Office 365 provides the productivity tools required by a modern enterprise workforce. This guide covers key details, including available applications, system requirements, and subscription options.

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 other 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 “living” guide, which we’ll periodically update as new information becomes available.

Executive summary

What is it? 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 it matter? As the standard for productivity suites, competing products are generally measured against applications from the Office 365 suite.

Who does it 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 it available? The latest version of Microsoft Office 365 is available right now. The current subscription includes Office 2016 applications.

How do you get it? Enterprises can purchase a subscription to Office 365 via the Microsoft website. Subscriptions range from $8/user/month to $35/user/month.

What is it?

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.

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.

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 those notes 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 1TB 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 applications 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 permissions 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 50GB of storage for email. Maintenance of the Exchange Server is generally handled at the administrator level.

Collaboration tools: Along with the typical productivity applications, Office 365 includes many collaboration tools—like Delve, Skype, 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 enterprises 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 supplied by Active Directory. Each Office 365 subscription includes five layers of security and proactive monitoring to help safeguard your data.

System requirements

• CPU: 1GHz or faster
• Memory: 2GB RAM
• Hard drive: 3GB of available space (6GB 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

Why does it 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.

Who does it 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.

When is it 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 each application because each application is continuously updated.

How do you get it?

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 is activating Yammer for every Office 365 subscription. But is this one collaboration tool too many?

On February 2, 2016, Kirk Koenigsbauer announced in the official Microsoft Office 365 blog that Yammer is now being activated for every eligible Office 365 subscription. In a nutshell, that means Yammer is going to be another app on the Office 365 app list unless an admin specifically turns off access. Your enterprise should plan accordingly.

Yammer

For those of you unfamiliar with the product, Yammer bills itself as an enterprise internal social network. It mixes the typical chat messenger application with collaboration tools available in Office 365.

Similar to the Delve tool we looked at last week, Yammer can serve as the central hub for team collaboration. From within a Yammer discussion, teams can set up meeting appointments using Outlook, switch to a full-fledged Skype for Business video meeting, and access OneDrive for Business to create collaborative documents.

The initial rollout of Yammer took place on February 2, 2016; the rest of the rollout will take place in stages. The next release is March 1, 2016, and the last is April 1, 2016. According to the blog post, the first wave is for “Office 365 customers with a business subscription who purchased fewer than 150 licenses that includes Yammer and who have zero or one custom domains for Yammer.”

The second wave is for “Office 365 customers with a business subscription who purchased fewer than 5,000 licenses that includes Yammer.” Customers with an education subscription are not included.

The final wave is for “remaining customers with a business subscription and all customers with an education subscription.” For subscribers who have never had a Yammer account, the rollout will take place last, in April. Alas, that is the wave I’ll have to wait for.

Collaboration

Yammer is the latest, and perhaps the last, major teamwork collaboration app to be added to Office 365. In Microsoft’s vision of a mobile-first, cloud-first enterprise, teams collaborate across distances using shared documents, video conferencing, and applications that tie it all together in one virtual location.

With the addition of Yammer, Microsoft is offering several tools teams can use to manage and organize their collaboration activities. Teams can use Yammer, Delve, Groups, Sites, SharePoint, and OneNote to manage their shared conversations and documents across the enterprise. One of those tools should be able to satisfy even the most persnickety of teams.

Bottom line

But then again, that may be where we run into problems. One could argue that there are too many collaboration tools available in Microsoft Office 365. While all these wonderful choices may seem good at first glance, it is possible that subscribers may become overwhelmed.

Microsoft’s idea that teams can choose the best tool for them or for the project they are working on sounds all well and good, but it does still require someone to make an important initial decision. For some people, making a decision that will affect a project from start to finish can be a daunting task.

In the long run, it may be beneficial for organizations to establish guidelines for when each of the collaboration tools works best. They may even decide to block some of the tools from use altogether in favor of a recommended best practice.

Having myriad collaboration tools is generally a good thing, but it might help move things along if the enterprise establishes some well thought out guidelines.

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Microsoft is rolling out a host of new email security features for Office 365 later this quarter, as it looks to thwart hackers and criminals.

