Over the last 12 months the Two Point Zero team have become even bigger fans of the solutions offered by Microsoft’s 365 suite of office tools; an ever-expanding selection of apps for collaborating, communicating and efficient working.
Microsoft launched Office for Windows in November 1990. This original offering consisted of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Following a 2010 beta test Microsoft launched Office 365 in June 2011, becoming Microsoft 365 in April 2020.
Today, Microsoft 365 is a subscription based model meaning that businesses can increase their solutions as needed. The basic package includes web and mobile versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint as well as Teams, Exchange, OneDrive and Sharepoint access. Other packages also include Publisher, Outlook, Intune and Azure Information Protection.
Within the packages ‘Teams’ has become one of the most utilised and valued. During the pandemic, and the huge shift to home working, Teams really proved its worth, growing from 20 million users in 2019 to 115 million active users just a year later (and a healthy 700% increase in revenue for Microsoft too!)
The key to Teams success is its seamless integration with all of the other Office products, as well as the quick and easy way it can be set up and deployed. It’s scalability has also made it a popular choice – easily adapting from one-to-one calling to conference broadcasts that can accommodate 10,000 attendees.
Post lockdown Microsoft are continuing to develop their offering by adding a Reading Progress feature to Teams. This will allow students to record themselves reading a passage of text for teachers to better assess accuracy rates and mispronunciations. This new tool is hot on the heels of research showing that students reading skills have significantly dropped since the pandemic (a Stanford University study actually found that reading fluency in early grades had fallen by 30%).
If you are looking to improve collaboration and communication within your business or maybe upgrade your Microsoft package speak to Two Point Zero today. We can assess your requirements and options and get you up and running – as well as providing ongoing support.
