What companies should consider when migrating to Office 365
More and more companies are migrating to cloud-based solutions such as Microsoft Office 365, facing the challenge of reconciling the growing collaboration needs of users with the need for security and centralized IT management on the part of the IT department.
Global enterprise messaging service provider Retarus has compiled five tips that companies should consider when migrating to Office 365:
- Optimizing spam and virus protection: Comprehensive spam and virus protection is particularly important when exchanging sensitive data by e-mail. When using cloud-based email solutions, companies should therefore carefully check whether the standard security features are actually sufficient for their requirements or whether additional functions need to be added. Supplementary cloud-based email security solutions, for example, offer additional protection by combining several virus scanners with intelligent spam and phishing filters.
- Correct implementation of security and compliance requirements: Many companies that use Office 365 do not see their security and compliance requirements fulfilled one hundred percent. According to Gartner, around 40 percent of companies using Office 365 will therefore be using additional third-party solutions by 2018. Special gateway-based email security services, for example, seamlessly combine email encryption and archiving. The email is not decrypted on the user's client, but centrally by the email security solution. The e-mail is then stored in the archive and re-encrypted there. This means that the archived information remains readable even after ten years and without the respective private keys.
- "Power to the user": The more heterogeneous the requirements of employees are, the greater their need to retain control over their business communications. Email security solutions from the cloud complement Office 365 not only with additional email security, but also with a wide range of email management functionalities. This can give users the freedom to make many settings themselves, for example, as part of quarantine management: Users receive an overview of filtered e-mails by e-mail. If, for example, a relevant newsletter was mistakenly intercepted, they can manage their individual block and exception lists themselves.
- Migration effort: There are many tasks to plan for when migrating to Office 365. These include temporary hybrid operation, archiving all email correspondence, recoding existing email formats, and migrating calendar entries and special applications such as room booking systems and vacation substitutions. To reduce this effort, companies should rely on service providers that specialize in cloud-based communications solutions. These not only offer innovative storage options for archiving old data and special solutions such as user-based routing for hybrid operation, but also provide companies with advice throughout the migration process.
- Fax support: With Exchange Online and Skype for Business (formerly Lync), Microsoft already offers extensive communication solutions for e-mail, telephony, audio and video conferencing, and instant messaging. Fax functionalities, on the other hand, are not provided by Microsoft itself. With the help of Cloud Fax Services, companies can ensure reliable fax communication even in IP environments. These enable smooth fax reception even if - as is the case with Skype for Business - no fax support is offered via the SIP trunk.
"We are currently observing an increasing demand for supplementary functions for Office 365," says Roger Moser, Country Manager at retarus (Schweiz) AG. "Regardless of whether it's banks, the manufacturing industry or the healthcare sector, companies in all industries are encountering scenarios, particularly with regard to security, compliance and usability, that can be solved most efficiently via third-party providers."
This press release and suitable photo material can be downloaded at www.retarus.ch can be retrieved.
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