What is Microsoft 365?

Microsoft 365 is a SaaS and PaaS offering by Microsoft. It is a collection of several products, services, and platforms, each tailored for a specific use case. Microsoft 365 applications can be accessed online at www.office.com. In addition to online applications, it also lets you download the license-based client version of certain applications, such as Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), OneDrive, Teams, and so on.

Moving to Microsoft 365 provides you with the following benefits:

• One subscription service for everything: Microsoft 365 provides you with an ecosystem of applications. Every application is designed to cater to a specific use case. You get applications that let you build electronic forms and business process automation, create insights into your business data, and so on. This saves you from buying multiple point solutions for every use case.
• No installation required: All Microsoft 365 apps are accessible through a web browser, including the ones that have a web and client version. Client versions are available for some applications, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, Power BI, and so on. Although the web versions provide limited features compared to the desktop version, they are catching up with their client counterparts pretty rapidly.
• Choose your own device: Microsoft 365 runs on PC, Mac, and Linux machines. It is compatible with all major browsers, such as Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer 11, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari 10+. More information on operating system and browser compatibility can be found at https://packt.link/browser-compatibility.
• Mobile friendly: All Microsoft 365 services are responsive (meaning that they adjust to the viewing area of the device) when viewed on mobile browsers. Most of these services also have a mobile app that lets you leverage native mobile features (such as camera and GPS). To read about the mobile compatibility of the various Microsoft 365 apps, visit https://packt.link/mobile-compatibility.
• Always get the latest features: Microsoft 365 is continuously being updated with new features and capabilities. Users do not have to worry about upgrades; they can experience improvements as soon as Microsoft updates are released to their organization’s tenant. Your organization can try new features before they are released to the general public by opting in for targeted release. Your IT administrator can designate a set of users to try out these new features before they get rolled out to the rest of the company. You can read more about the Standard and Targeted releases here: https://packt.link/first-release.
• High availability: Microsoft 365 offers 99.9% uptime. The information at https://packt.link/office-continuity shows uptime data across the world over the last three years. Microsoft notifies you at least five days before any scheduled maintenance job. You also receive notifications in case of unplanned outages. Administrators can check the status of Microsoft 365 services from the administration Service Health portal during partial outages.
• State-of-the-art security: One of the main reasons why companies are reluctant to move to the cloud is that they are not sure how secure their data is. Some of these security concerns are as follows:
  • Who can access my data?: Your data belongs to you. There are well-laid policies and checks to ensure that no one can access your data without permission. There could be exceptional scenarios where the government or law enforcement agencies can request your data. To read more about this, refer to https://packt.link/data-access.
  • Protect data from hackers: All Microsoft 365 data is stored in highly secured environments. However, to further secure your Microsoft 365 environment, Microsoft has laid out certain security guidelines (https://packt.link/security) that should be followed. These guidelines reduce the risks of hacking, if not eliminating them completely.
  • Data ownership: Even though your data is saved on Microsoft infrastructure, they do not own your data. If you cancel your Microsoft 365 subscription, your data gets deleted from their servers after 90 days. During this time, you can renew your subscription or back up the data from Microsoft 365. You can read more about data ownership at https://packt.link/ownership.
  • Compliance and information security: Microsoft 365 also provides features such as data loss prevention and device management that let you store your company’s data and information without the risk of information leakage. It offers additional capabilities surrounding data compliance and information security.

    Since these are very highly specialized areas, focused on the administrative side of Microsoft 365, we have not covered the topics in this book. If you are an administrator and implementing Microsoft 365 for your organization, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with these areas. You can read more about Microsoft 365 compliance features here: https://packt.link/M365-compliance. You can read more about Microsoft 365 security features here: https://packt.link/M365-security.