MICROSOFT OFFICE 365:
A GUIDE FOR TECH AND
BUSINESS LEADERS
By Mark Kaelin
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MICROSOFT OFFICE 365: A GUIDE FOR TECH AND BUSINESS LEADERS
INTRODUCTION
For just about any enterprise of any size, the productivity of its modern workforce revolves around the basic
office suite of email, calendar, word processor, and spreadsheet. But as the enterprise workforce has become
more mobile, the basic productivity toolset has had to adapt and change to match new requirements. This is
why Microsoft updated Office 365 to be a mobile collaborative platform ready to get work done wherever and
whenever it happens.
Microsoft Office 365 is the de facto productivity suite for many enterprises, and it is the suite all the
competitors are measured against. So as a leader in information technology for your enterprise, it’s in your best
interest to know everything there is to know about Office 365. To help you achieve that goal, TechRepublic
compiled the most important details and related resources on Microsoft Office 365 into this guide.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• What is Microsoft Office 365? Microsoft Office 365 provides users with the basic productivity
applications necessary to get work done in the modern enterprise. It includes applications like Word, Excel,
Outlook, PowerPoint, OneNote, and OneDrive, just to name a few.
• Why does Microsoft Office 365 matter? As the standard for productivity suites, competing
products are generally measured against applications from the Office 365 suite.
• Who does Microsoft Office 365 affect? In the modern mobile-centric enterprise, Office 365
provides the tools used to get work done. This makes Office 365 important to just about every
working individual.
• When is Microsoft Office 365 available? The latest version of Microsoft Office 365 is available
right now. The current subscription includes Office 2016 applications.
• How do you get Microsoft Office 365? Enterprises can purchase a subscription to Office 365 via
the Microsoft website. Subscriptions range from $8/user/month to $35/user/month.
WHAT IS MICROSOFT OFFICE 365?
Microsoft Office 365 is a subscription service that provides users with the basic productivity applications
necessary to get work done in the modern enterprise. Productivity applications include, but are not limited to,
a word processor, a spreadsheet, an email client, a calendar, and a presentation application. In fact, because of
Office 365’s cloud-based structure, the suite of productivity applications is constantly being updated
and improved.
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MICROSOFT OFFICE 365: A GUIDE FOR TECH AND BUSINESS LEADERS
As an example, a Business Premium subscription to Office 365 ($12.50 per person per month) includes these
applications:
Word: This app sets the standard for word processors and is available with Office 365 for both Business and
Premium. If users in your enterprise need to create documents, this is the tool they will use.
Excel: The spreadsheet has been the workhorse for basic data analysis since its invention back in the previous
century. Excel is the current standard-bearer and comes with Office 365 for Business and Premium.
Outlook: Office 365’s solution for managing email and an appointment calendar is called Outlook. The app
has been around for many years and its busy interface tends to be either loved or hated by users. It’s available
with both the Business and Premium subscriptions.
PowerPoint: Communicating information to a group of individuals at a meeting often involves a
presentation. Office 365’s PowerPoint allows users to create, display, and disseminate information in formats
ranging from the basic slide to animation to video.
Publisher: Sometimes, communicating information to a broader audience requires something more
permanent and more formal than a presentation at a meeting. The Publisher app in Office 365 provides users
with the tools they need to publish professional-looking newsletters, brochures, and booklets.
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MICROSOFT OFFICE 365: A GUIDE FOR TECH AND BUSINESS LEADERS
OneNote: As the workforce has become more mobile, the need to capture information on the go has become
increasingly important. Applications like OneNote allow users to take notes on any device and then retrieve
them from any other device. It’s your basic productivity cloud app.
OneDrive: The other basic and fundamental cloud-based application is storage. With each Office 365
Business subscription, Microsoft provides users with up to 1 TB of cloud storage in the form of an application
called OneDrive for Business.
SharePoint: A subscription to Office 365 Business Premium also provides an enterprise with a few applica-
tions for backend infrastructure management. SharePoint, for example, can be used to host intranet websites
for the enterprise. It also can be used to host smaller sites designed for smaller teams or divisions. The permis-
sions for these sites can be designated by the users themselves or by appointed administrators.
Exchange: Each Office 365 for Business subscription includes an Exchange Server, which handles all the
email management duties. By default, each user is granted 50 GB of storage for email. Maintenance of the
Exchange Server is generally handled at the administrator level.
