Microsoft 365 Simplified: Office 365, rebranded and extended
Microsoft furnishes some statistics regarding business adoption of M365 and O365 that provide a glimpse into the performance of the suites in the corporate realm.
Microsoft furnishes some statistics regarding business adoption of M365 and O365 that provide a glimpse into the performance of the suites in the corporate realm. For instance, the company declared last year that M365 is being utilized by 11 million small to medium businesses, and there have been noteworthy enterprise customer agreements in the past year — Microsoft highlighted oil and gas firm BP and financial services titan ING Bank as two E5 client successes in its Q2 FY24 outcomes, for instance, while Amazon purportedly sealed a $1 billion agreement last year for one million M365 licenses over a half-decade.
Encouraging clients to transition to the supreme E5 level is pivotal to Microsoft’s revenue expansion strategies for M365. “We observe Microsoft vigorously promoting E5 upon renewal to upsell more security and governance and other functionalities,” remarked Gartner’s Wong. “Augmenting revenue necessitates migrating clients to these higher-value, higher-priced packages.”
Miller from Directions on Microsoft concurred. “Microsoft is introducing new functionalities to numerous services this year — but most necessitate licensing at a higher tier for all users than most organizations are accustomed to or may feel at ease [with],” he stated.
The count of paid Office 365 commercial subscriptions surged by 7% year over year, according to Microsoft’s Q4 FY24 financial report in August, with Office 365 commercial revenues escalating by 13% year over year during this period. Once again, it’s indistinct what proportion of these are O365 vs. M365 customers, or what segment pertains to enterprises vs. small businesses.
It’s also feasible to determine how some of the other elements of M365 are performing. The EMS user base has reached 281 million, as disclosed by Microsoft CFO Amy Hood in the Q4 investor briefing. Moreover, Windows 11 adoption continues to rise, representing approximately 31% of Windows desktops globally, according to StatCounter, notwithstanding it still lags behind Windows 10 adoption (65%).
Though Gartner acknowledges business clients’ consideration of alternative productivity suites aside from Microsoft 365 — Google Workspace chiefly — M365 remains “a dominant player” in the industry, as per Wong, holding a firmly established position in the corporate sphere, partially due to its legacy of traditional Office usage.
It’s not solely Google, naturally. Microsoft confronts competition from a multitude of origins: Slack, Zoom, Notion, Zoho, and diverse others propose substitutes to M365, either paralleling individual M365 apps or — as is progressively the instance — expanding their product arrays with the intention of becoming the primary center for digital work at customer establishments.
Nonetheless, that doesn’t essentially impact Microsoft — businesses frequently implement multiple tools to cater to different segments of their workforce. “Typically it’s not one or the other,” asserted Wong. “For many of these tools, it’s coexistence rather than substitution.”
What are some of the most recent M365 functionalities?
Undoubtedly, the integration of Copilot across M365 applications has been the principal emphasis for Microsoft in recent years. It’s unusual to find a product update on the Microsoft 365 blog that does not mention the AI assistant in some capacity.
Recent enhancements encompass a novel Team Copilot that supplies AI support in group meetings and offers recommendations for task management; Copilot Studio for tailoring Copilots in M365; access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo model; and the widespread availability of Microsoft’s Designer AI image creator.
Additional fresh applications and functionalities encompass Mesh immersive gatherings for Teams, Places for hybrid work coordination, and a user interface refresh for the Loop collaborative app.
What lies ahead for M365?
The prospect of Microsoft introducing a new licensing level that offers access to various premium M365 add-ons remains to be perceived. As noted by analysts at Directions on Microsoft, pursuing its current strategy might prove more financially rewarding for Microsoft. Notwithstanding, with numerous fresh functionalities accessible outside of E5 subscriptions, it’s probable that conjectures in this domain will continue.
Concerning M365 products, given Microsoft’s substantial investment in integrating Copilot across the application suite, it seems rational to assume that the AI assistant will persist as the core of the company’s schemes for a while. This is notwithstanding the lingering uncertainties regarding the extent of business and employee interest in Copilot for M365, the potential for the AI assistant to hallucinate, and how enterprises can deploy the AI assistant without jeopardizing confidential data.
“The quandary is: can they establish Copilot as the focal point of activity just as they do with Teams or Outlook?” queried Wong. “How can Copilot be the orchestrator, the starting point for organizations seeking interaction with AI and genAI workloads? That will genuinely be pivotal.”
A Microsoft 365 glossary
Perusing through M365 plans and add-ons reveals a bewildering collection of included applications and services. Here’s a succinct guide to interpreting the significance of the main product designations.
Core M365 applications and services
– Word: text processing application
– Excel: spreadsheet application
– PowerPoint: slideshow application
– Outlook: email, calendar, and contacts application
– OneNote: note-taking application
– Teams: group chat and video conferencing application (not provided with enterprise plans)
– OneDrive: cloud storage with editions tailored for individuals and corporate users
– SharePoint: enterprise platform for shared content, sites, and applications
– Exchange: hosting/management service for corporate email, calendar, and contacts
– Windows: desktop operating system (inclu…
Note: Due to space limitations, only the first section of the glossary is provided here. The complete glossary list is available in the original text.
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