The term ‘cloud office’ refers to a suite of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) collaboration and communication tools that combine email, file-sharing, instant messaging, conferencing, as well as document management, search, and discovery. Popular examples of cloud office suites include Microsoft Office 365 and Google’s G Suite.According to global market research analysts, Gartner, the process of migrating to a cloud office involves consolidating and transferring a collection of workloads from source systems to a cloud-based office platform. The content items that are typically included in these workloads are:
- Emails
- Files
- Calendars
- Document types
- Related metadata
- Applications
- User permissions
- Compound structures
- Linked components
In this blog post, we will take a closer look at the business benefits of migrating to a cloud office solution and what this involves.
What are the business benefits of cloud migration?
Research from Gartner predicts that at least 70% of businesses will have completed a move to a cloud office platform by 2021. To understand why this is happening, let’s look at some of the important benefits that a cloud office suite can offer:
Apps such as Microsoft Teams give users the power to work, communicate and collaborate in real time, regardless of location or device.
Smarter Enterprise Search
Both popular cloud office suites offer intelligent search solutions, such as Microsoft Delve and Google Cloud Search. Both these solutions provide higher-quality search and data discovery capabilities compared to on-premises deployments.
Increased or Unlimited Storage
Most cloud office suites provide the attractive benefit of increased storage space per user. In fact, Office 365 provides each user with a very generous 1TB of storage space via OneDrive for Business (easily increased to 5TB), while Google G Suite provides 30GB per user as standard.
Unified Meeting Solutions
Messaging applications such as Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts make it easy to initiate and maintain persistent conversations and real-time meetings, which can easily be integrated with relevant content tools to provide a substantially richer meeting experience.
Easy to Manage Security
Attitudes towards the security capabilities of the cloud have now shifted from skepticism to positivity, thanks to cloud office solutions, such as Office 365 that include DLP, IRM, encryption, archiving, e-discovery, legal holds, two-factor authentication, and email governance built into their primary applications.
Better Mobile App Support
Users are increasingly demanding access to productivity tools on both tablets and smartphones; allowing them to continue work while away from the office. Modern cloud office suites answer this challenge with optimized mobile apps designed to deliver continuous working experiences.
Cloud-only products
Several tools and capabilities unavailable from on-premises deployments can be found in cloud office suites, opening a range of opportunities for organizations to improve business practices. Microsoft’s Office 365 includes:
- Teams for collaborative communications, including instant messaging and group meetings
- Delve for searching and discovering content items within your business information system
- To-Do for lists, tasks, and reminders
- Stream for sharing corporate videos with colleagues and teams
- Planner for creating new plans, assigning tasks, sharing files and discussing work progress
- Graph for accessing business intelligence data
- Flow for automating workflows
- PowerApps for building mobile applications from selectable templates
- Power BI for business analytics
- Yammer for employee engagement
What does cloud migration involve?
Cloud office migration can take several forms depending on the legacy source system the business is migrating from and the new target cloud office solution that it is migrating to. Perhaps there is a need to migrate from an on-premises solution to a cloud office solution, or even from one cloud office suite to another.
