Why now is the right time to migrate to Microsoft 365
The modern workplace is evolving at a pace with the traditional 9-5 ‘in-office’ job fast becoming a thing of the past. Work is no longer just a place you go, but rather a thing you do, whether that be at home, in a coffee shop, in the office or even in another country. Embracing the modern workplace is important as employees increasingly want the freedom to spend more work time engaged in collaborative and real-time tasks from anywhere, whether that be meetings, telephone calls or dealing with emails.
“79% of companies regularly receive requests from employees to obtain more cloud based applications, including file sharing and collaboration options as top of the list of requests.”
(source: Cloud Security Alliance and McAfee’s IT in the Age of Cloud Survey Report)
It therefore stands to reason that the IT technology deployed for today’s modern workforce must be fit for purpose, allowing employees to work together seamlessly and collaboratively from any location, at any time.
The IT Challenge
At the same time, IT heads need to ensure that while keeping the modern workforce happy they are also managing the crucial IT security requirements within the business. Employee frustration can be a result of factors such as outdated legacy systems causing inefficiency; the use of different versions of software that require updates at different times which can be difficult to manage; plus there are often situations where employees need to use their own personal applications in order to do their jobs creating yet more security risks. Thankfully, most organisations now recognise that empowering the workforce is vital, and ensuring they have the right tools and environment to do their jobs is critical.
Now is the time to switch to Microsoft 365
For any business still operating on older or outdated IT legacy systems, our expert team at Opus recommend switching to Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 provides all the familiar features you are used to, but with far greater enhanced communication, collaboration and security features all rolled into one platform.
As end of life approaches for Windows 7 in January and Office 2010 in October, this switch becomes even more important as Microsoft will no longer provide critical updates and support. A migration to Microsoft 365 comes with an automatic upgrade to Windows 10 for further enhancement features and security – all of this with the modern workplace in mind.
Opus can provide Microsoft 365 subscription plans tailored to suit your business requirements and that includes as standard the latest Office application suite and cloud services, including Office 365, Teams, One Drive and OneNote. With Microsoft 365, your employees can work anywhere because everything is based in the cloud, they can collaborate within teams both face to face or remotely, and all with the knowledge that the latest versions of programs and key security updates will always be provided.
“Collaboration in the workplace has increased by more than 50%”
(source: Harvard Business Review)
Microsoft Teams is the application that is central to collaborative working within Microsoft 365. Adoption of Teams is expected to see continued strong growth in the next two years, with 41% of businesses expected to be using this platform by the end of 2020. As the workforce continues to embrace new technology and modern ways of working, the question to ask is, can you afford to be left behind in your IT digital transformation?
