Microsoft 365 Business Premium vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

Microsoft 365 Business Premium is well suited to any size organization and is a must-have for business purposes. It is a vital component for the majority of work software needs, as the Microsoft 365 Business Premium package has apps to handle needs that I didn't know we had. It is a great way to provide the required software programs to teams, especially those that work remotely due to the great sharing capabilities built into it. Furthermore, the nonprofit program provided our small nonprofit with vital components for our remote work, while allowing us to keep our donated funds going directly to our mission.

Incentivized

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP was well suited to begin our journey to cloud storage as a service. The ease and intuitiveness of the product to enable our administrators to design, configure, and deploy the storage in a hybrid cloud environment was instrumental to the success and the early adoption of the service.

Incentivized

• Work in sync in different departments.
• Being able to work from any device or computer. It is a very noble tool in different devices.
• The work between the different programs (Word, Excel, Notes) that it offers is extremely light and good.

Incentivized

• Simplicity
• Flexibility
• Cost savings

Incentivized

• adding calendar invitations is not straight forward
• copying folders from SharePoint libraries to an external drive should not be relying on the available space on the C drive
• administering mailboxes for our company is convoluted forcing me to hunt for settings and options
• lack of flexibility on the location of the OST and PST files
• the new version should not do away with PST files but rather improve their reliability.
• the PST internal structure is inefficient. the PST file should be able to shrink automatically when one delete emails.

Incentivized

• More competitive pricing at lower volumes of storage
• Make it possible to manage storage across hybrid and multiple cloud environments

Incentivized

It is part of the organisation now. It provides and rich feature set and requires a relatively low amount of administration.

The basic apps are straightforward and easy to use, especially since they have been around so long. I'm referring to the basic apps like Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, etc. Other features such as Microsoft Teams and Sharepoint Sites, Sharepoint Lists, Sharepoint Groups, etc. all require a higher level of knowledge to both implement and use properly

Incentivized

In the last 5 years, Microsoft has come a long way. The performance of the products has become more and more user-friendly and it seems that the feedback provided by the user community is being listened to and worked on. The processes are very fast and seamless. There are negligible errors and doesn't slow the systems down.

Incentivized

As mentioned elsewhere in the review, Microsoft has historically paid attention to community feedback and issues, but timeliness can improve, and so can the addressing of long-standing issues about which many users have said "I have this issue too!" but no official solution exists. For issues that do have a solution, however, the solution is usually not difficult to find, and the explanation of features on Microsoft's website can mitigate many problems.

Incentivized

We utilized NetApp remote Professional Services to assist in our deployment and also engaged support since the deployment for assistance regarding some networking concerns. NetApp support was surprisingly quick to reply and very proactive in resolving our concerns much quicker than other support personnel from many of our other vendors we use. No complaints about NetApp support at this time.

Incentivized

Before migrating to Microsoft 365 Business Premium, we possessed an in-house exchange server. Therefore, it was difficult for us to look at alternatives to Microsoft for a solution – we did look at the Google Suite of products, but the transition for us seemed less cumbersome to stay with Microsoft from a staff and administrative perspective. While the G Suite does offer us many outstanding products and services, we also didn’t feel that Gmail is up-to-par as a corporate solution the way Exchange/Outlook/OWA are – this alone was also a driving force for our end-users, as there was minimal transition for them to move from an on-premise solution to an off-premise solution. The additional features of SharePoint, Teams, Project, and so many other applications within Microsoft 365 also helped us make a strong case to stay with Microsoft and expand what we were using. The end-user and mobile protections of InTune have also put us at ease when issuing laptops and mobile phones to an almost fully-remote end-user base.

Incentivized

ScienceLogic SL1 and SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor (SRM) were the closest competitors to meeting our business objectives. Tivoli Storage Manager was not able to meet the initial requirements. There was a significant overlap of capabilities between ScienceLogic SL1, SolarWinds SRM, and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP. The latter provided a more positive and cohesive experience for our administrators and executives.

Incentivized

• We can now keep work going from anywhere. It doesn't matter if we are on a job site or sitting in the office or working from home for a day or two we don't have to miss a beat.
• It has unified how we store information so that everything isn't stored on individual computers

Incentivized

• Not really any noticeable impact yet
• We are utilizing the free tier that is provided as a promotion with current systems
• It remains to be seen if it will continue to be enough value to renew the subscription

Incentivized