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook. Both web and mobile versions are included, so employees can be productive from the office or their home office.

Microsoft 365 also includes the services that let employees work together and collaborate, including Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. Power Automate lets you make business processes more efficient through the power of automation.

Importantly, Microsoft 365 has security features to ensure your data is kept safe and meets your compliance standards. While specific security features vary depending on the specific Microsoft 365 package that fits your business, in general Microsoft 365 has the capability to protect your business from typical email threats, such as malware and phishing emails, as well as from ransomware and more advanced threats. You can make sure remote workers connect safely using Microsoft 365’s mobile device management, which allows you to set up controls such as multifactor authentication.

Because Microsoft 365 houses so much of your key company data, ensuring compliance controls are applied is vital. The compliance center in Microsoft 365 provides a single administrative center for monitoring and managing compliance in Microsoft 365. Information governance tools help apply policies for data retention and deletion, data loss prevention capabilities help prevent incidents, and for those incidents that do occur, there are tools to help you investigate the cause. Microsoft 365 provides a compliance scorecard to help you track how well you’re applying recommended policies to reduce risk.

For most businesses the business value of Microsoft 365 is clear, but transitioning to the platform can be difficult. It requires migrating existing email and SharePoint deployments from premises to the Microsoft 365 cloud, which needs careful planning and execution to ensure no data is lost or user access is disrupted. Once transitioned, businesses need to implement a strategy for monitoring their Microsoft 365 environment. Businesses may also need to implement their own backup strategy if the default Microsoft 365 backup policies don’t meet the business needs.

Prescient Solutions helps businesses in the Chicago and Schaumburg areas make the transition to Microsoft 365 and provides the ongoing support needed. To learn more about why your business should migrate to Microsoft 365, to execute the transition, or to get support after your migration is complete, contact us.