The world is in constant change, and device management is also changing all the time. Management of devices as we have done in the past may no longer be necessary for the near feature. To add more complexity, you also need to manage mobile devices; however, users need some mobility and flexibility to perform their day-to-day tasks while you want to keep the data as secure as possible.
Microsoft 365 is the heart of the Microsoft solution for this new cloud-driven world. Azure, Configuration Manager, Intune, Windows 10, and Office 365 are some of the technologies we need to learn and understand to be able to deliver security to our business and agility to our end-users.
Where large organisations have invested heavily in on-premises technologies over the years, they may not be able to move to a cloud-only environment. Hybrid is the solution, all the cloud benefits (like agility, security, etc.) plus all the on-prem benefits (i.e. customisation, control, etc.).
However, there are many companies out there without a managed infrastructure or specialised team and can quickly start or migrate to a cloud-only environment and take advantage, or all that cloud can offer.
I keep talking about the benefits and advantages, but what are they? The list below is a glimpse of them:
- No infrastructure to setup, maintain and upgrade – No physical devices (servers, ups, nas), servers (Firewall/Proxy, Active Directory, Backup, Configuration Manager, Anti-Virus, etc.)
- Physical Security – Microsoft data centre is more secure than your environment, I am sure about it (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/security/fundamentals/physical-security)
- Data security – Microsoft cloud has security in the core. There are loads of checks, reports and monitoring built-in in the cloud
- Reliability – Microsoft SLA for their services is, at least, 99.9%. (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/sla/, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/office-365-platform-service-description/service-level-agreement)
- Agility – New features become available all the time, and bugs fixed every day
- Access from any location – You only need internet access to have access to the data you require
- Billing – you know how much you will pay based on your user base. If your user base grows, so your bill. If your user base decrease, so your bill.
On the other hand, there are always disadvantages. Below are some of those:
- Billing – depending on the services your company use; i.e. you may need to pay for outbound network connection and more network traffic means higher price to pay. It is not something you can control
- performance – low network (i.e. satellite connection) will represent poor service quality due to high latency
- troubleshooting – is this problem in my environment or the cloud? Maybe the internet provider? it becomes difficult to troubleshoot issues
- flexibility – The software/service does a specific function and cannot be customised to your needs; you will need to adapt to the cloud and not the cloud to adapt to you
- Incompatibility – not all software can work (or work well) in a cloud-only scenario. Check if the software your company uses work with cloud-only
Moving on, is your company (or your client) one of those companies that can migrate to a cloud-only scenario? If yes, stay tuned, as, in this series of articles, I will show you all the steps required from setting up the environment to perform the most common day-to-day tasks required.
Article originally published on LinkedIn.
