If you’re one of the millions of Office 365 users around the world, you’re in good company. 1 in 5 corporate employees use the platform for their business workflows. 

Office 365 includes the famous Office programs that have been a mainstay in businesses for decades – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook – plus a whole slew of 21stcentury tools to help teams collaborate online, manage tasks more efficiently, and access their work from any location. Office 365 takes full advantage of cloud services, which help ensure business continuity by storing files off site and enables real-time collaboration between teams, but some users might wish it could do even more.

For example, while Office 365 takes full advantage of mobility by offering its platform on desktop and mobile devices, it’s not designed to specifically manage the security of mobile devices, which continue to take over more of the office workload from desktops every year. So, to offer organizations even more tools that can help their businesses thrive, Microsoft created another tier of their subscription service, called Microsoft 365. While the two names may seem confusing at first, Microsoft 365 does have some distinct advantages over Office 365. And in fact, they’re not competing platforms, Microsoft 365 simply gives you everything in the Office 365 subscription, plus a lot more.

What’s the Difference Between Office 365 and Microsoft 365?

Office 365 is the more familiar of the two platforms and is a cloud hybrid that allows you to take your Office work online or off and make use of the benefits of working in “the cloud.” 90% of companies use cloud computing technologies.

Office 365

Office 365 Business and Business Premium offer the following applications and benefits:

  • Word
  • Excel
  • PowerPoint
  • Outlook
  • Access
  • OneDrive
  • Exchange (Premium)
  • SharePoint (Premium)
  • Teams (Premium)
  • 1 TB of OneDrive storage space per user

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 takes your technology farther by offering more tools that can help you keep your data secure and manage a mobile workforce. Microsoft 365 Business (which is for small to medium sized businesses) includes:

  • Office 365 Business Premium
  • Windows 10 Pro
  • Mobile Device Management from Intune
  • Business apps from Office (Bookings, Outlook Customer Manager)
  • Advanced security protection for Windows 10 and mobile devices

Office 365 vs Microsoft 365 Pricing Comparison

There is flexibility between the two subscription plans, so if you want to keep some of your users on the lower priced Office 365 plan and give others the additional features of Microsoft 365, you can do that. This gives growing businesses the ability to pay for just the services they need. Pricing for the platforms:

  • Office 365 Business Premium: $12.50 per user per month
  • Microsoft 365 Business: $20.00 per user per month

There are also enterprise options for larger organizations.

Advantages of Getting a Microsoft 365 Subscription

There are three key areas of benefits when it comes to upgrading to Microsoft 365, the mobile device management, the security, and the additional software.

Microsoft Intune Mobile Device Management

91% of corporate employees use at least one mobile app for work and 71% of employees spend more than two hours per week accessing company information on a smartphone or tablet. Trying to control the information flow across multiple employee mobile devices can be a nightmare unless you have an application designed to do that, which is what Intune is all about. Intune comes with the Microsoft 365 subscription and can help your company:

  • Enforce security policies across devices
  • Safeguard data access from mobile devices owned by employees
  • Ensure devices and apps are compliant with company security policies
  • Track app usage across devices
  • Remotely control access to corporate applications

Advanced Security

Your IT security is one of the most important components of your technology infrastructure. Data breaches are the new form of “break-in” and stolen data can be quite costly for companies of all sizes. Microsoft 365 comes with a number of advanced security features, including:

  • Advanced Threat Protection to help protect your network against advanced malware, ransomware, and Zero-day threats
  • Ability to remotely wide company data from lost or stolen devices
  • Controls that allow you to restrict the saving or copying of company data to unauthorized apps and locations
  • Unlimited cloud archive and long-term preservation policies that allow you to ensure your emails are never lost
  • Pre-breach threat resistance for Windows 10 with Windows Defender Exploit Guard

Additional Business Microsoft Business Apps

Microsoft 365 offers some additional helpful business tools that give you even more advanced benefits and ways to get ahead of your competition.

Bookings

If you run a business that takes appointments, Bookings can simplify and automate the process by making it easy for customers to book appointments online.

Outlook Customer Manager

Keep your client relationships organized and take less time trying to track down notes, emails, and appointments. Outlook Customer Manager keeps everything related to your contact in one place and allows you to easily share contact information and notes with your team all from within Outlook.

Get Expert Help for Your Cloud Solutions from Managed IT Asia!

As a small business owner, trying to run your business, plus keep on top of the best technology to support your growth can be difficult… unless you have an expert partner by your side. Contact us today to discuss your cloud technology and see if it’s truly serving your needs. Call us at +65 6748 8776 or reach us online.

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    MANAGED IT ASIA, we are an IT Support, IT Solutioning and Managed IT Service Provider specializing in serving Small Businesses across Asia. Call us at +65 6748 8776 and let us manage your Small Business IT today!