Depending on your subscription plan, some of the benefits of Office 365 for business could include: The latest Office apps, like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. The ability to install on PCs, Macs, tablets, and phones.
There are two stand alone versions of Microsoft Office that can be purchased on subscription from Office 365:. Office 365 Business. Office 365 ProPlus. These can also be bundled in with (or purchased in addition to) various other Microsoft Office 365 services such as Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Skype for Business. Office 365 Business is bundled in with the Office 365 Business Premium plan. Office 365 ProPlus is bundled in with the Office 365 E3 and E4 plans. In general these two applications are the more or less the same.
You’ll have the ability to:. Install Office applications on up to five computers for each subscriber. Run the major Microsoft Office applications of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc. Install and use the Office applications on a iOS, Android and Windows mobile devices. Upgrade to a newer version of the software whenever a new version is released Major differences between Office 365 Business and Office 365 ProPlus:. Office 365 Business costs 7.00 GBP + VAT / month. Office 365 ProPlus costs 10.10 GBP + VAT / month.
Pricing assumes a yearly commitment. You can purchase Office 365 Business for 8.50 GBP + VAT / month without a yearly commitment. Office 365 Business can only be deployed for up to 300 users within an organisation; Office 365 ProPlus does not have this restriction. Office 365 ProPlus includes Microsoft Access There are a number of smaller differences between the two versions of the software:. Since Office 365 Business doesn’t have Access then features such as Database compare are not available. Office 365 ProPlus allows the ability to run Microsoft Office on a virtual desktops hosted on a Windows Server running Remote Desktop Services along with the ability to activate this for all the users. Office 365 Business does not.
Office 365 ProPlus has a few useful Excel tools: Excel Spreadsheet Compare, Excel Spreadsheet Inquire, Power Pivot for Excel, Power Query for Excel, Power View for Excel; that Office 365 Business does not. Office 365 ProPlus supports Exchange Online and SharePoint Online Archiving and Compliance. These are used with the powered up versions (Plan 2) of Exchange Online and SharePoint Online and allow a company to put in place message retention and eDiscovery requirements. Office 365 Business does not support these. Office 365 ProPlus has Group Policy support e.g. If you want to implement an add-in across an organisation but don’t want to have to go to each machine to do this then this is what you’d use. Office 365 Business does not have this functionality.
Office 365 ProPlus supports Information Rights Management which works in tandem with the Azure Rights Management options in some Office 365 Plans. Office 365 Business does not have this functionality. Office 365 ProPlus includes InfoPath Designer which is used to design, distribute, complete and submit electronic forms and can be used in conjunction with SharePoint Online. Office 365 Business does not include InfoPath Designer. Office 365 ProPlus supports Office Telemetry; a monitoring framework that can speed up Office deployments by helping discover business critical Office documents and solutions in the company.
Office 365 Business does not support this. Office 365 ProPlus supports the ability to block cloud-based file storage through a registry edit. This can’t be achieved in Office 365 Business. If you found this article useful then you’ll want to check out our.
Originally published June, 2015, updated February 2019. IT managers are by nature conservative. It comes with the job. So your first reaction to the thought of replacing traditional software installations with subscription services is likely to be, “What’s the catch?” Download Analyst Report: That’s especially true of Office 365, Microsoft’s subscription-based replacement for its traditional enterprise productivity services. Businesses worldwide run on Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, and other server-based products, with employees using perpetual-license versions of Microsoft Office productivity programs on Windows PCs and Macs. Switching to a subscription-based service means getting a more-or-less predictable monthly bill rather than writing huge checks every few years for company-wide upgrades. There are other, less tangible differences, too.
Per-user licensing eliminates the headaches of buying, assigning, managing, and tracking individual software licenses and client access licenses (CALs) for server products. You assign a license to an employee based on their organizational email address; when the employee leaves the organization, you remove their license from the Office 365 dashboard. That straightforward process eliminates the cost and uncertainty of annual licensing audits for traditional licensing. In Office 365 plans that include the traditional Office programs—Word, Outlook, Excel, and so on—each user in your organization is entitled to install the software on up to five devices.
Those installations are initiated by the user, with no product keys or installation media required. The employee just signs in using organizational credentials and uses the Click-to-Run installer. New product features, even whole new versions, are automatically installed as part of the normal background update process. That doesn’t mean everything in the transition to Microsoft’s suite of cloud applications and services is self-evident. If you’re considering a Office 365 migration, here are four key factors to consider. Factor in all the costs The simplest calculation for an Office 365 migration doesn’t require a spreadsheet.
Just count the number of seats and multiply by the annual cost of your enterprise plan. Chances are that number will seem high, perhaps as much as 30% higher than your corresponding budget for traditional server and desktop software licenses. But the total cost becomes more reasonable when you factor in some of the savings:. Lower data center costs: You probably won’t be able to eliminate your server room completely, but you should be able to consolidate servers and cut your hardware budget. Reduced IT workload: Because Microsoft is managing Exchange, SharePoint, and other servers, your IT pros don’t have to to of each month. Fewer help desk calls: Those self-service installations of Office apps on Windows, Mac, and mobile devices mean no lost product keys and no activation issues, both of which can cause serious support headaches and user angst.
Don’t be afraid to mix and match plans Microsoft has a. Plans in the Business group are intended for organizations with fewer than 300 users, while those in the Enterprise group allow you to provision an unlimited number of users. The easy path is to choose the $20-per-month E3 plan for everybody, with Exchange email, OneDrive for Business, and the full suite of Office desktop programs and mobile apps. But you can squeeze out significant savings if you look past those all-in-one plans.
Do you want some workers to have email only, without the full Office desktop suite? Then look at the, which cost $4 and $8 a month, respectively. You can also trim costs by choosing individual services (such as Skype for Business online conferencing) from the a la carte menu.
Some judicious choices here can shave that monthly budget by 10% or more without impacting productivity. Take advantage of security options Make sure to use multi-factor authentication, which significantly lowers the risk that user accounts will be hacked or phished. Are available on every mobile platform, which means your users can take advantage of the greater security afforded by multi-factor authentication regardless of which type of smartphone they use.
There also additional security features available from Microsoft and its partners for an additional cost. Consider third-party data protection tools While Office 365 comes with some native tools that can help when you or one of your users makes an accident, it may not be helpful in every situation. For example, if you delete or accidentally corrupt a file or two, Microsoft has tools to help restore that data. However, there are several scenarios where these tools may be insufficient. At worst, you may find important company data gone forever and we cover these limitation in more detail in this. If you’d like to completely protect your Office 365 data from malware, hackers, and rogue admins, then tools such as Druva inSync may be an ideal solution.
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