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Quest On Demand Adds Office 365 License Management
Quest On Demand has added two new features to help organizations further streamline Office 365 (O365) management and potentially reduce costs: a License Management module and support for Microsoft Teams in its existing O365 Migration solution.
The License Management module can help organizations reduce costs by better understanding existing usage. Specifically, it adds the ability to:
- Identify who currently has O365 licenses.
- Determine which O365 services are actually being used.
- Use the above data to identify underutilization and examine whether a cheaper licensing package would be appropriate.
The Migration module migrates Exchange, SharePoint, and OneDrive to a different tenant as part of a consolidation effort to streamline O365 management – for example, following a merger or acquisition. The latest update adds support for Microsoft Teams. Specifically, this includes the ability to:
- Identify existing Teams and associated data to help you plan the migration.
- Migrate Teams without losing existing data such as channel conversations.
- Rename and merge Teams as part of the migration.
Quest On Demand is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution, hosted in Microsoft Azure, that provides a range of modules to help organizations manage their O365 implementations.
Our Take
In general, cloud services make it easy to overprovision. For example, there is no hardware limitation that forces organizations to keep a better handle on current usage. When you combine that with a complex licensing package, it’s no surprise that many organizations are paying more than they need to for O365 licenses. As a result, the License Management module could make a significant impact on organizations trying to reduce O365 costs.
The addition of Teams to Quest On Demand Migration reflects the increased adoption of Teams as more than just an instant messaging solution. There’s critical data there and tight integrations with the other O365 modules that need to be preserved in a migration.
Overall, Quest On Demand’s new features are an example of how the vendor market has responded to the ongoing proliferation of O365 adoption with better tools to help organizations manage and protect their O365 implementation. Organizations looking for O365 support have plenty of options to choose from, so the continued expansion of Quest On Demand is in fact a necessity to keep up with competing products.
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