What is Microsoft 365?Ī few months ago, on 21st April 2020, Microsoft officially rebranded Office 365, effectively changing the name from Office 365 to Microsoft 365 – but only for specific licence types – namely the small and medium business SKUs Office 365 contains the same core desktop applications as the traditional versions of Microsoft Office, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, as well as a suite of other apps and online services for cloud file storage, secure communication, and collaboration. Tools such as Planner, OneDrive, Exchange, SharePoint, Yammer and Microsoft Teams all come together to provide an unparalleled user experience.

Launched by Microsoft back in June 2011, this subscription-based service is paid on either a monthly or annual basis providing an incredibly cost-effective way for organisations to consume their productivity workloads. Office 365 is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that combines the traditional Microsoft Office desktop applications, Microsoft application services, and some new productivity services, all of which are enabled as consumable services from within Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. We increasingly see references online to both Office 365 and Microsoft 365 – but what are they? Which one should you be using? What benefits do they deliver? And is there actually any difference between the two? Discover more in this post.

Microsoft 365 office