Microsoft Teams: Younger members of the modern enterprise workforce are familiar and comfortable
with chat applications. To satisfy the needs of those employees, Office 365 now includes Microsoft Teams, a
chat-based workspace that integrates people, content, and tools into a single platform.
Skype for Business: Video conferencing is an essential tool for a mobile enterprise workforce. With Skype
for Business, enterprises can host unlimited online and video conferencing meetings with up to 250 people.
License scope: One licensed subscription to Office 365 covers five phones, five tablets, and five PCs or
Macs per user.
Support: Each Office 365 subscription includes full 24/7 web and phone support.
Collaboration tools: Along with the typical productivity applications, Office 365 includes many collabo-
ration tools—like Delve, Yammer, and Sway. These tools allow users to communicate, brainstorm ideas, share
documents, and have video meetings while on the go.
Power BI: One of the most powerful tools any enterprise can have, regardless of size, is reliable business
intelligence gathering applications. Office 365 for Business, through its Power BI application, provides enter-
prises with a set of tools for collecting, sorting, and presenting business intelligence data.
Infrastructure: All Office 365 subscriptions include a reliability guarantee of 99.9% uptime. In addition,
permissions for internal access control are handled by administrators designated by the enterprise using tools
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MICROSOFT OFFICE 365: A GUIDE FOR TECH AND BUSINESS LEADERS
supplied by Active Directory. Each Office 365 subscription includes five layers of security and proactive
monitoring to help safeguard your data.
Kaizala: Mobile communications is vital to many organizations, and Kaizala adds a secure mobile messaging
and workflow app that can be deployed both internally and externally. Employees, customers, and vendors can
all communicate and coordinate with each other in a secure environment.
Flow: Managing workflow in a dynamic business and across various applications can consume precious time
and resources. Flow provides a simple system to manage notifications within Office 365 across all the applica-
tions you use.
To-Do: An update to Microsoft Office 365 has added the To-Do app to the productivity suite. No longer
an afterthought piggybacking on the Calendar app, To-Do is now a feature-rich standalone application that
integrates with the rest of Office 365.
Small business support: Microsoft has updated and added new small business support applications in
Office 365. There are now apps to help small businesses book clients (Bookings), invoice for services and
products (Invoicing), and plan and manage projects (Planner).
PowerApps: For those situations when your organization needs a specific app to do a specific job, there is
PowerApps. Businesses can leverage simplified development techniques to create sophisticated applications
using features, procedures, and processes found in Microsoft Office 365.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
• CPU: 1GHz or faster
• Memory: 2 GB RAM
• Hard drive: 3 GB of available space (6 GB for Mac)
• Display: 1280 X 800 screen resolution
• Operating system: PC—Windows 7, 8, or 10; Mac—Mac OS X 10.10
• Connectivity: Internet connection
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MICROSOFT OFFICE 365: A GUIDE FOR TECH AND BUSINESS LEADERS
Additional resources
• Microsoft Office 365 for business: Everything you need to know (ZDNet)
• Microsoft 365 to offer tighter security and privacy controls (TechRepublic)
• Microsoft is making OneDrive, SharePoint Online its default save locations for Office 365 apps (ZDNet)
• Microsoft Search rolling out to all Microsoft 365 and Office 365 commercial customers (TechRepublic)
• Microsoft Office 365 is suffering from the dreaded feature creep (TechRepublic)
• Which apps are in Office 365? (Plus answers to other popular Google searches) (ZDNet)
• More Office 365 subscribers are starting to get Office 2016 (ZDNet)
• How to connect multiple Apple systems to Office 365 (TechRepublic)
• 10 reasons why Microsoft Office 365 rocks (TechRepublic)
• Get more must-read Microsoft tips and news (TechRepublic on Flipboard)
WHY DOES MICROSOFT OFFICE 365 MATTER?
Collaboration and communication are the key components of productivity in the modern enterprise, and
productivity is the lifeblood of the enterprise. Microsoft Office 365 provides the tools necessary to bring
collaboration and communication—and by extension, productivity—to each individual in an enterprise.
For many companies, Office 365 is the de facto standard for productivity software. The performance of all
competing products is generally measured against applications from the Office 365 suite.
