Microsoft Azure and Office 365: Why They’re a Great Combination

Businesses are consistently looking for new ways to drive efficiency and productivity to achieve better profitability or to meet organizational goals. Nowadays, cloud computing plays a large role in achieving these accomplishments. Additionally, cloud solutions are a cost-effective way to reduce capital spending, enabling enterprises to funnel these funds into alternative vital projects or allot them for other organizational needs.

Two prominent cloud solutions businesses often turn to are Microsoft Azure and Office 365. While each solution is cloud-based and offers its own unique services and solutions as they are designed as standalone platforms, the two easily complement one other. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the purpose of each software and why a Microsoft Azure Office 365 combination might be a smart strategic move for your enterprise.

What is Microsoft Azure?

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform offering Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. These combined solutions can be used in addition to your in-house servers or to replace them. A subscription to Azure comes with five support options: Basic, Developer, Standard, Professional Direct and Enterprise. Top features include:

• Delivers enhanced backup and disaster recovery capabilities in any language on any operating system.
• Provides the ability to host and develop both web and mobile apps.
• Offers the capacity to integrate with Azure Active Directory to supplement identity and access abilities.
• Integrates well with IoT solutions, providing you with scalability, security and flexibility.
• Seamlessly connects users to your site or application.
• Offers the ability to send messages between different applications.
• Stores your vital data in the cloud.
• Gives the ability to process large amounts of data.
• Manages your applications across multiple servers or devices simultaneously.

As a solution, Azure essentially offers all the tools you need to build, manage and deploy a software application, using any programming language of your choosing. Offering a wide array of features, Azure is robust and is known for its speed, reliability, openness, flexibility and cost-efficiency.

What Is Office 365 (AKA Microsoft 365)?

Office 365 is a cloud-based productivity app many have used for years, essentially replacing the CDs and downloads of yesteryear frequently used to install Microsoft’s software on desktops and laptops. The transition from Office 365 to Microsoft 365 began in 2020, but the company fully rebranded this product as Microsoft 365 in 2022.

This change will facilitate more products and features to be added to its bundle that currently includes legacy office productivity apps (e.g. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Outlook), but also expands to include newer applications such as OneDrive, Teams, Loop, Stream, Clipchamp and Designer in its subscription, along with optional add-ons, such as Power BI and Microsoft Graph.

The purpose of the rebrand is to help you simplify collaboration and have 24/7 accessibility while interacting with all of Microsoft’s commonly utilized applications, conveniently in one place. Since Microsoft 365 is 100% cloud-based, you can access your applications at any time, from anywhere.

Why an Azure/Office 365 Marriage Makes Sense

The synergies between Microsoft Azure and the newly dubbed Microsoft 365 make perfect sense since the two platforms enhance and complement one another’s capabilities in relation to productivity, security and scalability.

Essentially, Azure provides the infrastructure while MS 365 supplies the applications you need to perform your daily office tasks – all of which are managed in the cloud. Being in the cloud offers high scalability, since you can already use as much or as little as you need due to its natural design. For many enterprises, marrying these two products together equates to a good strategic solution.

Ways Azure and Office 365 Work Together as a Solution

Since Azure and Office 365 are both Microsoft products, it is very straightforward to set them up jointly – the company has designed them to work together. Here are some ways Azure and Microsoft 365 can be used in conjunction with one another, providing great benefits.

Security

Security is increasingly becoming a vital part of every organization, in any industry and any size. No company can afford to ignore or neglect security and these products help bolster your security posture. The Microsoft suite of Azure and Office 365:

• Continuously monitors your MS 365 environment for suspicious logins, unusual user behaviors and unanticipated changes to files via Azure’s Advanced Threat Protection feature to prevent malicious exploits or attacks.
• Sets preferences regarding activities, so the correct activities are flagged as potential threats.
• Provides the ability to obtain reports and audit logs showing any user or admin activity to quickly identify any unusual behaviors or suspicious activities.
• Offers the ability to access other methods to provide threat protection, including encryption.
• Enables you to enjoy full access management for your users to provide limited access where desired to specific applications, empowering you to designate “need to know” access in the form of groups.
• Gives the ability to utilize Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to manage your organization’s user identities.

Backup and Recovery

Losing data is one nightmare no business wants to face. By leveraging the capabilities of Microsoft’s products, you can ensure your data is always safe, secure and accessible.

