Moving to the Cloud

Most organisations that choose to move to the cloud do so because they have decided they need it for business agility and want the cost savings that come with it.

How can you know whether or not you’re getting it all?

If your organisation is considering Microsoft Office 365 as your first step in moving applications to hosted solutions, you may have found similar inconsistencies in your research, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction. Using Office 365 as an example, let's help you separate fact from fiction.

Download our Cloud benefits brochure here

FACT: Office 365 is the Office you already know, plus productivity tools that will help you work more efficiently.

Whether at your desk or on the go, you have the tools to focus on the work that matters to your mission. And, since Office 365 lives in the cloud, these tools stay up to date, are simple to use and manage, and are ready to work when you are.

These tools include: SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business for collaboration, websites, workflows, and enterprise file sync and share (available across all plans) and so much more.

Plus, with many Office 365 plans, you can install the latest full Office applications on your devices, so you can work offline or online in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook too.

FACT: You still have total control over technology, but your IT department won’t have to worry about constant updates.

When you move to the cloud, time spent maintaining hardware and upgrading software is significantly reduced, eliminating headaches with it. Now your IT team can focus on advancing your organisation’s technology, rather than being a repair service. Plus, you will have more time to spend improving operations and launching agile initiatives.

FACT: Security and uptime come standard with Office 365 in the cloud.

“It’s becoming increasingly clear that your on-premises systems aren’t inherently more secure than they’d be in the cloud,” says Mark Anderson, founder of the INVNT/IP Global Consortium, a group of governments and security experts solving the growing cyber theft problem. “Many organisations are routinely hacked and don’t know it,” says Anderson.

Even if your organisation has a growing security team, organisations can rarely assemble a team large enough to uncover and protect against the hundreds of possible alerts that come through each day. When you switch to Office 365, we act as an extension of your security team. Microsoft data centers are built with scale in mind.

To keep Office 365 security at the pinnacle of industry standards, our dedicated security team uses a wide range of processes including the Security Development Lifecycle; traffic throttling; and preventing, detecting, and mitigating breaches at an enterprise level. And, Microsoft Office 365 has a 99.9% financially backed uptime guarantee.

To protect against external threats, Office 365 gives you the option to use Advanced Threat Protection to secure mailboxes against sophisticated attacks in real time. Every email attachment or link is automatically evaluated for suspicious activity, and malicious content is neutralized before the chance of a risk.

Additionally, we staff industry-leading regulatory compliance experts. We know and keep up-to-date with the latest regulations and rules, such as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley, Federal Information, Security Management Act (FISMA), ISO 27001, European Union (EU) Model Clauses, U.S.–EU Safe Harbor framework, Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), just to name a few. To learn more about Office 365 security and compliance, visit Office 365 Trust Center.

FACT: Microsoft and Geodetic.UK are here to help every step of the way.

When you start considering how to move petabytes of data to the cloud, it’s easy to see why some people think “going cloud” is too big a challenge for IT departments and staff, alike. We’re not going to tell you it’s simple, but you really can get Office 365 up and running quickly.

Microsoft and Geodetic.UK will help you every step of the way, with information and tips on firewall configurations, reverse proxy requirements, identity options, migration possibilities, and a phased approach for hybrid setups. We’ve created several paths you can follow, and in most cases, you can use your existing tools and processes throughout the migration, so day to day work won’t be disrupted.

We also have plenty of information on how to set up Office 365, where you can learn more about each application, as well as find tips on how to get your teams excited to use Office 365 in the Microsoft Adoption Center.

It only takes a phone call to Geodetic.UK on 07713 605176. The free no obligation chat could be the most important call you make this year.