‘Insider spoofing’ or faking the CEO’s email address to trick the CFO into transferring millions to criminal bank accounts is big business. Now Microsoft is using big data and reputation filters to try and squish the threat.

According to the FBI, between October 2013 and August 2015, 7,066 US businesses have fallen prey to ‘business email compromise’, netting criminals an estimated $747m.

Non-US victims lost a further $51m over the period, with the FBI estimating a 270 percent increase in identified victims since January 2015, when it first released figures about the threat category.

As Microsoft notes, when a corporate email domain is spoofed, it makes it hard for existing filters to identify the bogus email as malicious.

However, Microsoft reckons it has achieved a 500 percent improvement in counterfeit detection using a blend of big data, strong authentication checks, and reputation filters in Exchange Online Protection for Office 365.

It’s also rolling out new phishing and trust notifications to indicate whether an email is from a known sender or if a message is from an untrusted source, and therefore could be a phishing email.

The company is also promising a faster email experience as it vets attachments for malware and new tools to auto-correct messages that are mis-classified as spam. The aim is to boost defences without impairing end-user productivity.

Malicious email attachments remain a popular way for attackers to gain a foothold in an organization and, as RSA’s disastrous SecurID breach in 2011 showed, a little social engineering can go a long way to ensuring someone opens it.

Microsoft’s new attachment scanner, called Dynamic Delivery of Safe Attachments, looks to reduce delays as it checks attachments for potential threats.

Currently it captures suspicious looking attachments in a sandbox with a ‘detonation chamber’ where it analyses it for malware in a process takes five to seven minutes.

Microsoft hasn’t figured out a faster way to analyse the attachment, but instead of holding up the email as it conducts the scan, it will send the body of the email with a placeholder attachment. If the attachment is deemed safe, it will replace the placeholder and if not, the admin can filter out the attachment.

The feature is part of Microsoft’s Office 365 Exchange Online Protection and Advanced Threat Protection services.

The company is also tackling false-positive spam, or legitimate messages that are mis-identified as spam, and vice versa, with a new feature called Zero-hour Auto Purge, which allows admins to “change that verdict”.

“If a message is delivered to your inbox and later found to be spam, Zero-hour Auto Purge moves that message from the inbox to the spam folder; the reverse is true for messages misclassified as spam,” Microsoft notes.

Microsoft is testing this approach with 50 customers and says it will be rolled out for all Exchange Online Protection global clients in the first quarter of 2016.

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Microsoft begins selling its new highest-end Office 365 business plan, E5, on December 1 for $420 per user per year. Here’s what’s included.

Microsoft will charge users $35 per user per month, or $420 per year, for its new highest-end Office 365 business plan.

Microsoft officials went public with the pricing for Office 365 E5, its top-of-the-line commercial Office 365 offering, on November 30 during the company’s Convergence EMEA conference. Office 365 E5 is available to customers for purchase starting, December 1.

Office 365 E4 — the current high-end version of Microsoft’s Office 365 line — sells for $22 per user per month, or $264 per user, per year.

The Office 365 E5 SKU will include Skype for Business (Lync) with support for features including Cloud PBX and Meeting Broadcast; new analytics features, like Power BI Pro and Delve Organizational Analytics; and new advanced security features, such as eDiscovery, Customer Lockbox, and Safe Attachments.

Office 365 E4 includes Skype for Business with Enterprise Voice and unified messaging; the full suite of locally downloadable Office apps; and Power BI for Office 365 (which is being superseded by Power BI pro).

Microsoft is planning to retire E4 and replace it with E5. However, Office 365 E4 will remain on the price list till June 30, 2016, Microsoft officials have said.

The E1 and E3 versions of Office 365 will retain their current prices of $8 per user per month, and $20 per user per month, respectively.

Office 365 E1 users will get new work-management capabilities, as well as Skype for Business’s Meeting Broadcast functionality added to their plans for no additional charge. Office 365 E3 users will get those same two new features, as well as the option to purchase Equivio Analytics for eDiscovery. (Microsoft bought Equivio in January 2015.)

