With the COVID-19 outbreak impacting companies across the globe, we’ve all experienced a world of remote everything. Overnight, the outbreak compelled organizations large and small to shut their doors and navigate a whiplash digital transformation while working to keep employees safe, connect with customers, and move work forward. Today, as some organizations begin to reopen and others remain fully remote, small, and medium-sized businesses face a unique set of challenges. We get it, and we are working hard to help enable your employees to stay connected and productive, through COVID-19 and beyond.
Here I’m going to share three inspiring stories on how small and medium-sized businesses are navigating this moment. Then I’ll go over some recent offerings designed to help you and your business navigate this unprecedented moment. Finally, I’ll point you to partnerships with American Express and Adobe, created to further support your efforts to keep work moving. Let’s get started.
Learning from customers
Every day, our customers tell us that priority number one is adapting tools that enable remote work and help them roll out changes as quickly as possible. Peter, who owns a winery in Michigan, typically runs his company on-site, with staff in the office. When the pandemic hit, Peter quickly realized that he needed to invest in online collaboration and file-sharing tools like OneDrive for Business. He started using OneDrive to help make sure that “business documents [and] business information are accessible from anywhere, and not to anyone, but to the appropriate people from wherever they need to work.” This has helped him safely stay in business, fulfilling orders remotely until offices can reopen.
Alex, the president of an engineering consulting firm in Toronto, found he also needs to pivot his business in a new direction. “We used to have 80 percent of our meetings with clients in person,” says Alex. “Now it’s 100 percent over the internet.” Secure communications, along with the ability to hold long online meetings that fit clients’ schedules, are particularly important to Alex. We designed new features and capabilities in Microsoft Teams, part of the Microsoft 365 productivity solution, to help companies like Alex continue to connect with clients even when they can’t meet in person. You can learn more about Teams here.
As restrictions ease in certain regions, some businesses are reopening softly—but may have a long way to go before they can recover fully. Jackie is a General Manager who works at a restaurant supply distributing company with 17 employees in Massachusetts. She says keeping her staff employed is “critical” for her organization, but also tricky since their business depends on events like parties and weddings. While the team was fully remote, Jackie set up what she calls “virtual offices,” distributing computers to everyone who didn’t already have one that they could take home. Recently, her employees have been able to return to the office in rotation while continuing to communicate with teammates working from home. Meanwhile, Jackie intends on keeping everyone busy. “I literally have them cleaning, organizing, you know, doing a cycle counts, inventory, like pretty much trying to keep everybody employed,” she says.
We are thrilled that our technology can help keep work moving for customers like Peter, Alex, and Jackie. To help more of our small and medium-sized business customers at this time, we have updated some of our offerings to specifically meet their needs.
Benefits for your business
Here’s a quick summary of existing benefits to help small and medium-sized businesses at this time.
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic six-months-free offer (with an annual subscription): We continue to evolve the Microsoft 365 family to help enable remote work, simplify IT, and reduce costs. It is now free for six months with an annual subscription of Microsoft 365 Business Basic. Starting this month, this offer is also available through CSP channels to support Partner sales.
- Microsoft Teams Free offer: Teams are a part of Microsoft 365. Customers using an email address like Gmail or Outlook can also sign up for the free version of Teams. And a reminder, if you already have Microsoft 365 subscription that includes Teams, you can get started by logging in here.
- SMB COVID-19 Resource Center: We created this collection of resources to help small businesses get set up for remote work, enable their employees to work remotely, and weather the storm with advice from fellow business owners on operating through COVID-19. There’s also advice from Microsoft Advertising on ways to attract new customers at this time, including a special offer for search services.
Small and medium-sized businesses are the heartbeat of economies and cultures everywhere. At Microsoft, we are committed to enabling them to stay open through this challenging moment. Today, I’ve shared stories of how businesses like yours are showing resilience even in the face of great challenges. I’ve also outlined offerings aimed at helping all of our small and medium-sized customers, including offers with partners that you may already be working with. I look forward to sharing more news and updates with you in the days to come. Meanwhile, let’s continue to move forward together.
Microsoft teams up with Mastercard to empower small business owners
At Microsoft, we believe in the power of the cloud to help you reach your business objectives, so you have more time to do what you love. We understand that small business owners face unique challenges, and we’re building the tools to help them succeed in a competitive and rapidly changing world. Today, we’re announcing a special offer for Mastercard cardholders designed to make it easy for small business owners to get professional-grade tools to run and grow their businesses.
Meeting your small business needs
We designed these benefits specifically for the evolving needs of small business owners. We put the cloud to work for you, so you can work from anywhere, transform the way you manage your business, grow your customer base, and protect your valuable data.
