Guide to Office 365 Migration: What is Office 365?

In this guide we will examine the process of migrating to Office 365. We will cover what Office 365 is in general, why you should make the move to Office 365, different subscription options, how to plan for the migration, post migration strategies, and why the Agile IT team can help you make a smooth migration to Office 365. This first section will cover what Office 365 is and what it could mean for your business.

What is Office 365?

Office 365 is a subscription based plan that provides access to Office applications such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc. over the Internet. Most of the Office 365 plans include a desktop version of the newest Office applications that you can install on multiple computers and devices to include laptops, PCs, macs, Android tablets and phones, and iPads and iPhones.

Office 365 subscriptions are an excellent option for businesses as they are compatible with the desktop versions of Office 2007, Office 2010, Office 2011 for Mac, and Office 2008 for Mac. These don’t include Exchange Online Kiosk or Office 365 Enterprise K1 subscriptions. All Office 365 subscriptions can be paid annually or monthly.

You will need Internet access to install and activate Office 365 plans and to manage your account. You also need an Internet connection to access Office 365 Cloud services which include email, IT management, and conferencing. If you have a setksop verion of Office you can work offline and the next time you connect, your progress will be automatically Sync’d so you will always have the latest version of every document. When you have Office 365 your desktop version is also kept up to date when you are online.

With Office 365 everything is stored on the Cloud. The Cloud is simply a web-based computing service that is hosted externally to your organization. When you use a Cloud-based service, your IT infrastructure is no longer on-premises and is maintained by host rather than residing on a physical server that you are responsible to maintain. With Office 365, Microsoft manages the software and storage on their servers. With this Cloud-based service you can access your data anywhere you have Internet connectivity with your PC, tablet, smartphone, or other mobile device.

Office 365 is scalable to fir your business needs. Small to enterprise sized companies can connect tens of thousands of users with Business and Enterprise plans that are a best fit for business of all size. Office 365 subscription plans will be discussed in another section of this guide.

Office 365 is available for several mobile devices including Android and iPad. Office Mobile already comes preinstalled on the Windows Phone 8 and certain models of the iPhone and Android. Office Mobile provides excellent content viewing and quick content editing. Office Mobile helps you manage your content to ensure your formatting is correct so the documents you work on while on the go will appear just as they would if you created them on your desktop. Now that you have a general overview on what Office 365 is we will dive deeper into reasons why you should switch to Office 365, the different subscription plans explained, how to plan for migration, and why Agile IT should be your first step once you consider migrating to Office 365. After you read this complete guide you should have a better understanding of what Office 365 is, how it differs from the desktop versions of Office, and why Office 365 is excellent for the mobile user.