Microsoft Office 365 is a series of subscription services provided by Microsoft as a part of the Microsoft Office suite. With over fifty million users worldwide, it’s one of the most popular suites of office products available. It’s free to subscribe and gives customers a full range of software applications, ranging from Word to Excel, PowerPoint, and more. The software is bundled together for ease of use and there are many technical support options available. The service supports standard office applications like word, Excel and PowerPoint, but also provides additional tools like the Microsoft Office Web Services and Microsoft Dynamics GP.
There are three subscription plans available in the Microsoft Office 365 suite:
Professional, Business, and Ultimate. The prices vary according to the plan purchased. With the Business plan you pay up front to have five computers that are provided to your company with Microsoft 365 licenses, while the Ultimate plan offers unlimited access to five computers for a full year, or you can upgrade to a Business or Ultimate plan if you need to.
The Business plan is the most basic offering of Microsoft 365 services, allowing you to run five computers on your own network for a year. You can activate this plan after purchasing an evaluation version of the software. In this plan, users can access email, Word, and Excel. Microsoft has integration with the Sharepoint business platform and has applications for finance, social media, and marketing.
The Business plan comes with Outlook, the email client, and Microsoft’s brand new browser, Edge. With Outlook, you are provided access to Microsoft’s email server, where you can manage your Outlook emails. With this package you also get access to Microsoft’s social network, MSN, and Yahoo. This allows you to communicate with your employees and clients across multiple platforms. Additionally, with the Yahoo! 360 applications you get access to Yahoo! Weather and Microsoft’s Bing Weather.
On average, users will spend approximately two hours using Outlook per month on their personal computer. With Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions, users have access to Outlook plus all the benefits that come from Microsoft’s cloud-based service, including data capture and push notification services. With Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions, users are provided with a username and password, which allow them to sign in anywhere they have an Internet connection, even while they are on the road. For example, if a business owner were to go on vacation, his employees would still be able to access Outlook online. They would simply log in to a different local time zone, so that they could receive their email and other important notifications.
Also included with your subscription is Microsoft Exchange Server.
This is where your messages are stored, organized, and synchronized between Outlook and the Exchange server. For companies who use Microsoft SharePoint Software as their main platform, having a Microsoft Exchange Server is important. The advantage of using this service is that your company’s information is always secure, even when you are not using the internet or are miles away from the office. This is because all mail is sent as a secured message to your active directory.
All companies involved in an organization need to realize the benefits of the Microsoft Office 365 platform. It is important that everyone knows how the service works and how it can improve productivity within the company. To do this, all kinds of information about the service including plans aimed at business users need to be made available to everyone. Users need to be educated about the various services that are included in the subscription, how each service can make life easier for them and what they can achieve by having a subscription to the Microsoft 365 platform.
- With the introduction of the Microsoft Office 365 platform in the market, more businesses can expect better efficiency.
- The availability of apps for Outlook, like for instance, Address Book, Calendar, and Web Services makes it even easier for employees to access the information that they need from Outlook.
- With this technology, it is also possible for an employee to check his or her email even while on the go.
- This is why it is vital that companies provide proper training to their staff about the use of these apps for better productivity.