In this blog series, we will talk about modern governance in the cloud, more specifically, scaling Microsoft 365 governance. It’s a broad topic, encompassing many different areas depending on your approach to Microsoft 365.
We asked participants in our recent webinar, How to stay in control of Office 365 in 2020, what Microsoft 365 governance means to them. They came up with a quick bullet list, and here are a few of the top topics they were thinking of at the time:
- Privacy, GDPR, and content lifecycle management
- Interoperability without chaos
- Defining Microsoft 365 groups creators
- External access
- General rules and frameworks to adhere and guide
As you see, governance can be prioritized differently depending on the organization setup, varying from security, external access, to naming convention rules, and documentation. However, all these points and more should be a priority, and businesses are finding it challenging to scale their governance efforts to meet the needs of their organizational processes.
Addressing Microsoft 365 governance challenges
At Rencore, we are conducting ongoing research into the pain points organizations have with cloud governance, and how they are currently trying to solve them. From our analysis, we have defined some key points people want to do concerning Microsoft 365 governance.
Discover
Many want to discover the information to understand their environment, for example, who is creating Microsoft 365 groups. They also want to keep a secure environment.
Act
People want their governance plans to be actionable in the most optimal way. For instance, if there is an unused site that hasn’t been used in the last sixty days, and you would like permission to delete or archive it, this action must align with existing business processes and be acted upon swiftly.
Report
Our current research shows that creating reports is a top priority. Individuals want to give stakeholders a report on the current governance situation, which is easy to decipher. Thus, information can be quickly acted on.
Scaling Microsoft 365 governance is difficult
In the past, you may have seen a demo showing a perfectly managed Microsoft 365 tenant with ten Teams. Everything is under control. However, the moment you take that tenant into production, your users will start to work with it.
After some time, user adoption will inevitably go through the roof once users become accustomed to the platform. At that point, you will see growth, and we can relate first-hand with our own adoption of Teams at Rencore.
Furthermore, business users are adopting a self-service approach initiated by Microsoft, and are empowered to build solutions using Power Automate and Power Apps, and build groups, which also leads to sprawl and orphaned resources. Consequently, this can also create unpredictable costs and a lack of security overview.
Microsoft 365 growth can rapidly spin out of control, and that is when you need assistance managing Office 365 at scale.
Scaling Microsoft 365 Governance with Rencore
Our research is continuing to grow. In our latest governance webinar: How to stay in control of Office 365 in 2020, which you can catch up on demand if you have time, we had a live demo of our Rencore Governance software. Participants could view and feedback first-hand on what policies they would find helpful when automating their governance efforts.
Rencore Governance allows you to choose what you want to track, build relevant reports, and automate with your business processes in mind. If you would like to learn more about Rencore governance and see it in action, please head to the Rencore Governance product page by clicking the button below.
Please comment on the policies you would like to find in our governance automation software.
