What is our primary use case?
We use Teams for our collaboration. We use the
Office 365 suite of products including PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and all related tools. Mostly I use Teams, Excel, and Word. I seldom use PowerPoint because I am not required to make presentations very often. I spend almost every moment in my office using Teams to collaborate and communicate with others, along with Excel and Word.
In Office 365, you can open Excel and Word documents and even PDFs without having to save the file or navigate outside Office 365. You can save your files on OneDrive. It offers access to all the software in the Microsoft ecosystem. Through Office 365, you can access applications such as Drive, Excel, and Word.
What is most valuable?
Teams is a really good collaboration tool. You can work basically at any part of the world and communicate and collaborate with anybody, as long as they are connected to the internet. It helps with remote work, and although I don't work remotely, I have offices in Dubai and different geographical locations. It helps me connect with my colleagues and team who are not in the same geography as I am in Bangalore. Teams can facilitate team meetings, screen sharing, and organizing meetings.
Regarding security, we have two-factor authentication governed by organizational policy. When trying to login to Office 365, Teams, or any Office 365 app, we are required to provide a password and use Microsoft Authenticator to sign in using a code. This is how two-factor authentication is implemented in our organization.
Office 365 offers a suite of apps including OneNote, though I don't use it very often. In terms of integration with Microsoft ecosystem, it offers everything needed to get work done without any hassle.
What needs improvement?
I work on a Mac, and sometimes Outlook on Mac is pretty slow. I experience some latency on Outlook on my Mac. I am not sure if users encounter the same issue on Windows, but on Mac, I sometimes experience slowness on Outlook.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Office 365 for maybe 10 years. All organizations that I have worked for use or have used Office 365.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We have a separate team who look after licensing, installation, and technical issues. If I encounter an issue, I am not required to communicate directly with Microsoft technical support. I have never encountered or faced an issue with Office 365 in the last 3 1/2 to 4 years at my current organization that required me to escalate or reach out to our in-house technical support team.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It works seamlessly without any hassle on Windows. On Mac, there are tiny glitches, but you don't encounter them very often, and by and large, it works great on Mac as well.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Large enterprises, Fortune 500, Fortune 100, Fortune 50 companies use Office 365 suite of products extensively within their organizations. Regarding scalability, I have rarely come across any outages or latency due to scaling issues. Scalability has never been an issue with Office 365.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used
Google Workspace and Office 365. I have also used other collaboration apps, such as
Slack, which is a competitor to
Microsoft Teams. As a package, Office 365 bundles many software together, making it a very compelling proposition. There are competitors such as
Google Workspace and Zoho, but in terms of support and reach, Office 365 surpasses them in features and integration with the Microsoft ecosystem, especially with
Azure. However, there are standalone products which are better than their counterparts in Office 365. For instance, I prefer
Slack over Teams.
How was the initial setup?
I was given a machine which had Office 365 already set up, so I have no experience with the initial setup.
What about the implementation team?
We have a separate team who look after licensing, installation, and technical issues.
What was our ROI?
It works seamlessly without any hassle.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I am not aware of the cost because it's offered by my organization. They might have an agreement with Microsoft since everybody in my office uses Office 365.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have used Google Workspace outside of my current organization. I have also used other collaboration apps, such as Slack, which competes with
Microsoft Teams. As a package, Office 365 bundles many software together, making it a compelling proposition.
There are competitors such as Google Workspace and Zoho, but in terms of support and reach, Office 365 surpasses them in features and integration with the Microsoft ecosystem, especially with Azure integration capabilities.
What other advice do I have?
I have been working with Xamarin only, which is my area of work.
Every new employee who joins the organization is given access to Office 365. They have some kind of agreement with Microsoft. Office 365 is the only productivity suite of software that we use.
Power BI is used extensively, but we have a separate team for that. I don't work on Power BI. The solution is deployed on cloud, not on-premises.
My rating for Office 365 is 7.5 out of 10. It would be interesting to see how it performs for Linux users, as there aren't as many Linux users as Mac or Windows users.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
*Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.