Why Governance of Office 365 Matters for all Organisations

It has long been a frustration of mine that, when I attend conferences about Office 365, all of the governance topics are targeted at large enterprises.
Now, it is undoubtedly true that the scale of the governance challenges with products like Microsoft Teams is far more significant for larger organisations. However, organisations of all sizes face challenges with managing, classifying and securing content.

Managing Sprawl

Deploying Microsoft Teams in an organisation of over 50,000 users will undoubtedly result in a high volume of Teams. The situation is made worse if users self-serve the creation and management of Teams. However, typically, organisations of this size are better suited to being able to manage the challenge of sprawl. Put simply; they are better able to invest money and resources into addressing these challenges.

It is essential to challenge the assumption that high volume only happens in large organisations. I have worked with many clients with only a few hundred users, whom each month create a volume of Teams far higher than you would expect. Now, these organisations often have an IT department of fewer than ten people but are now faced with how they manage and effectively archive thousands of Teams.

Governance Solutions

In conclusion, once we accept that smaller organisations suffer from the same governance challenges with Office 365 as larger organisations, how can they effectively manage them? Historically, the cost of tooling to implement effective governance and lifecycle management is limited to large organisations. ProvisionPoint 365 is different; it is a cost-effective governance solution for Office 365, whether you have 50 or 50,000 users.

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash