Office 365 Widespread Adoption
by Chris Arrigali, CTO at Tier4 Advisors
The race to the cloud continues…
Office 365 has now become a household name in the technology industry. Companies have already adopted the cloud-based Microsoft suite at such a rapid rate, that is now the majority instead of the minority in terms of deployed seats. Almost 60% of organizations already use Office 365, while 30% are planning to move to the cloud in the next 3-4 years. It means that by 2020, almost 90% of organizations will be using Office 365. This is pretty logical taking into account that Microsoft continues to stuff Office 365 with new features that make content management and collaboration easier, and more dynamic.
The trend is undeniable. And while the majority of Office 365 organizations won’t run 100% of their IT in the cloud for some time because of infrastructure complexity, SaaS applications are and will continue to be heavily adopted. Even though security is at the forefront of concern with regards to migrating to the cloud, it has still become less and less of an issue over time. With Office 365, your employees will always have access to their work documents regardless of whether they’re in the office, working remotely from home or on the road. There’s little or no need to print out a business document, when it’s available in the cloud.
The Microsoft 365 platform can be accessed through a recurring subscription. You simply sign up for the service that you want and pay a fee every time you want to renew your subscription, with the promise that you’ll get plenty of regular updates along the way. The release of this cloud-based solution for business represented a significant update from the traditional nature of Microsoft’s one-time purchase licensing fees that many of us have used in the past. Changing the game financially from a CapEx to an OpEx model.
Microsoft tools available in Office 365 are Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, OneNote, OneDrive, SharePoint, Skype for Business, Yammer, and Teams.
Despite the growing trend, caution still needs to be exercised when it comes to catching the wave. Helping organizations evaluate and navigate through the Office 365 waters is one of Tier4’s core competencies. With many key vendor partnerships in this space, coupled with our team’s deep technical expertise in this area, Tier4 is ready to help.
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Tier4 Blog Edition 30: March 7, 2018