Simplified Business
Integration
Content Access | File Transfer | Team Collaboration | Email
MICROSOFT OFFFICE 365 Enterprise E3
WHITE PAPER
Simplified Business Integration with Microsoft 365 Office
Enterprise E3 and OneDrive Cloud Service
Jihye W. Muniz | February 2019
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In today’s tech driven world, it is imperative to invest in tools and resources that
Cloud service is an integrated online infrastructure that give users the ability to
consummate effective solutions in running business operations. The problem is
store, access, and manage information and data instead of storing them locally on
that when business owners resort to purchasing multiple software, hardware,
the computer’s hard drive. This computing service that is handled by physical or
and applications for their business needs, it results in extensive costs and
virtual servers not only frees up physical storage space but provides more security
burdensome upkeeping of the latest versions, installations, and individual
than if you were to store data conventionally. This white paper will highlight the
payment methods. Time and productivity are also negatively affected; often
challenges you may currently face in running your business and exploit the
times, businesses have collaboration tools that differ in storage model, user
benefits of utilizing the Microsoft 365 Office Enterprise E3 package. MS O365 E3
authentication, user interface, and content organization/format/addressing
is a cloud-based suite of productivity applications that are also available in
which causes a conflict in long-term collaboration. Technology giants such as
desktop versions combined with OneDrive Cloud service, built in advanced
Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM – to name a few, have emerged with Cloud
security features, and more. This paper will also address the MS O365 advantages
services to address these issues.
over other cloud services to assist you in making an informative decision.
Internal Business Perspective
Elements of Business
Some of the most important elements of a
business include and not limited to the
value proposition, cost structure, customer
relations, revenue stream, key resources,
channels, customer segments, and key
activities.
Importance of Key Activities
What should also be taken into great
consideration, is how those key activities are
being performed – is your business
operating in the most time effective and
productivity induced manner?
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Long Term Collaboration Conflict
Collaboration tools that differ in storage
model, user authentication, user interface, and
content organization/format/addressing causes
a conflict in long-term collaboration.
Protecting Sensitive Data
Protecting the information flows of the
business, in conjunction with sensitive data
such as personal information of your clients,
employees, and key partners must be taken as
a priority. Without the right protection, data
can be easily compromised.
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24/7 Data Backup and Accessibility
Microsoft Office products are the most commonly used desktop applications in the
office, school, and in any environment that requires the usage of a computer.
Obtaining the Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise E3 package may be the ideal solution
to maximize your business output. Here are some of the key identifiable solutions to
your current operational needs.
Financial Flexibility
The Microsoft Office Enterprise E3 plan provides an integrated platform that
provides the ease of use for all users while providing the productivity tools and
security that is detrimental for your business. The cost is economically priced at
$20/month per user with an annual commitment. Without the need of any upfront
costs, this solution would be a great fit into your monthly budget. The all-in-one
package allows you to avoid the financial burden of investing in additional resources
such as hardware/software.
Each user is allotted 5TB of cloud storage space. This solution will eliminate your
current storage space limitation of utilizing a physical storage space in office, in
which you are running the risk of exposing sensitive data if not properly secured.
The risk of exposing sensitive data may also occur during relocation and in the
process of transfer. Another important factor to consider is the possibility of losing
access to important data in case of a server crash, natural disaster, and/or human
error of misplacing them. Microsoft Office 365 online portal is available 24/7 and
can be accessed from anywhere where there is an internet connection, and on any
device. A maximum of 5 different devices can be used by the same user, increasing
the convenience of accessing the account from a cellular device, tablet, laptop,
desktop at work and at home.
Collaboration Method
Utilizing different resources and/or software to complete a project can be
burdensome and is not the best way to spend your valuable time. Office 365 will
provide all the tools you need in an all-in-one package. All resources can be found
on the online portal; documents in collaboration can be easily located in the
shared folder. MS Word offers the ability for the author of the document to input
permissions and restrictions on other users to view and edit the document, and to
track those changes. The user may also use the “block authors” option to
eliminate others to make changes when enabled. Manage access privileges to
documents when sharing documents from the portal. Work on projects on the go
by accessing the online version of MS office products on your tablet/laptop.
