Control Office 365 costs -- or pay the price

by John Smith Technician

It’s a face that every user requires every service in the Office 365 suite. Admins who are switching to Office 365 need to adapt the SaaS-based cost structure on Microsoft’s cloud platform. However, they can surely avoid it at their budget’s risk. Office 365 is an amazing option for a business using an older Exchange Server platform wrapping up on its lifecycle. Most of the Microsoft Office subscriptions charge a flat rate except some of the a la carte services that costs extra. So, the administrators must also check for these extra Office 365 costs to make sure that they are not paying more than their budget.

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On the other hand, it is also true that an administrator cannot guess the overall total cost of ownership over several years without first checking different areas. For one, Office 365 includes additional services clubbed together under different subscriptions. Microsoft believes some of these additional services require additional purchases, which in turn leads to the complexity to Office 365 licensing.

The point here is that the IT decision-makers must first make a list of what they need from Office 365 by evaluating and analyzing cost as well as upfront sizing. These two aspects further include provisioning of cloud services, third-party services and migration work for Office 365 backup. Other aspects an administrator should take care of are:

1. Make Frequent Audits

When a business switches to Office 365, the IT professionals need to focus a bit more on how to manage the platform’s services. The administrators must utilize Office 365’s reports to conduct a quarterly or if possible, monthly review of how the license is being used. The Office 365 adoption content pack in Power BI makes customized dashboards that offer insights into the app activation and how others users should use this subscription.

2. Monitor services with variable cost

As aforementioned, some of the features and services in Office 365 subscription ask you to pay extra. These features include:

· Advanced Security Management

· Advanced Threat Protection

· Power BI

· Cloud PBX

3. Make the most of the licensing tools

The Office 365 license manager in the admin portal help the administrator access license and see the present consumption of licenses. This makes the assignment process less confusing. Microsoft also offers extra group option based on the sections created by the IT department.

4. Define the right licenses for the right users

Check the Office 365 licenses that each user requires according to their requirements and roles. Make a plan which plans go to what users to lock in Office 365 costs. That’s because not every user require the advanced services including the analytics product Power BI pro. Make the categories of Office 365 users and then allocate the appropriate license for each group.