Additional resources
• Use new security features in Microsoft Office 365 to raise your Secure Score (TechRepublic)
• Microsoft to add two new Microsoft 365 security, compliance bundles to its line-up (ZDNet)
• 30 things you should never do in Microsoft Office (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
• Microsoft adds new cloud-based tools and machine learning features to Office apps (TechRepublic)
• Could new G Suite features entice enterprise users to switch from Office 365? (TechRepublic)
• Three reasons why you should subscribe to Office 365 (TechRepublic)
• Office 365: The time has come for Mac offices (TechRepublic)
• Google may be declaring war against Microsoft and Office 365 (TechRepublic)
• Microsoft’s three new Office 365 SMB plans now open for business (ZDNet)
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MICROSOFT OFFICE 365: A GUIDE FOR TECH AND BUSINESS LEADERS
COMPETITION
The primary competition for Office 365 comes from Google’s G Suite, which is a set of productivity and
collaboration apps, formerly referred to as Google Apps. The G Suite features the typical set of productivity
applications (word processor, spreadsheet, email, calendar), as well as several tools designed to enable and
enhance collaboration in a modern mobile workforce. Pricing for G Suite starts with a subscription of $5 per
user per month.
Other web-based and online productivity suites from other vendors are available—some are even offered
without a monthly subscription, but those suites often lack a full set of collaboration tools and are not suitable
for business enterprises.
WHO DOES MICROSOFT OFFICE 365 AFFECT?
Just about every knowledge worker in every enterprise is required to have an email account and a calendar
application. Beyond that, most individuals in an enterprise will need to use, at least once in a while, a word
processor. And a significant number of individuals in an enterprise will also find themselves needing to use
presentation software or a spreadsheet at some point in their career.
These are the productivity tools of any enterprise. These are the tools used to get work done. That means
Office 365 is important to just about every working individual.
Additional resources
• Microsoft Build 2019: The biggest takeaways (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
• 50 time-saving tips to speed your work in Microsoft Office (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
• Video: How Zscaler is optimizing Office 365 to remove the burden from firewalls (TechRepublic)
• Microsoft acquires Intentional Software to simplify future Office 365 collaboration (TechRepublic)
• Intriguing new features in Microsoft Word 2016 for Mac (TechRepublic)
WHEN IS MICROSOFT OFFICE 365 AVAILABLE?
Microsoft Office 365 is available right now. The current subscription includes applications updated to the
Office 2016 versions. Of course, the key to the subscription model is that each user will always be using the
most current and most secure version of every application because the applications are continuously updated.
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MICROSOFT OFFICE 365: A GUIDE FOR TECH AND BUSINESS LEADERS
Additional resources
• Microsoft adds intelligent cloud collaboration features to Office 365 (TechRepublic)
• Microsoft updates Office 365 with six new Excel functions (TechRepublic)
• Office 2016: A roundup of the best new capabilities (TechRepublic)
• Skype for Business: New features could change how your enterprise works (TechRepublic)
• Microsoft’s new Android app puts Office 365 in the keyboard (ZDNet)
HOW DO YOU GET MICROSOFT OFFICE 365?
Enterprises with fewer than 300 users can purchase a subscription to Office 365 and download the appropriate
applications via the Microsoft website. The Premium version costs $12.50 per user per month ($150/year).
There are also versions of Office 365 available for individuals ($69.99/year) and households ($99.99/year).
For large enterprises, unlimited user versions of Office 365 are available, ranging from $12 per person
per month to $35 per person per month. Each subscription caters to a particular type of enterprise.
More expensive enterprise versions of Office 365 add features like voicemail, compliance auditing, rights
management, encryption, and Advanced Threat Protection.
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MICROSOFT OFFICE 365: A GUIDE FOR TECH AND BUSINESS LEADERS
Additional resources
• 10+ things you should know before buying Office 365 (TechRepublic)
• Comparison chart: Office suites (Tech Pro Research)
• Microsoft Office has changed, how you use it should too (ZDNet)
• How to manage multiple installations of Office 365 (TechRepublic)
• Making Microsoft Search work for your business (TechRepublic)
• Using your Office 365 Secure Score (TechRepublic)
• How to improve business communication with Microsoft’s AI-powered Office 365 Editor (TechRepublic)
• Which deployment option for Microsoft Office 2016 is best for your organization? (TechRepublic)
• How to improve business communication with Microsoft’s AI-powered Office 365 Editor (TechRepublic)
• How to configure Office 365 in macOS Sierra (TechRepublic)
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