It may seem like a straight forward thing, needing a word document platform, some sort of spreadsheet program to keep data organized, the ability to make presentations in a slide by slide form factor so that you can neatly display them to a room of people. However, it goes beyond just buying a license for Microsoft Office to deliver those options to an employee or even yourself for your business. You need to worry about the hardware running the application, getting it installed correctly on that endpoint, one action works on one endpoint and not the other even though everything is the same, upgrading to a new version, add-ons and much more. Pretty soon you’re adding or fixing something a few times a week because each endpoint is its own special case, I’ve been there as an IT Service Desk Specialist.
Microsoft Office 365
For those of you that don’t want to worry about 20+ individual devices and prefer an option to pay for the service as needed instead of a full upfront license that may or may not be used immediately, there is a great alternative! Microsoft offers a service called Office 365. Important points out of the way first, this a month to month billing option for the use of the Microsoft Office applications and it is paid on a per user basis. You can add additional seats on the go as your business grows or remove them when you find yourself with an overabundance. Office 365 includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access.
Microsoft Office 365 Benefits
There are quite a few benefits to using the Office platform this way as a business. The apps are hosted directly by Microsoft, you won’t have to worry about inconvenient downtime as they do upgrades and patching in a way that the service is always accessible. Because of Microsoft overseeing the hosting, you are always using the most recent version of the applications, no more having to manually upgrade yourself. Being hosted in the cloud also means that you can access those documents, spreadsheets, email, etc. wherever you are at as long as you have an internet connection. For those that rely on collaboration across multiple people or teams on projects, individuals can see the most recent version of the saved document, ensuring that the information is always up to date and can make changes in real-time. Office 365 is the most cost efficient and easily accessible way to host your office applications, offering the most return on investment to the business compared to the full license and install alternative.
Nate Freng, Sales Executive
If you’d like to explore this as an option for your business, contact us.
