Benefits of Microsoft 365 as digital cloud infrastructure.

"The main thing is that it works!"In the wake of the corona pandemic, many companies are forced to implement a quick solution for communication from home. Many companies chose the subscription solution Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365).

SUSTAINABLE INTRODUCTION OF MICROSOFT 365

In addition to the purely technical deployment of Microsoft 365, a variety of organizational and regulatory challenges must be taken into account for a sustainable introduction.

Microsoft's business plan is to replace classic perpetual licensing with a subscription-based service model. The license terms and rights of use of the products also change. Read what concrete impact this change will have on your company's license management and lifecycle processes.

While the management of your company's data and user rights has so far been solely in the hands of your IT, the cloud solution is increasingly gaining influence on your procedures and your handling of applications and data: the cloud provider.

The possibilities that Office 365 or Microsoft 365 offers, have increased enormously. Previously, the products were used for pure word processing, spreadsheets as well as an e-mail and presentation application. Today there is a package for Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC). The package includes special extensions for the joint and simultaneous processing of data as well as for data exchange; in particular via the video conferencing solution Microsoft Teams.

The named possibilities of Microsoft 365 ensure that compliance requirements increase significantly. In order to continue, among other things To preserve trade secrets, far-reaching regulations should be created with regard to data handling, IT and information security. In addition, the topic of data protection must be considered (e.g. Data transfer to third countries). It also makes sense to know the licensing model exactly.

SO THAT MICROSOFT 365 DOESN'T JUST "RUN"

Nortb Consultants will be happy to help you make the right strategic decisions regarding the Microsoft 365 solution. In this way, you can use the full range of the complete solution without losing sight of the topics of data security and data protection.

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PROCEDURE FOR THE INTRODUCTION OF MICROSOFT 365

In order to advance digital transformation as quickly as possible with the help of Microsoft 365, you can see in the following diagram how to introduce the cloud solution so that it can be implemented successfully and sustainably. Important to know: The points listed are among the most important that should be considered in the respective step, but are by no means the only points to be taken into account.

1. PROJECT TEAM

Create a project team. Among other things, define the roles and responsibilities within the project team and inform your team which products or services should be introduced.

2. STRATEGY

Work out a strategy. What concrete goals do you pursue? Describe your stakeholders. Which KPIs are important to you?

3. READINESS

Check the technical requirements of your infrastructure as well as the organizational interfaces for a successful Microsoft 365 introduction. Develop a governance plan and define structures for a uniform way of working. Be sure to involve your data protection officer in this step.

In order to clarify the scope of a single step, we now take a closer look at the points of data protection and information security and show you what questions arise for your company. In our example, the transformation takes place from on-premise storage in your own data center to extending storage to the public cloud

Among other things, the following questions arise:

• Is the company data classified according to the need for protection and by confidentiality levels?

• Are there regulations on how to handle this classified data?

• Is it clearly defined what kind of data may also be stored outside the locally operated infrastructure?

• Are employees accordingly sensitized to which location which data should be stored in the public cloud? (When is data or notebooks stored in OneDrive for Business, when in SharePoint Online, for example?)

• From a data protection point of view, are there agreements regarding order processing and data transfer to third countries outside the EU?

• How is the protection of data protected against unauthorized access ensured (for example, can encryption technology be used?)

• To what extent can the transmission of telemetry data be regulated?

• ...  

4. BUILD/PLAN

Define pilot groups and set up a champion program. Which services and components do you roll out at what time? Set rollout phases and the main milestones of the project.

5. ONBOARDING

You have introduced the basis for Microsoft 365 in your company. Start with the step-by-step connection of end users. If not already available, you should think about identity management at an early stage. Do not leave your end users alone, but regularly give them the opportunity to participate in user training.

Achieving data privacy compliance

It is critical to go to scale operations rapidly, but this should never come at the expense of proper data management. Avoiding the above-mentioned breaches is the first step, but managing rapid development cycles and comprehensive security audits is difficult, especially when working with sensitive data.

Nortb's data privacy vault technique can be beneficial. The expert team of expert consultants of Nortb, allows you to focus on innovation and speed while handling encryption, de-identification, governance, and logging from a secure data vault. Compliance, secure data sharing, data residency, secure analytics, and other data privacy issues are simple to resolve.