10 Myths About Moving to the Cloud 1

10 Myths About Moving to the Cloud

What businesses really need to know about moving to Microsoft Office 365
 10 Myths About Moving to the Cloud 2

Most companies that choose to move to the cloud do so because they

have decided they need it for business agility and want the cost savings that
come with it.

How can you know whether or not you’re getting it all?

If your company is considering Microsoft Office 365 as your first step

in moving applications to hosted solutions, you may have found similar
inconsistencies in your research—making it difficult to separate fact
from fiction.

A common misconception about Office 365,

for example, is that it is simply a version of Office
accessed by a browser.
To help in your migration to the cloud, we’ve created this myth-busting
guide for all-things Office 365. When considering Office 365 to power your
organization, you need to know the facts. Your business depends on it.
 10 Myths About Moving to the Cloud 3

1 Office 365 is just Office tools in the cloud, and I can only use it online.

Myths 2 If our data moves to the cloud, our business will no longer have control over our technology.

3 Keeping data on-premises is safer than in the cloud.

4 I have to move everything to the cloud; it is an all-or-nothing scenario.

5 Cloud migration is too much for my business to handle.

6 Corporate spies, cyberthieves, and governments will have access to my data if it is in the cloud.

7 I have to learn all new tools to manage SharePoint Online.

8 Skype and Skype for Business are one and the same.

9 Email isn’t any simpler in the cloud.

10 Continuously updating Office 365 will break my critical business applications.

 10 Myths About Moving to the Cloud 4

MYTH 1 FACT
Office 365 is just Office tools Office 365 is the Office you already know, plus
in the cloud, and we can only productivity tools that will help you work more efficiently.
use it online.
Whether at your desk or on the go, you have the Plus, with many Office 365 plans, you can install
tools to do your best work wherever you are on all the latest full Office applications on your devices,
of your favorite devices. And, since Office 365 lives so you can work offline or online in Word, Excel,
in the cloud, these tools stay up to date, are simple PowerPoint and Outlook too.
to use and manage, and are ready to work when
you are.

These tools include:

• SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business

for collaboration, websites, workflows,
and enterprise file sync and share (available
across all plans)
• Skype for Business for voice, IM, meetings, and
presence (available with all enterprise plans)
• Yammer for social collaboration (available with
all enterprise plans)
• Public Switched Telephony Network (PSTN)
conferencing to dial into Skype meetings from
anywhere (available with Enterprise E5 plan)
• Advanced analytics, with Power BI and Microsoft
MyAnalytics (available with
all enterprise plans)
• Advanced security, with Advanced Threat
Protection and Customer Lockbox
(available with Enterprise E5 plan)
 10 Myths About Moving to the Cloud 5

MYTH 2 FACT
If our data moves to the You still have total control over technology, but your IT
cloud, our business will no department won’t have to worry about constant updates.
longer have control over our
technology. When you move to the cloud, time spent
maintaining hardware and upgrading software
is significantly reduced—eliminating headaches
with it. Now your IT team can focus on advancing
your organization’s technology, rather than being
a repair service. Plus, you will have more time
to spend improving business operations and
launching agile initiatives.

Instead of spending more and more portions of

your capital budget on servers for email storage
and workloads, you can think strategically and
support business managers in a much more agile
fashion, quickly responding to their needs.
 10 Myths About Moving to the Cloud 6

MYTH 3 FACT
Keeping data on-premises Security and uptime come standard with Office 365 in
is safer than storing it in the cloud.
the cloud.
“It’s becoming increasingly clear that your on- To protect against external threats, Office 365 gives
premises systems aren’t inherently more secure you the option to use Advanced Threat Protection
than they’d be in the cloud,” says Mark Anderson, to secure mailboxes against sophisticated attacks
founder of the INVNT/IP Global Consortium, a in real time. Every email attachment or link is
group of governments and security experts solving automatically evaluated for suspicious activity, and
the growing cyber theft problem. “Many companies malicious content is neutralized before the chance
are routinely hacked and don’t know it,” says of a risk.
Anderson.
Additionally, we staff industry-leading regulatory
Even if your company has a growing security compliance experts. We know and keep up-to-date
team, businesses can rarely assemble a team with the latest regulations and rules, such as HIPAA
large enough to uncover and protect against the and Sarbanes-Oxley, Federal Information, Security
hundreds of possible alerts that come through Management Act (FISMA), ISO 27001, European
each day. When you switch to Office 365, we act as Union (EU) Model Clauses, U.S.–EU Safe Harbor
an extension of your security team. Microsoft data framework, Family Educational Rights and Privacy
centers are built with scale in mind. Act (FERPA), and the Canadian Personal Information
Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA),
To keep Office 365 security at the pinnacle of just to name a few.
industry standards, our dedicated security team
uses a wide range of processes including the To learn more about Office 365 security and
Security Development Lifecycle; traffic throttling; compliance, visit Office 365 Trust Center.
and preventing, detecting, and mitigating breaches
at an enterprise level.

