Microsoft 365 is an umbrella offering of software and services for organizations that launched in the summer of 2017. Because some may be scratching their heads as to what precisely Microsoft 365 is, we provide an explanation of what it's all about below. Microsoft representatives (who also call it M365) describe the product as Office 365 plus Windows 10 plus Enterprise Mobility.
Update: In March 2020, the company unveiled a version of Microsoft 365 for consumers. That offering differs from the business plans, and it replaces Office 365 plans. It includes not only the Office apps, but also OneDrive cloud storage, Outlook, Family Safety (including apps for Android and iOS), and Teams for Families. It also includes new consumer-targeted finance templates for Excel, and AI-powered style checking for Word.
The offering has been a success at attracting customers: At a recent Goldman Sachs conference last month, Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jared Spataro stated that "over a quarter of Office 365 licenses are being purchased through M365 or through Microsoft 365."
The Microsoft Graph
Microsoft 365 is available in three flavors: Business, Enterprise, and Education. Pricing starts at $20 per user per month for the Business level, which gets you all of Office 365. According to my Microsoft contact, however, "Pricing varies based on factors such as seat volume and total services provided by the Microsoft partner involved in the sale."
Microsoft 365 leverages the Microsoft Graph, which is basically all the data you produce based on your activity in Office apps, in the Edge web browser, and on Microsoft's mobile apps, including the Edge and Office apps for iOS and Android. There are other inputs as well, such as web-indexing data from Bing, Outlook.com mail, Azure Active Directory, SharePoint, and business data from LinkedIn.
That data is just the start of the Graph, however. Its special sauce is the Microsoft AI and machine learning applied to it. An example of this is the new grammar-learning capabilities in Word. Cloud services can learn grammar patterns and propose more types of corrections. It will know, for example, that it's more correct to say "I saw fog in the air" rather than "I saw the fog in the air," based on lots of data showing the correct usage.
The Graph isn't just for Microsoft apps: Developers can use Graph APIs to build more proactive and smarter apps of their own using all that intelligence via Azure cloud services. For example, a company could use the APIs to build a custom administrator's console.
What's New in Microsoft 365?
Since Microsoft 365 includes Windows 10 and Office 365, the case could be made that every new feature in those is a new Microsoft 365 feature. One new feature specific to the service is Insider Risk Management. This uses AI to monitor risky situations such as a departing employee downloading sensitive business files. It checks for simple security mistakes as well as for malicious actions. The protection is important, as a survey showed that 90 percent of organizations felt vulnerable to insider risk, and half of the respondents had experienced insider breaches in the previous year.
A related new tool is Advanced Audit for Microsoft 365. This Enterprise feature adds the following capabilities:
- Extending the preservation of a user’s audit activities from 90 days to 1 year
- Increasing bandwidth access to the Management Activity API
- Access to crucial events for investigations
Windows 10's Your Phone app is a window on the PC that shows photos, notifications, and messages from Android mobile devices. Microsoft still hasn't gotten Your Phone capabilities to work with iOS, but Microsoft 365 MDM capabilities do work with iPhones. You'll likely see more features with Android, since Apple locks down its OS features more. But a Microsoft rep said Your Phone will indeed work with iOS sometime.
Office and M365
Of course, a huge part of M365 is Office 365. The adaptive cards that appear in Outlook and Teams messages change to reflect changes in your organization's Microsoft Graph data. A manager could approve an expense report right in a card. You'll also be able to pay bills in a card using Microsoft Pay. Cards are adaptive and actionable, as the buttons in the card below show.
Mobile
In addition to the mobile app integrations mentioned above, Microsoft 365 includes mobile device management capabilities. This lets IT staff deploy app and security settings to Android and iOS devices as well as to Windows tabletsand desktops. The system doesn't offer automatic deployment on the mobile OSes, but does allow this on Windows 10 devices. You can set security policies to take effect on all platforms.
Cloud Storage and Services
As you might expect, Microsoft throws in OneDrive online storage and sharing, as well as access to all the Office web apps, for when you don't have one of your own devices handy. Microsoft 365 users get the same 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage Office 365 subscribers get, along with Microsoft Teams accounts. They also get customizable SharePoint team intranet sites.
Security
Microsoft 365 offers better security than what you'd get with a simple Office 365 subscription, including Advanced Threat Protection, remote wiping capability, App protection (which restricts copying or saving proprietary data in mobile apps), Windows Defender Exploit Guard, and unlimited cloud archiving for Exchange email.
Is Microsoft 365 Cannibalizing Windows and Office?
At first glance, it could seem like Windows and Office are being subsumed by Microsoft 365. But really, it's just that the company wants to promote the new offering for businesses and organizations. Windows and Office aren't going anywhere, and indeed, they'll benefit from some of the features introduced for Microsoft 365.
Further Reading
- Microsoft's All-In-One Office Mobile App Now Available for Everyone
- Office 365 ProPlus Will Switch Chrome's Default Search to Bing
- Adobe Integrates Creative Cloud With Microsoft Office
- How to Use Track Changes in Google Docs
- More in Office Suites