• Provides an ability to back up Office 365 data from other Microsoft products (e.g., OneDrive or SharePoint) directly into the cloud via Azure Backup, keeping files and data secure if disruption or corruption occurs with other methods of backup.
• Gives the ability for you to make use of recovery options if something does occur that causes your organization to lose data.

Compliance

Violating government or industry compliance rules can equate to hefty fines and penalties. Using a Microsoft Azure and Office 365 combination helps keep your organization’s use of Office 365 compliant with security best practices via Secure Score in Azure Security Center.

Efficiency and Convenience

Time is money and using Azure and Office 365 together empower you to save time and money through achieving higher efficiency and making processes more convenient for your users.

• Provides an ability to access a single sign-on (SSO) by connecting Office 365 and Azure, reducing the number of user application logins to a singular one, providing a high level of security and convenience, along with reducing overall IT costs.
• Uses the Azure VPN Gateway via site-to-site or point-to-site connections from your on-premises networks to Microsoft 365 platforms.
• Offers the opportunity for users to have access to collaboration tools, along with real-time co-authoring.
• Gives users a way to enjoy full use of remote/hybrid work support and capabilities, optimizing them to retrieve data from your local office network, speeding up access time.
• Provides the ability to create custom apps or web services on Azure and enhance Office 365 functionality.

 Scalability

As your business changes and/or grows, scalability becomes increasingly important. The cloud is innately scalable, and Microsoft’s products are designed with this in mind.

• Being cloud solutions, Azure and Office 365 jointly offer scalable storage and compute power.
• Utilizing both MS products together enables you to enjoy elastic infrastructure and better IT resource management.
• By using Microsoft’s cloud-based solutions, you avoid overspending on software you find you don’t need, or you no longer need to worry about working with obsolete technology.

Affordability

Every business likes to cut unnecessary or wasteful spending when they can and transitioning to cloud solutions helps them effectively do this while not sacrificing quality or practicality. An Azure and Office 365 combination gives you the ability to allow the following.

• Gives you the ability to enjoy a pay-as-you-go service, so you can increase or decrease the levels of services you need when you need them.
• Provides you with knowledge of a predictable subscription price, so you know how much your costs will be ahead of time for budget planning.
• Your organization gains the ability to have streamlined subscription management, helping you to simplify expenses and easily manage your cloud costs.
• Offers an opportunity to reduce your on-premises infrastructure costs, empowering you to reallocate funds to other critical areas of your business.

Generally speaking, integrated cloud solutions are more effective because you streamline your technology, consolidate costs and assist your IT staff to help make their job easier. All things considered, cloud solutions also typically offer your users a more positive experience.

How to Obtain Access to Azure and Office 365

The good news is you have a high ability to customize how you want to use one or both Microsoft products, or, if it makes sense for your technology strategy, using both Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 jointly is very easy to do.

In fact, if you’ve purchased a subscription to 365, you already have an ability to utilize Azure services. (You can also purchase Azure as a standalone product). On the other hand, if you already have Azure, you can easily subscribe to Office 365, provided you have the ability to access Global Admin or Billing Admin permissions. This usually is not a problem for most organizations, since their technology decision-makers are likely involved in setting permissions.

Summary

Microsoft historically has been a pioneer when it comes to taking existing and new technologies to the next level. Due to the seamless integration Microsoft establishes between its products, many enterprise-sized organizations find the technology giant’s Azure and Microsoft 365 products to be highly complementary and, as a result, coexist nicely together, helping them to meet their internal objectives.

Whether you want to bolster your organization’s security levels, increase productivity and convenience, streamline your costs or all of the above, chances are once you examine your options, you’ll find these two Microsoft products might be a good strategic option for your business.

Ready to Look at Your Cloud Options? Contact Red River Today!

The cloud is not a passing fad. For the foreseeable future, it’s going to play a prominent role in organizational IT strategies across the globe. Are you ready to combine your cloud solutions to boost your productivity and efficiency, while simultaneously reducing costs?

If so, Red River can help you find the best options. When you work with our professional experts, they’ll do the heavy lifting while helping you identify the right technology solutions for your enterprise. Transitioning some or all of your processes to the cloud is beneficial and can help simplify the ever-growing complexity of our technological landscape. Red River brings decades of experience, and our team of experts will work closely with you to develop solutions to meet your technological needs.

If you’re ready to explore marrying Microsoft Azure and Office 365 to improve upon your existing processes or want to explore other cloud services, contact Red River today to discuss your options. A member of our professional team will outline your potential solutions and work to help you find the ideal solution to meet your organizational needs. We look forward to speaking with you!