Scroll through to see five secrets to lowering your total cost of ownership of Office 365. Learn more at: http://rackspace.com/office-365

1. 5 WAYS TO LOWER
THE TCO OF YOUR
OFFICE 365
INVESTMENT
Maximize the value of Office 365
by using more of the suite
Using a single Microsoft Office product is good. However,
your company will gain the biggest ROI by leveraging the
entire Office 365 suite. Instead of using separate email
programs, project management tools, booking software
and word processing software, these tools (plus more) work
together in Office 365 to significantly increase productivity.
Also, it enables you to avoid having to pay for additional
third-party services like Dropbox for Business or Box by using
OneDrive for Business, and expensive services like WebEx by
using Skype for Business, all of which are part of most Office
365 plans.
Here are five secrets to lowering your
total cost of ownership of Office 365:
5
4
3
2
1
Spend a little. Save a lot. To find the best plan for your small business,
start here: https://www.rackspace.com/office-365/pick-your-plan
Take advantage of a single
identity to manage business apps
We are creatures of habit, especially when it comes to
passwords. Studies have shown that most online identities are
protected with the same password for different sites. If one
site’s account store is compromised, it means that a bad actor
can try to use that account name and password on other sites
that the identity might be used on. By using multiple accounts
with the same name and with the same password, you are
decreasing the effectiveness of the intended security. Office
365 uses a single identity for all the products in the suite and
offers options to integrate that same identity with other sites.
Providing a single identity for employees to manage makes
the likelihood of identity loss significantly lower. It also makes
employees less resistant to having to change their passwords on
a scheduled basis.
Get started on the right path
from the beginning
To ensure that your organization reaps all the benefits
of Office 365, it’s important that the initial setup and any
migrations go smoothly. Being able to manage the issues
or troubleshooting problems that will inevitably arise can
be time consuming — and thereby costly. Add to that the
evergreen nature of Office 365 with its hundreds of updates
per year and it can be challenging and expensive. You need
support, but as an SMB, full-time IT employees are often hard
to come by. If you are lucky enough to have a dedicated IT
staff, there is the reality that they will need to take personal
or sick days and go on vacations. Also, they are not experts
in every IT topic, especially in today’s ever-changing tech
landscape. By using external IT support like Rackspace’s
Fanatical Support, you spend a little to get a lot. Keep your
IT employees dedicated to the other needs of the business
and allow Rackspace to provide them with the on-demand
expertise to deliver success in supporting Office 365.
Always have the latest
software updates and releases
In addition to its frequent updates to the Office 365 platform
and new service offerings, Microsoft is also regularly
updating the client-side Office Suite. Offered as a part of
several of the Office 365 SKUs, an always up-to-date version
of Office is not only more efficient for administrators, but a
huge benefit to end users as well. They can take advantage
of all the latest advancements plus eliminate the upfront
costs of licensing and any update fees for future versions.
Leverage Office 365’s built-in
security
Securing your company’s data is a high, if not the highest,
priority. CompTIA found that roughly eight in 10 U.S.
businesses place a higher priority on security than they
did two years ago. With Office 365, you already have best-
in-breed security options in the suite. This means you
don’t need to buy third-party security products, thereby
saving the time and money that is involved with managing
vendors. Today, two-factor authentication (TFA) is a
standard for security, and with Office 365 you can avoid
additional costs by using the Microsoft Authenticator,
text message, or email as your second factor rather than
spending additional money on a third-party vendor.
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