Office 365 is a collection of apps and cloud services that you can use to be productive across a variety of devices from just about anywhere. Microsoft's Office 365 allows you to run your business without having to run a server, and is a top pick for businesses who wish to move their operations to the cloud. 

Microsoft’s securely hosted Office 365 applications give you the full power of Office Professional without any of the server maintenance worries.  All Office 365 plans include automatic updates to their respective software at no additional charge, as opposed to conventional licenses for these programs—where new versions require purchase of a new license. 

Are you a nonprofit organization? If so, you can qualify for free or discounted licenses through Microsoft's donation program. 

Depending on the plan, Office 365 includes cloud and desktop versions of all of your favorite applications such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and OneNote. There are also packages available with email hosting, Exchange, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams. Office Web Apps give you access to your files anytime, anywhere, while also giving you current versions of Office desktop software.

Businesses choose Office 365 when planning for an email migration, but you can also utilize O365's SharePoint as a file repository, removing the need for a physical server.

Here is a glossary of terms you will hear in discussing Office 365 and the cloud.

• Active Sync: A service that sends calendar and email information from an Office 365 account to various mobile devices.

• Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Data Loss Prevention in Office 365 allows you to monitor and respond to sensitive information within your organization through content analysis. DLS can be preconfigured to flag certain messages and alert users when they are about to send personally identifiable information through email.

• In the cloud: Stored on the Internet rather than in your office.  Frees you from worrying about server maintenance.

• Hosted: A hosted file or program is accessed through a server in the cloud.  This “host server” is provided as part of your cloud service.

• Hosted Exchange: The backbone of Office 365, giving you all the benefits of Microsoft Exchange with Outlook e-mail and collaboration, without having to run your own Exchange server.  Hosted Exchange  makes sense for organizations of all sizes, opening the doors to advanced collaboration for organizations that can’t run their own Exchange server.

• Hosted SharePoint: Like hosted Exchange, gives you the benefits of SharePoint without having to run your own server.

• Office 365: Office 365 is a suite of productivity tools that can be used both in your web browser and on your desktop, with the ability to sync. Several popular programs that are included within Office 365 are Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Sharepoint, OneNote and a variety of others.

• Office 365 Migration: The process of moving an email account or series of accounts from any email client or Exchange server to an Office 365 cloud based solution.

• OneDrive: OneDrive for Business allows users to store, modify, sync and share files collaboratively in real time and is intended for storing and organizing your work documents. OneDrive is a fully cloud based service.

• SharePoint: SharePoint allows organizations to create websites to store, share and organize information from most any device. With SharePoint all of an organization’s important data can be accessed from any web browser.

Tech Networks of Boston is proud to be a Microsoft Partner providing support and implementation for Office 365.  Call us at (617) 269-0299 x 2 for information or to receive a quote for your cloud migration project.