Most business leaders don't have a strong understanding of IT operations, but aging platforms can impose a financial stranglehold on your organization. Since tech evolves faster than any other market sector, it’s vital to review your firm’s spend regularly on software and services with your IT team, Managed Service Provider, or other trusted advisor.

Cloud Cost

Cloud computing removes the need for servers, related self-hosting equipment and the maintenance costs associated with upgrading and repairing hardware. This also bears the responsibility of data recovery issues, meaning you don’t need to maintain overly complicated disaster recovery plans.

Microsoft Office 365 is the world’s most widely-used cloud service for enterprise organizations. If you’re not already there, our market-leading Microsoft Professional Services can get you there fast.

Microsoft 365 License Management

You need to identify the type of license to ensure licenses aren’t being over-purchased or underutilized. In many cases, staff are assigned the more costly E3 or E5 licenses across the board, but granular reporting may find that huge scores of users are only utilizing a few of the workloads, which allows you to downgrade it to a less costly package.

Replace Any Legacy Platform

Paying for a storage upgrade may look like the easiest work, least painful option at the time, but it is a short-term fix and adds a long-term financial burden. Making the decision to migrate Enterprise Vault to Microsoft 365 can end up saving your organization huge money in the long term running, as Microsoft’s cloud is future-proof technology with superior scalability.

The decision not to upgrade or replace a legacy system can have devastating long-term consequences that can add an organization with high cost, antiquated systems that will eventually cease to function properly.

You also want to make sure that your company is not over-purchasing or pooling licenses. This is one of the old strategies associated with on-premises systems, which is largely dying out as organizations make the move to the cloud. IT departments no longer need to over-purchase to make sure there’s enough to go around; when you move to a cloud-based service like Microsoft 365, your ability to scale up or down as licenses are easy based on your requirements.

Office 365 Business Essentials may cost $6 per user per month when paid month-by-month. If the organization allows work-at-home for employees needing the plan runs nine or fewer months, then, month-by-month payments will save money over the annual rate and commitment

If your organization is already armed with Microsoft 365, the by-subscription service whereby customers pay Microsoft an ongoing fee annually or monthly for the right to run the suite and numerous services — have an edge when their workers get spread. This is because the subscription is licensed per user, not per device, allowing each employee to install the applications on multiple devices, including personal hardware they have at home.

Conclusion

Microsoft 365 implementation and Cloud computing is a brilliant way to reduce capital costs and IT expenses. Cloud allows you to have access to the latest application upgrades and ability to scale up on-demand, whether for licenses or to increase data storage. Additionally, the cloud can be customized and increases user access and collaboration, with the ability to access applications remotely on personal devices enabling a remote workforce.