Microsoft 365 Business Basic is designed for small businesses, offering web and mobile versions of core Office apps, Exchange Online for email, OneDrive for storage, and Microsoft Teams. It provides the essential cloud services they need without the cost and complexity of desktop application installation or advanced management features found in higher-tier plans like E3.

Multi-Geo Capabilities in Microsoft 365 allow an organization to provision and store data at rest in specific, chosen geo-locations to meet data residency requirements. While DLP protects data from being shared inappropriately and MFA secures access, only Multi-Geo directly controls the physical storage location of data.

SharePoint Online is the service designed for team-based collaboration and document management. It provides team sites where files can be stored centrally, allowing multiple people to co-author documents simultaneously, track version history, and manage permissions. OneDrive is for personal file storage, while Exchange is for email and Planner for task management.

Sensitivity Labels can be configured to enforce protections like encryption and content markings. Crucially, they can apply usage rights that prevent forwarding, printing, or copying of content. These protections travel with the file or email, controlling access regardless of where it’s stored. Message Encryption primarily protects content in transit but doesn’t necessarily restrict actions like printing after decryption.

The key distinction is that Microsoft 365 Apps are the full, rich desktop applications (like Word.exe) installed locally, offering the complete set of features. Office Online refers to the lightweight, browser-based versions (Word for the web) that have a simplified interface and core functionality, ideal for quick edits and co-authoring from any device.

The Microsoft 365 admin center is the primary portal for overall tenant management. It includes homepages with cards and reports showing service health, adoption metrics, billing information, and user management—providing the integrated, high-level dashboard the manager needs. The other centers are for managing specific services.

Teams Phone with Calling Plan is the Microsoft 365 add-on that provides PSTN calling capabilities. It gives users a phone number and the ability to make and receive traditional phone calls directly within the Teams app. Audio Conferencing is for adding dial-in numbers to meetings, which is related but different from individual user calling plans.

Compliance Manager is a workflow-based risk assessment tool within the Service Trust Portal. Its score reflects your progress in implementing recommended controls (both Microsoft’s and your own actions) to meet the requirements of various standards (like NIST, ISO, GDPR). It’s for tracking and managing compliance efforts, not for real-time monitoring or automated remediation.

Microsoft 365 is fundamentally a SaaS offering. Microsoft manages the entire infrastructure (servers, storage, networking), the platform (OS, middleware), and the application software (Exchange, SharePoint, Teams). The customer’s responsibility is focused on managing their users, data, and device access—the “shared responsibility model” heavily favors Microsoft’s management in the SaaS layer.

Microsoft 365 Business Basic is designed for small businesses, offering web and mobile versions of core Office apps, Exchange Online for email, OneDrive for storage, and Microsoft Teams. It provides the essential cloud services they need without the cost and complexity of desktop application installation or advanced management features found in higher-tier plans like E3.0