And, Microsoft Office 365 has a 99.9% financially

backed uptime guarantee.
 10 Myths About Moving to the Cloud 7

MYTH 4 FACT
I have to move everything You can move to the cloud at your own pace, or use a
to the cloud. It is an all-or- hybrid approach.
nothing scenario.
While some early cloud supporters advocated As many companies move their productivity
for moving your entire business to the cloud all workloads to the cloud, the path for each
at once, this isn’t a process that needs to happen workload is different, and the time it takes for
overnight. Most implementations start with a those migrations varies. We can help you move
hybrid approach—moving a single workload, like workloads such as file sync-and-share or email first,
email, and growing from there. and then help you figure out the right long-term
plan for more difficult or larger projects.
The hybrid cloud creates a consistent platform
that spans data centers and the cloud, simplifying
IT and delivering apps and data to users on virtually
any device, anywhere. It gives you control to deliver
the computing power and capabilities that your
business demands and to scale up or down as
needed without wasting your onsite technology
investments.
 10 Myths About Moving to the Cloud 8

MYTH 5 FACT
Cloud migration is too much We’re here to help every step of the way.
for my business to handle.
When you start considering how to move petabytes We also have plenty of information on how to set
of data to the cloud, it’s easy to see why some up Office 365, where you can learn more about
people think “going cloud” is too big a challenge each application, as well as find tips on how to
for IT departments and staff, alike. We’re not going get your teams excited to use Office 365 in our
to tell you it’s simple, but you really can get Office Adoption Center.
365 up and running quickly.

We’ll help you every step of the way, with

information and tips on firewall configurations,
reverse proxy requirements, identity options,
migration possibilities, and a phased approach for
hybrid setups. We’ve created several paths you can
follow, and in most cases, you can use your existing
tools and processes throughout the migration, so
day to day work won’t be disrupted.

We provide an array of online tools to help you,

too. As a customer you can take advantage of
Microsoft FastTrack for Office 365, our customer
success service that helps you smoothly and
confidently move to Office 365 and delivers faster
business value, free with your subscription.*

* Free with a 50 or more seat purchase of qualifying Office 365 SKUs

 10 Myths About Moving to the Cloud 9

MYTH 6 FACT
Corporate spies, cyber It’s your data, not anyone else’s.
thieves, and governments
will have access to my data if This is a top fear about the cloud among many Strict controls and design elements prevent your

it is in the cloud. businesses, but it is unfounded. Your IT team

manages access, sets up rights and restrictions,
data from mingling with that of other organizations,
and our data center staff never has unprivileged
and provides smartphone access and options. access to your data.
Further, your company remains the sole owner:
You retain the rights, title, and interest in the Microsoft is the first major cloud provider to
data stored in Office 365. adopt the world’s first international standard for
cloud privacy. The standard establishes a uniform,
When safeguarding your data, we operate under international approach to protecting privacy for
several key principles: personal data stored in the cloud. It reinforces that:

• We do not mine your data for advertising • You are in control of your data.
or for any purpose other than providing • You know what’s happening with your data.
you with services that you have paid for. • We provide strong security protection for
• If you ever choose to leave the service, your data.
you take your data with you. • Your data won’t be used for advertising.
• Privacy controls allow you to configure • Microsoft encourages government inquiries
who in your organization has access and to be made directly to you unless legally
what they can access. prohibited and will challenge attempts to
• Extensive auditing and supervision prevent prohibit disclosure in court.
admins from unauthorized access to your
data.
• Customer Lockbox for Office 365 leaves
customers with explicit control in the rare
instance a Microsoft engineer may need to
access customer content to resolve an IT
issue.
 10 Myths About Moving to the Cloud 10

MYTH 7 FACT
We have to learn all new tools SharePoint Online abstracts maintains the infrastructure,
to manage SharePoint Online. without changing anything else.
All of your hard work learning how to manage
SharePoint is not lost! SharePoint Online shares
the same familiar administration and management
tools, whether your deployment is in the cloud, on
location, or in a hybrid of the two. Although your
customizations aren’t populated to the cloud, all
the administrative controls remain the same.