Skype Meeting Broadcast enables users to broadcast of a Skype for Business meeting on the Internet to up to 10,000 people, who can attend in a browser.

Office 365 E5 users get all the features that E1 and E3 users get, plus other analytics and networking functionality, including Cloud PBX and PSTN Conferencing.

The Skype for Business Cloud PBX with PSTN Calling service provides users with the ability to make and receive traditional phone calls in their Skype for Business client, and to manage these calls using hold, resume, forward and transfer.

PSTN Conferencing is initially available to 15 countries on December 1, with a phased roll out to international markets in the future. Cloud PBX is available worldwide starting December 1. PSTN Calling is available in the U.S. starting December 1, with a phased roll out to international markets in the future.

The fine print: PSTN Conferencing users may incur additional per-minute consumption charges, but customer can disable this feature to avoid additional billing. PSTN Calling is paid add-on for E1, E3 and E5. For E5 users, PSTN Calling costs $24 extra (per user, per month) for international and domestic calling, and $12 for domestic calling only. For E1 and E3, the international and domestic calling plan is $32 extra.

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Microsoft Office 365 has taken market share from Google Apps and Google isn’t taking it lying down. Are we looking at the start of a price war?

According to an August 2015 report, Microsoft Office 365 has surpassed Google Apps and now controls more than 25% of the enterprise market—triple the enterprise market share the company held just a year ago. That is some serious growth and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by the folks at Alphabet (aka Google).

Details

On October 19, 2015, Rich Rao, head of global sales for Google Apps for Work announced a new program specifically designed to turn the tide against Microsoft Office 365’s advance.

In a nutshell, enterprises with preexisting contracts for a competitor’s office suite (read Office 365) looking to switch to Google Apps can do so and not pay any additional fees until the competitor’s contract has run its course. In essence, switching enterprises will pay Microsoft’s contract while they use Google Apps.

When the preexisting contract is over, enterprises sign a new contract with Google Apps. The announcement also suggests that Google will pay some of the transition costs through a special program offered by its Google for Work Partners service.

This is a bold move by Google and it signals that the company is reeling from the sudden surge of Microsoft Office 365. I don’t think Google was expecting this level of competition for its Google Apps suite.

Microsoft’s response

The ball is now in Microsoft’s court. There should be some kind of serious strategic response offered by Microsoft—that is, if it intends to maintain the growth of Office 365 in the enterprise market. Letting the tremendous advances in its market share over the last year erode would be irresponsible.

One strategy Microsoft may consider is lower subscription prices.

The basic enterprise version of Google Apps carries a subscription price of $5 per user. The basic enterprise version of Office 365 carries a subscription price of $8 per user. That $3 difference can really add up for a large enterprise and there may be some wiggle room for Microsoft to lower the per-user price for its service.

Cola wars. Pizza wars. We have seen major international companies take part in price wars in the past, and in the end, not much has been resolved. So I don’t think lowering their subscription prices is really the best strategy for Microsoft.

There is another way.

It’s all about collaboration

The basic applications offered by Office 365 and Google Apps—word processing, spreadsheets, emails, calendar, etc.—are similar. Office 365’s applications do have more features and deeper capabilities. Of course, Google Apps claims its lack of features is a good thing because its apps are simpler to use.

However, in this day and age, the real battleground for enterprise markets exists in features outside the basic office suite. The real battleground lies in cloud and collaboration services, including collaboration tools, storage, video communication, and document sharing. The cloud is where Microsoft and Google are going to fight their battle for productivity suite superiority.

And cloud is where Microsoft has been winning handily for the past year or so. I believe the new cloud and collaboration emphasis of Office 365 has taken Google by surprise. I think Google has realized that Microsoft has upped its game and that it can’t coast into increased enterprise market share by merely offering a lower-price, simpler productivity suite.

It may have been an indirect battle before, but Microsoft and Google are now engaged in a mano a mano fight for enterprise market share in the productivity software category. It will be interesting to see how this strategic battle between two superpowers plays out. I just hope each side takes appropriate steps to avoid collateral damage.

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