Microsoft 365 brings together best-in-class Office apps like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel with powerful cloud services like professional email, online meetings, chat, file storage, and more. Powered by intelligent security, it proactively protects your employees, data, and customer information.
Microsoft Advertising makes it easy for small business owners to reach new customers with intelligent targeting capabilities that can help drive traffic, leads, and purchases for your business.
Both complement Mastercard’s existing small business digital resources, including 24/7 Business Assistant, Mastercard ID Theft Protection™, Mastercard Easy Savings, and more.
We’re excited to work with Mastercard to help you unleash the potential in your business. After all, starting a business is often a test of character, but running your business shouldn’t be.
Our commitment to privacy and security in Microsoft Teams
Almost overnight, video conferencing has become a big part of our daily life and work. A few weeks in, my team and I at Microsoft have adjusted to the new reality of seeing each other’s homes, complete with dogs, cats, and other family members. Everyone around the world is now working, learning, and connecting with colleagues, friends, and family through the power of technology. From kitchen tables to living room couches, and from home offices doubling as home schools—people are relying on Microsoft Teams to work and learn.
Businesses large and small are depending on Teams for mission-critical work. First responders are using Teams to communicate when lives depend on it. Governments are turning to Teams to move medical supplies to where they are needed most. Doctors and nurses are using it to consult with patients, and researchers are collaborating on it across continents to find a vaccine. And teachers are using Teams to teach students in entirely new ways. Important moments of human connection, achievement, and celebration have all moved online.
Now more than ever, people need to know that their virtual conversations are private and secure. At Microsoft, privacy and security are never an afterthought. It’s our commitment to you—not only during this challenging time, but always. Here’s how we’re working to earn your trust every day with Microsoft Teams.
We provide privacy and security controls for video conferences in Teams
We offer a variety of privacy and security controls to allow you to manage who participates in your meetings and who has access to meeting information.
For example, you decide who from outside your organization can join your meetings directly, and who should wait in the lobby for someone to let them in. You can also remove participants during a meeting, designate “presenters” and “attendees,” and control which meeting participants can present content. And with guest access, you can add people from outside your organization but still retain control over your data. Moderation allows you to control who is and isn’t allowed to post and share content. And advanced artificial intelligence (AI) monitors chats to help prevent negative behaviors like bullying and harassment.
We safeguard your privacy by design
When you use Microsoft Teams, you are entrusting us with one of your most valuable assets—your data and personal information. Our approach to privacy is grounded in our commitment to giving you transparency over the collection, use, and distribution of your data. Far from an afterthought, privacy is deeply ingrained in our company philosophy and how we build products. Here are our privacy commitments to you.
We never use your Team's data to serve you ads.
We do not track participant attention or multi-tasking in Team meetings.
Your data is deleted after the termination or expiration of your subscription.
We take strong measures to ensure access to your data is restricted and carefully define requirements for responding to government requests for data.
You can access your own customer data at any time and for any reason.
We offer regular transparency reports on the Transparency Hub, detailing how we have responded to third-party requests for data.
We protect your identity and account information
Multi-factor authentication (MFA), a feature turned on by your IT administrator, protects your username and password by requiring you to provide a second form of verification to prove your identity. This simple, two-step verification process is widely used in many consumer applications today, including banking, and protects you from attacks that take advantage of weak or stolen passwords.
We protect your data and defend against cybersecurity threats
As a leader in security, Microsoft processes more than 8 trillion security signals every day and uses them to proactively protect you from security threats. In Teams, we encrypt data in transit and at rest, storing your data in our secure network of data centers and using Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) for video, audio, and desktop sharing.
We meet more than 90 regulatory and industry standards
To comply with global, national, regional, and industry-specific regulations, Teams supports more than 90 regulatory standards and laws, including HIPAA, GDPR, FedRAMP, SOC, and Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) for the security of students and children.
For more information on the features, we’ve built to deliver on these promises, see our detailed post on privacy and security in Microsoft Teams or refer to our Teams product documentation. And to learn more about our approach to security, compliance, and privacy across all our products, including Teams, visit the Microsoft Trust Center.
No matter how you’re using Teams at this extraordinary time to connect with the people that matter most to you for work and in life, we’re committed to continuing to learn and get better each day as we work to help you keep all your conversations private and secure.
When recording a meeting, all participants are notified when a recording starts, and online participants can access our privacy notice directly. Recordings are only available to the people on the call or people invited to the meeting. And recordings are stored in a controlled repository that is protected by permissions and encryption.
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