4Matt Technology

4 Microsoft Office 365 Optimization Tips

How to optimize our Microsoft 365 and Office 365 contracts? Where to start? How to reduce contracts without losing functionality? How to deal with Microsoft? These are the top questions we get when asked for an Office 365 contract optimization review.

Working on some Office 365 optimization scenarios for a Client very recently, we came across a great alternative: licensing of this product by device.

This device-based license is designed to simplify the management of Office 365 ProPlus on devices shared by many users. Anyone who logs in and uses this device can use Office 365 ProPlus to create and edit documents.

IMPORTANT: Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus device-based subscription is only available as an add-on license for some commercial clients and some educational clients and can be done by monthly subscription or yearly subscription.

Requirements for using device-based licensing for Office 365 ProPlus:

  • Version 1907 or higher of Office 365 ProPlus;
  • Version 1803 or higher of Windows 10;
  • The device with Windows 10 must have been; joined Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Azure AD hybrid.

Going even further in optimizing Office 365 we recommend to our customers the use of 4 basic optimization points:

1- Create a baseline:

It is very important that the information technology area creates a baseline of users by department and their usage profile.

It is also important to analyze the quota on Exchange or OneDrive storage they included (GB) and were actually used, along with other data to assist in the optimization process. This aids in information-driven decision-making and reduces waste of what is not being used.

2- Assess what is not being used:

We usually find more complete products like an Offce 365 E3 or E5 with users who don't need this complete suite. Check the usage profile of each professional in the areas, as users may have the correct license or have future projects that require access to a certain tool in the Office 365 suite.

3- Analyze the storage capacity:

Analyzing your real storage needs and your Downgrade options makes Office 365 plans smaller and smaller.

Office 365 E3 license users have 1Tb of unlimited personal OneDrive storage and 100GB of email storage. Companies often run alternative storage apps like Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive. In this case consider your actual tb storage requirements, downgrade options or opt-out of other SaaS storage.

Furthermore, analyzing the change of plans can also make sense for license optimization if you are, for example, using Google G Suite for email and other Office applications for authoring and collaboration.

4- Quarterly review the signatures:

The entry and exit movements of professionals and the change in organizational needs make it a necessity also for the change of contracts. New hires and projects come and go.

By tracking this quarterly, companies can maximize their ROI and keep their employees with the best suite. You can also monitor the Office 365 Admin Center using the MattZero platform to stay up-to-date with HR change processes and manage assignments, user blocking, or profile changes

We would like to reinforce that Software Asset Management (SAM - Software Asset Management) it is the set of business practices that support software management in the Organization in a responsible and productive manner. These practices are used to achieve goals such as:

  • Software cost reduction;
  • Risk mitigation with auditing and security for example;
  • Support in decision making and compliance with the strategic plan.

Our recommendation:

It is very common for companies to only pay attention to the change in Office licensing after it happens and that is why our work methodology shows that this proactive analysis is of great importance.

These changes to licensing rules can be tracked and managed by a Center of Excellence in Software and Cloud Governance (CCoE). You can use a single hybrid cloud governance platform, where you can control the costs of your VMware datacenter as well as AWS, Azure and Google public clouds.

We are 4Matt Tecnologia, specialists in Software Governance and CCoE, Cloud Center of Excellence.

Office 365 is a subscription-based suite of online office applications that provides access to a variety of services and software built on the Microsoft Office platform. Initially includes hosted versions of Exchange, Microsoft Lync Server, SharePoint, Office Online, Microsoft Teams, along with access to Microsoft Office 2019 desktop applications in corporate subscription plans.

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