Office 365 is the undisputed industry leader in workplace productivity with more than 120 million business users. There are many different editions available tailored towards businesses of varying sizes and industries. For example, you might choose to deploy the software on-premises, keep everything hosted in a public cloud or even adopt a hybrid approach that helps you get the best of both worlds.
For small businesses in particular, managed hosting services make sense, especially when it comes to support, implementation, and maintenance. With a managed Office 365 environment, your computing infrastructure is primarily hosted in an off-site data center, rather than in your office. The overarching benefit of this approach is that you no longer have to worry about looking after everything yourself.
#1. High uptime
There’s nothing stopping you from using Microsoft’s offline-only desktop productivity applications like Word and Excel, but relying on in-house resources leaves you with a single point of failure. For example, if a workstation stops working, you risk losing important data and having to manually restore and reinstall everything.
Fortunately, Office 365 combines the benefits of desktop computing with the flexibility and redundancy of the cloud. All subscription packages come with web-based versions of the core Microsoft Office apps and, when managed by an external host, you’ll have an extra layer of protection against unscheduled downtime. In other words, your mission-critical apps and data will always be there for you.
#2. Better archiving
One of the biggest technological challenges facing modern businesses is that they often have no way of knowing exactly where their data resides, and which documents are original. Nonetheless, many industries are still obligated by law to maintain full audit trails of their communications, including email correspondence.
To ensure you’re meeting your compliance obligations and to mitigate the effects of any possible legal action in the future, you need a way to easily archive your data and retain it in its original form. Office 365 offers basic archiving features, but working with an IT partner can greatly extend upon these abilities to provide maximum risk tolerance.
#3. More scalability
On-premises computing is severely limited by factors such as budgetary constraints, the availability of in-house expertise, and even physical space. If you’re relying on a local Office 365 deployment, you’ll eventually need to invest in more hardware when your business encounters a period of increased demand.
With a remotely hosted Office 365 infrastructure, there’s no need to invest in extra hardware or manually install and configure your applications whenever you enroll a new employee. Instead, you can simply open a new user account, and all the apps and data your team uses to do their jobs will be ready for them over any internet-connected device. This enables virtually limitless scalability and empowers your workforce with complete mobility.
#4. Stronger security
As an industry standard, Office 365 provides a solid foundation when it comes to security. However, improving functionality and tailoring it to your specific needs can come at the higher price of a more expensive enterprise-tier subscription. Nonetheless, you can’t afford to skimp on cybersecurity, especially now that the threat landscape is more complex and multifaceted than ever before.
Partnering with an IT provider that offers bespoke Office 365 solutions, cybersecurity systems, and other services provides the optimal blend of Microsoft’s own level of protection with that of third-party solutions. Given the fact that every industry faces a different range of threats and potential attack vectors, that’s a major plus to have on your side.
Founders Technology Group provides cloud-hosted Office 365 solutions tailored to the specific needs of your business. We guarantee 99.9% uptime, built-in disaster-recovery, and a whole lot more to enable a successful digital transformation. Call us today to learn more.