When moving to SharePoint Online, you no longer

need to bother with controlling the workload
implementation—instead, your IT team can
focus on controlling its configuration. With the
convenient, one-time, expert-led implementation
that SharePoint Online handles, your IT team
can reallocate time they used to spend on
implementation and can concentrate on building
strong, strategic tools for the business. SharePoint
Online simply abstracts the infrastructure, enabling
you to focus on the solution.
 10 Myths About Moving to the Cloud 11

MYTH 8 FACT
Skype and Skype for Business Skype for Business is your link to hosting productive
are one and the same. meetings, not just phone calls.
The version of Skype you use at home is great for a With Skype for Business, you don’t need to have a
small number of users and is free, unless you want dedicated administrator to be able to run servers
to make calls to landlines and mobiles. or invest in additional infrastructure. We take care
of it all for you. As a part of Office 365, Skype for
Alternatively, Skype for Business lets you add Business offers users new features, upgrades, and
up to 250 people to online meetings, gives patches as soon as they are ready.
you enterprise-grade security, allows you to
manage employee accounts, and is integrated Both the business and the consumer versions
into your Office apps. With the use of Skype can also be federated, so that communication
Meeting Broadcast, you can host virtual meetings is possible between platforms. And service is
connecting up to 10,000 participants. supported around the clock. Of course, your IT
team is empowered to manage settings, access,
Skype for Business integrates with Office 365, and security, but we handle everything on the
boosting productivity by letting people connect on backend.
their terms. Employees can make and receive calls,
give presentations, and attend meetings on one
application.

For example, employees can:

• Instantly see when someone is busy or

available.
• Start an instant messaging session by
double-clicking a contact name.
• Share a desktop during a meeting.
• Invite outside partners to join a meeting via a
full-feature Web-conferencing experience.
• Integrate video through a webcam for a call
or a conference.
 10 Myths About Moving to the Cloud 12

MYTH 9 FACT
Email isn’t any simpler in With automatic updates, you don’t have to worry about
the cloud. email downtime.
When you move your business’ email to the
cloud, you can rest easy knowing that the experts
who created the software are taking care of the
maintenance and updates. Your IT team no longer
needs to worry about installing updates, and can
instead focus on bigger IT needs. Software updates
and fixes are delivered automatically as soon as
they are released. However, your IT team can
always pause these updates or control when they
happen through the Exchange Admin Center.

With Office 365, you have many options, so we

created a plan comparison chart for you to explore
which option might be best for your company,
including Exchange Online options.
 10 Myths About Moving to the Cloud 13

MYTH 10 FACT
Continuously updating Office 365 updates won’t negatively impact your
Office 365 will break my existing applications.
critical business applications.
We know that a lot rides on your employees’ ability to use business-critical apps and add-ins
with Office. We are committed to Office 365 compatibility with the tools you use every day.
Here’s how we do that:

• Offer the same worldwide standard of desktop applications with the familiar tools you
know and love, including Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
• Work hard to ensure that even as we update Office on a regular basis in the cloud, the
updates do not impact other software applications. For example, for the past 24 months,
monthly Office 365 releases have not resulted in object model or API changes. If your
business-critical solutions work with Office 2010 or Office 2016 today, it is likely they will
work with Office 365.
• Collaborate closely with leading software vendors and provide them tools and early
access to ensure that their Office-compatible solutions continue to work with Office 365.
• Provide customers with guidance and best practices for update management and
development to help you avoid compatibility issues.
 10 Myths About Moving to the Cloud 14

Your IT team is busy managing disconnected systems, applications, and

data with inflexible and slow systems. They take flak from employees and
partners demanding access to the corporate network, as well as new
tools. It’s hard to squeeze in even a few minutes to keep up with new
products and evaluate everything you hear.

Now that you have a better understanding of the productivity and

collaboration that Office 365 provides, let us help you streamline the
process. Feel free to share this with colleagues who need help separating
fact from fiction when it comes to Office 365 in the cloud. It’s good to
be on the same page, and you’ll save time by not having to argue about
these myths.

Interested in learning more about Office 365?

Take a test drive of Explore benefits of Office Pick the right O365 plan
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