How IT Managers can start to optimize their Office 365 environment

Certero is one of the world's leading solution providers for ITAM, SAM, SaaS and Cloud services – helping businesses get greater visibility over their IT infrastructure and implement more efficient practices.

As organizations have made that migration to the cloud, many IT Managers believe the days of license management are behind them. However, cloud subscriptions still need to be controlled. This is especially important in the case of Office 365. A service which has seen an increase in deployment throughout 2020 and 2021 due to on-going remote working.

Neglecting this responsibility can lead to spiraling costs that are often difficult to address. A particular pitfall that many businesses encounter is when onboarding a new starter. Whereby leavers’ subscriptions are not tracked properly and the organization’s IT team wastes a substantial amount of money and time purchasing extra licenses for new starters, rather than re-harvesting their existing ones.

The Office 365 license management and optimization solution from Certero gives businesses greater visibility and control over their subscriptions, users, products, storage, usage and costs to avoid such mistakes. With out-of-the-box automation, a single source of granular data and advanced analytics, Certero’s Office 365 module lets enterprises have a single pane of glass visibility of their applications and full control over their use of Office 365 and expenditure.

The solution automates the consolidation of user, subscription, activity and storage data into one easy to access area, allowing IT managers to begin analysis without the tiresome process of collecting the figures.

Also by improving visibility and accountability of starters and leavers processes, the module enables users to reduce unnecessary expenditure on new licences by highlighting unused and unallocated subscriptions that can be reused.

Certero’s Office 365 module provides managers and other decision makers within an organization with their entire expenditure on the subscription service. Additionally it can advise on which subscription type would best for a business by identifying products that are not in use or yet to even be activated.

The Active Directory feature helps to identify the users who have not logged in for a certain period of time or accounts that have been disabled.

What’s more, to help manage potential cost increases, the module can identify and track storage consumption so business owners know when it might be beneficial to upgrade their subscription.

Certero recently published a case study exemplifying the value of their Office 365 module. A logistics business was able to identify cost savings for Office 365 amounting to $1.6million within hours of implementing Certero’s Office 365 solution.

John Lunt, CEO of Certero, reaffirmed his commitment to helping businesses excel after transitioning to remote working.

“COVID-19 has undoubtedly challenged the way that businesses operate across the globe and has led to an extraordinary adoption of Cloud & SaaS technologies to accommodate rapid change, not least with Office 365.”

He continued, “We’re hoping to help our client’s restore a sense of order within their everyday working practices in these uncertain times, by providing them full visibility, analytics and control over their Office 365 utilization – ensuring no money is wasted on subscriptions or products they don't need.”