Expand the potential of your Microsoft 365 investment (and other Microsoft technologies)

October 7, 2021

Thousands of organisations rapidly migrated to Microsoft 365 in response to the pandemic and, in some cases, customers are discovering configuration gaps.

But migrating to any new system — or upgrading existing technology — presents hurdles of its own, especially if those systems are implemented rapidly, without the support of platform specialists. In the rush to meet demand and solve business challenges, it’s not uncommon for roll-outs to be hurried, add-ons skipped and (potentially critical) steps overlooked.

As trusted advisers to Microsoft’s customers, our individually certified Microsoft specialists have an expert understanding of the key issues faced by Microsoft 365 (M365) users today.

From rapid deployment projects delivered in response to the pandemic to fragmented security systems and absent backup solutions, read on to uncover the gaps in your Microsoft stack — and how our technology and business experts can help you to solve them.

1. Rapid Microsoft migration in response to the pandemic

When the UK government announced the first national lockdown, IT teams across the country reacted admirably to deploy the solutions their organisations needed to communicate remotely, maintain business continuity and keep operations running.

From March to June 2020, Microsoft Teams noticed 894 per cent growth as organisations looked to build remote capabilities into the workforce.”

But the suddenness of the pandemic and the disruption to working conditions that UK businesses have had to manage since meant that many migrations were delivered rapidly, without the detailed level of planning and preparation they would have otherwise received.

In some cases, the Microsoft applications were perceived — and implemented — as temporary solutions to a short-term problem which, as it turns out, has not gone away.

As a result, our team of Microsoft specialists is finding that many of the migrations carried out during this time are not quite fit for purpose or have gaps in performance and security.

A Q Associates Microsoft Health Check is the first step to improving your existing environment. Delivered by our specialists, each with extensive experience across M365, the check is designed to provide insight into your M365 environment, your operational efficiency and how best to utilise the Microsoft stack to improve your business performance.

By surfacing usage data and actionable insights into your M365 estate, we can help you to expand the potential of your investment and turn a short-term solution into one that meets the constant change and challenges of today’s working world.

2. Security blind spots across your Microsoft stack

While remote working and the subsequent shift to hybrid working models present two of the most recent — and strongest — business cases for adopting Microsoft technology, IT teams have been leveraging the Microsoft stack for decades in order to meet changing demands and solve business challenges. Evergreen amongst these is system security.

Traditionally, organisations have relied on the ‘best of breed’ model to keep their systems safe, bringing together solutions from a variety of different providers to unlock the best features and protect their data. But in today’s world, that model is no longer feasible.

  • The integrations involved are complex and expensive to set up.
  • Teams require constant training on a wide variety of different systems.
  • There are too many alerts to handle effectively.

Finally, the model inevitably leaves gaps in security, which ever-more sophisticated threats like phishing and ransomware can manipulate to access an organisation’s systems.

Our Q Associates Microsoft 365 Security Audit will help you leverage Microsoft’s cloud-based security features to navigate these challenges and add value to your business.

Our experts’ strategic approach to your security enables your team to work securely from any location, whether or not the corporate network is there to safeguard them. We’ll review data loss prevention and consolidate your security tools to reduce end-user friction, lower integration costs and minimise blind spots, so your systems and data are properly protected.

Watch the video: our top five security recommendations for remote working

3. Skipping your Microsoft 365 backups

Data protection isn’t just limited to an organisation’s security capabilities. Backing up content and data is a vital step in ensuring compliance with nine different types of data protection.

Should an incident occur without a backup in place, it can be more than an organisation’s data that’s at risk when its reputation, and customer confidence, is brought into question.

In the rush to migrate to M365 and adapt to new, more immediate business challenges such as remote working or changing security threats, we’re seeing that backups have been viewed by some businesses as an afterthought. Now, as organisations begin to review their systems, creating backups using the right solution should be a key priority.

To help your organisation choose the right M365 backup technology, the Q Associates Microsoft 365 Backup Review assesses your current applications and usage to identify data protection priorities and other core requirements. Drawing from our extensive experience, we undertake research on your behalf, analyse complex pricing models and help you predict your total cost of ownership to find the backup solution you can rely on.

Learn more about how our expert team can help you find the right backup technology.

Expand the potential of your Microsoft 365 investment

One of the advantages that M365 provides to organisations is its relative familiarity, helping to facilitate a smoother upgrade or rollout and enabling useability. Nevertheless, the process still needs to be carried through with diligence.

Whether you need a Health Check, a Security Audit or a Backup Review, our qualified team will draw from their individual Microsoft certifications and deep experience servicing our clients to provide a Microsoft Expert Service that’s tailored to suit your needs and budget.

At the company level, Q Associates is a certified Gold Microsoft Partner across nine different competencies including Collaboration and Content, Data Platform, Data Centre and Communications, amongst others, while our best-in-class abilities extend across:

  • Microsoft Teams
  • Microsoft Exchange
  • Microsoft SharePoint
  • Microsoft Power BI
  • Microsoft OneDrive for Business

We hope this gives you confidence in the quality of our expertise and the methods we follow to help you understand and get the most value out of your Microsoft environment.

For those still considering Microsoft, we can also design a roadmap of what M365 could look like for your organisation, giving you visibility over the range of solutions and their potential.

Microsoft technologies have the ability to help organisations across all sectors adapt and deliver critical workloads — but can you confidently say your M365 migration is complete?

To find out more about our Microsoft Expert Service, click the image below to download the datasheet or get in touch today.

 

Get In Touch

Contact Q Associates today if you have any questions or would like to discuss your IT requirements in more detail.

Tel: 01635 248181
Email: Info@qassociates.co.uk

Donna Robinson

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