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How your business could benefit from Microsoft Office 365
This Cloud Based Service provides collaboration with different tools allowing data and files to be easily organized, accessed,
stored, and searched with an architecture that integrates both desktop and server-centric tools.
FINANCIAL PERSPECTIVE
$20 user/month (annual commitment)
With no upfront costs, it is easier to fit this solution
into your monthly budget.
Scalable solution that allows you to manage the
number of users. Data Security and Control is also
included in the plan.
Communication tools such as Skype for Business now
implements web conferencing with desktop/file sharing
features along with instant messaging. Meetings can happen
anywhere, without complications. The SharePoint also
includes a variety of team interaction areas such as including
blogs, wiki, and supports collaboration on a set of files or
documents for internal communication.
COMMUNICATION TOOLS
AVOID LICENCING MESS
DATA SECURITY & CONTROL
Advanced Threat Analytics scans malicious email links &
attachments. Ability to remotely wipe data if device is lost.
Office 365 is one of the few cloud services to receive the
“highest rating of Skyhigh Enterprise-Ready based on an
objective assessment of its security controls.”
All users will have the same updated version of
Office 365 including all licensing and deployable
company wide without having to upgrade anything.
You also have the option to mix and match plans to
suit the needs of your users.
Collaboration activities that are done effectively and in a
time-effective manner increases productivity of the
business and boosts client satisfaction. All files are
loaded onto the cloud and will be available to you and
your team 24/7. Synchronized contents will
automatically update across all devices allowing realtime team collaboration. Update the status of assigned
tasks and keep organized with the Planner.
TEAM COLLABORATION &
PRODUCTIVITY
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Why Security should be a Priority for your Business
Microsoft 365 Office has built in security and continuous
compliance. The Advanced Threat Analytics feature uses analytics
and machine learning to detect and alert suspicious behavior
over the network and scans for malicious links or attachments on
emails to prevent data breach. There are four levels of external
sharing (Anyone, New and Existing external users, Existing
external users, and only people in your organization), which
allows you to have complete control of how your users can share
contents via OneDrive and Sharepoint. Additional security
features, such as being able to configure document policies,
content lock down, and managing device access are also
available. The following analyzed data is on the cloud data usage
from Skyhigh Cloud Access Security Broker for over 27 million
users in over 600 enterprise locations.
Types of Sensitive Data Stored in OneDrive and SharePoint Online
9.4%
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Confidential data
4.1%
Personally Identifiable Info
1.9%
Payment Information
Coles, C.(2019) Office 365 Adoption Rate, Stats and Usage. Skyhigh Networks. Retrieved from https://www.skyhighnetworks.com/cloud-securityblog/7-charts-reveal-the-meteoric-rise-of-office-365/
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Google G-Suite Enterprise vs. Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise E3
Google G Suite, most commonly known as Google Apps is Microsoft Office 365’s
biggest competitor. Both use the same platform of utilizing the cloud for file and
sharing storage and have similar features used for productivity and collaboration. Gsuite’s Enterprise plan offers an unlimited file storage space on plans with more than
5 users while Office 365 offers a limited storage space of 5TB on the Enterprise E3
plan; which still equates to 4000 billion pages assuming there are 500 8 char words
per page - This should be adequate for a medium sized business. The Microsoft
Outlook email service consists of 100GB of mailbox storage per user and most
importantly protects the integrity of your documents being sent with the Rights
Management Service.
This service allows you to restrict the access to documents to specific people
and prevents anyone from viewing or editing that is sent to anyone. You will
also be able to secure confidentiality of your data with the option to encrypt
emails so that it is unreadable by unauthorized personnel; the recipient is able
to retrieve the encrypted email by first authenticating their identity and
requesting a one-time passcode that has been created through the Microsoft
365 Protected Message Viewer Portal. This advanced security option of
encrypted emailing service is unfortunately unavailable with G-Suite.
