Since its introduction Microsoft Office 365 has been evolving rapidly to incorporate innovative cloud services and data security measures. In particular, the Microsoft Azure platform of tools only recently came into play but has since rapidly out-sold competitors such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and IBM. In fact, by 2018 Microsoft Azure was projecting revenues close to that of AWS.
However, one of the challenges for Microsoft and its competitor is the cost of Microsoft Office on its own cloud-based infrastructure. The first question is how do you manage and protect data as it moves from on-premises data centers to the cloud. Another important question is how do you manage your data centers Microsoft has addressed both concerns in a comprehensive series of articles on MSN News.
Microsoft has three cloud-based services – MS Office, Dynamics GP, and Great Plains – and two internal cloud-based solutions – MS Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint (ex Lotus Domino). The first is designed to allow multiple users to run custom applications and to collaborate on projects without the need for a dedicated administrator. It enables you to create email addresses with auto-signatures, view calendar events, set up work groups, attach documents with metadata, share stored data with other staff members, and perform several dozen functions in Excel or PowerPoint online. MS Exchange offers various visibility options including; public folders, private folders, safe storage area, global policies, custom permissions, and more.
In addition to these familiar tools and features there are two new cloud computing services from Microsoft that are worth mentioning Microsoft Office Graph and Microsoft Business Intelligence BI. Microsoft Office Graph is an in-memory processing service designed to provide fast, real-time analytics over Excel spreadsheets. This service works well with MS Office 2007 and later because of the parallel processing and event-processing capabilities it provides. Microsoft Business Intelligence BI, on the other hand, is designed to deliver insights and actionable data from all types of sources via the internet. This includes web feeds, Excel spreadsheets, RDF data, text and image files, and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
Microsoft is taking the proactive approach to managing the secure cloud by releasing Microsoft Azure Security. This is an online security suite that protects against all known types of security threats, including viruses, malware, intrusion attempts, phishing scams, and identity theft. With Microsoft Azure Security your organization can anticipate and plan for any potential threat that it might face and prepare to respond accordingly. There are many capabilities and features that this popular open source service offers, including
Microsoft Azure Cloud Security helps organizations address two very important issues; the prevention of threats and vulnerability detection and response. Through cloud-based threat management, businesses can proactively prevent against external threats and proactively respond to vulnerabilities identified within their own network. Through vulnerability detection and response, businesses can quickly mitigate the impact of vulnerabilities and defend themselves against these external threats and vulnerabilities. By combining the security of Azure with the speed and versatility of Microsoft’s own in-house ERP solution, organizations are able to achieve a balanced combination of IT and business objectives.
