Business Premium: Small Business Multi-Tool
In recent years, Microsoft has changed their strategy regarding small businesses. With the 2022 addition of Microsoft Defender for Business, Small and Medium Businesses (SMB) can now enjoy many benefits once thought the domain of enterprise, government, and large businesses.
"It's Just Microsoft Office on a Subscription"
Microsoft 365, previously Office 365, started as an evolution of the Office license. Microsoft’s Office suite of products has long been a mainstay of businesses big and small. These applications, such as Word, Excel, Publisher, and Outlook are essential to productivity for workers.
In more recent years other applications, such as OneDrive and Teams, have become equally important. The addition of Sharepoint Online and Exchange Online was also a game changer for small businesses, as organizations gained the ability to be more agile and allow users to collaborate in new and unique ways while reducing their compute infrastructure needs.
All of these tools are included with M365 Business Standard. So, what makes Business Premium worth the almost 50% markup from Business Standard?
Business Premium: Value Proposition
Business Premium does very little to change what an end user sees on their desktop. The only notable change is shared device activation, letting unlicensed users utilize Office Apps on shared machines. Some users will also find hosting video content on Microsoft Stream a nice feature for internal documentation and training.
For the business as an organization, Business Premium adds an incredible list of features, including:
- Unlimited Email Archiving
- Exchange Online Enhanced Protection
- Intune and Autopilot Enrollment
- Azure Information Protection P1 (Data Loss Prevention)
- Azure AD P1 Subscription (Including Conditional Access Policies)
- Microsoft Defender for Business including cross platform protection, EDR, Threat and Vulnerability management, and centralized reporting
- Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (advanced antiphishing, real-time detections, Safe Attachments, Safe Links)
Capabilities that once required a patchwork of tools and expertise can now be centrally managed for the SMB. The combination of Intune and Azure AD bring many capabilites that were once reserved for organizations with a robust Active Directory environment with SCCM.
With the addition of Defender for Business, M365 Business Premium now gives small businesses a significant boost to their security posture. Endpoints can now easily be monitored and remediated when a cybersecurity incident occurs.
The MVP: Windows Autopilot and Intune
Autopilot is a game changer for the SMB space. No more MDT, no more manual set up of devices. Instead, a small business now has the ability to centrally manage all of their endpoints from one location. They can guarantee that their data is encrypted at rest, wipe devices remotely, and easily implement more advanced security features such as certificate based authenticate for their VPN. Software can be deployed and configured automatically, decreasing friction when onboarding new employees. Access control has also never been easier, as you can configure your users in Azure AD with groups, conditional access to applications, and more.
Conclusion
M365 Business Premium can be a huge boon to a small to medium sized business. Available for organizations with 300 users or less, this subscription gives you access to features once reserved for the enterprise. While Intune is not a direct replacement for Microsoft’s Configuration Manager, it can dramatically decrease onboarding time for a new device. Additionally, the security features gained from adopting M365 are almost a ‘no brainer’ in today’s modern workplace.
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Did you find this helpful? Maybe discovered a flaw? Please contact me at:
- blake@foxlabsolutions.com