Functionality of the Applications
The G-Suite office applications are comparable to the Microsoft Office 365
products. However, when taking an in-depth look at each application, the
functionality will come down to the features they offer. G-Suite’s office
applications are only available on the portal while full desktop versions that
can be worked while offline, are included with 365 which is a huge
convenience factor to your users. The portal works fine but usually used as
an alternative method - in case the desktop documents happen to be
unavailable. There is a total of 1.2 billion office users world-wide; summing
that these are the most common desktop applications. When it comes down
to the functionality of the applications, Office 365 is a clear winner. For
example, you are able to add more creativity in MS Word Documents and
PowerPoint and do advanced formulation through Excel. Email feature is the
most detrimental communication tool utilized in any organization. Gmail
offers a robust searching function which is almost expected by Google but
Microsoft outlook provides a lot more flexibility in managing your email in
sorting, grouping, and labeling.
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Comparison charts retrieved from https://clean-clouds.com/2017/09/30/office-365-or-g-suite-what-is-the-right-choice-for-my-business/
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Analyzing usage of over
20,000 cloud services,
58.4%
Of Sensitive Data in the
cloud is stored in Microsoft
Office Documents
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Outlook (MSG, PST)
Microsoft Excel
Adobe PDF
79.1%
One Drive for Business
has the Highest
penetration rate of
organizations with
minimum of 100 users
18.6%
Also has highest usage rate
of all enterprise employees
actively using it
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Other
Microsoft 365 OneDrive Advantages over Google Drive and other cloud storages
Microsoft occupies the top spot in cloud usage rankings by user account. Microsoft has a proactive
approach by having fault tolerance built into their data centers; making sure to always have a data
center to become the primary node if one is to crash. This allows OneDrive to offer a minimum of
99.97% uptime - the continuous availability of their platform, and limit potential downtime to 25.9
seconds per day. This only equates to only about 0.0002% of cloud dependency per year. Have
international companies? Thanks to OneDrive having data centers around the world, their storage
platform is available on every continent which will allow you to meet the data residency requirements
per geolocation. Also, the OneDrive sync client is available across multiple operating systems.
Coles, C.(2019) Office 365 Adoption Rate, Stats and Usage. Skyhigh Networks. Retrieved from https://www.skyhighnetworks.com/cloud-securityblog/7-charts-reveal-the-meteoric-rise-of-office-365/
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”Total 1.2 Billion Office Users Worldwide.
60 Million Monthly Active Office 354 commercial users.
50,000 small business customers added each month.”
Microsoft Office 365 platform continues to grow
but there are certain disadvantages that the
business owner should be aware of. Since Office
365 is cloud based, the online portal will not be
accessible if the internet in your business were to
go down, which will cause disruption to your work.
However, the desktop applications can be worked
on while off-line and the portal can still be accessed
on devices that use cellular service such as tablets
and mobile phones. Connecting laptops to near-by
wi-fi connections or to a mobile hot-spot will also
be another method to gain internet service as a
workaround.
The Enterprise E3 plan comes with numerous of
applications and security features that are
highly recommended to utilize Office 365 to its
full potential but not all users may use these. In
this case, you do have the option to move those
users to a cheaper plan as you can mix and
match plan options; an annual commitment is
required but not to a specific plan. This can also
be viewed as a once a year billing instead of
worrying about the bill on a monthly basis.
Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise E3 plan will
be the right decision for you if you are looking
for a cloud-based solution with all around
functionality, security, and the ease of use with most applications that users are already
familiar with. Keep in mind, in order to have
the security feature for your entire business,
you must purchase the plan includes it or you
may purchase it a la carte. Microsoft
continues to implement new features and
functionalities to assist in making running
business operations intuitively as possible.
Callaham, J. (March 2016) There are now 1.2 billion office users and 60 million Office 365 commercial customers. Windows Central.
Retrieved by https://www.windowscentral.com/there-are-now-12-billion-office-users-60-million-office-365-commercial-customers
References
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https://www.quest.com/community/quest/microsoft-platform-management/b/microsoft-platformmanagement-blog/posts/the-top-5-benefits-of-using-onedrive
Brown, Jason. (2015, December) 7 Benefits of Office 354 for Small Business. SherWeb | Blog. Retrieved
from https://www.sherweb.com/blog/7-benefits-of-office-365-for-small-business/
Buford, J., Mahajan, K. & Krishnaswamy, V. (2011, December) Federated Enterprise and Cloud-Based
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