Business Guide to Office 365 - Leap Consulting

Office 365 is the plan or subscription Microsoft offers that provides access to their suite of applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access. The business plans offer up to 300 users of the latest desktop versions, which can also be installed across up to 5 devices.

Since its release in 2011, Office 365 has seen major success. Its adoption slowly grew and in 2013, Microsoft announced it would allow enterprises (companies with more than 250 PC’s at the time) to add Office 365 to their existing volume agreements.

Following this, they reported seeing a 150% increase in the number of SMBs using Office. 365 is available in 3 different business plans and has been a popular choice for those looking to either replace or implement a new intranet system.

Why use Office 365 for business

For many businesses including small business, the business packages offer everything a team needs, utilising the cloud for increased productivity, helping save time, money, and free up resources.

Office 365 combines the desktop suite with cloud-based apps for communication and collaboration including email, online meeting, cloud file sharing, and portal platform.

Any of the business plans enable secure access to data from any device, anytime, anywhere. This facilitates sharing within a team and with clients, especially for those businesses that have team members working both in the office, at home, and in remote locations.

Office 365 is always being updated, which means businesses always have the newest version, giving users the benefits of any new functionality immediately.

Office 365 Benefits:

All Office 365 business subscriptions include:
• Financially backed service level agreement – SLA guaranteeing 99.9% uptime
• Simple deployment and management – ability to add and remove users instantaneously
• Regular updates as part of your subscription
• Active Directory integration with synchronisation to single sign-on
• Access to your files from anywhere – your email, documents, contacts and calendar can be accessed anytime from any Web-enabled device
• Collaboration tools – view, edit and share documents using Office Web Apps
• Storage and speed – mailboxes with 25 GB of storage that can send attachments as large as 25 MB
• Simple Web design – create a professional website in no time flat with user-friendly design tools
• Secure sharing – robust security settings allow you to share documents with colleagues and customers on sites you create
• Anti-virus and anti-spam – reliable, industry-leading security solutions
• Modern communication tools – online meetings for Web conferencing, multiparty data sharing and IM all from one convenient platform
• 99% uptime – financially-backed and guaranteed service
• Reliable support – community-based support that’s moderated 24/7

Office 365 Plans & Pricing

Microsoft offer Office 365 plans for Education, Small & Medium Businesses and Enterprises.