Essential Cloud

Governance Planning
Declutter Microsoft 365

Stay in control of Microsoft 365

Successful user adoption = Cloud sprawl

Due to the increase in remote working, cloud adoption has rocketed—and it will only continue to
grow. As well as this, more devices are being provisioned to facilitate hybrid and flexible working
options for a significantly large proportion of the workforce.

All indications say this trend has been long in the making. But the outbreak of COVID-19 and the
need to facilitate remote working have certainly brought the roadmap forward.

Microsoft 365 has become the go-to cloud-based productivity

and collaboration tool for organizations all around the world.

Microsoft 365 has become the go-to cloud-based productivity and collaboration tool for organiza-
tions all around the world. Yet its success - due to its ease of use and familiarity, scope of use
through its range of services, and scalability - has a by-product: cloud sprawl. An accumulation of
both cloud sprawl and other resources gather to create an abundance of clutter. The need to
de-clutter is essential for organizations that want to reduce costs, increase productivity, and
remain agile in an ever-changing world.

Cloud sprawl
Cloud sprawl is the idea that the use of cloud apps and services can proliferate
to the point where growth is out of control. Collaboration governance is key, as
users are constantly creating new teams, sites, and flows to better work together.

Today’s organizations face an increase in cloud sprawl and therefore an influx of

data and information that needs to be closely managed for governance purpos-
es. In this whitepaper we are going to examine how this affects governance -
and why a combination of out-of-the-box and third-party tools provide the only
viable solution that meets the requirements of the modern business user.
CONTENTS

04 | Cloud sprawl needs a dynamic

governance approach

07 | The challenge of decluttering

10 | Governance solutions: what are the

options?

13 | Declutter with third-party tools

Essential Cloud Governance Planning: Declutter Microsoft 365 | 03

CLOUD SPRAWL NEEDS A DYNAMIC
GOVERNANCE APPROACH

As Microsoft 365 services adoption continues to rise, cloud sprawl becomes increasingly tough to
manage. For many organizations, the rollout of Microsoft Teams during the coronavirus pandemic
has been a huge success, immediately engaging users and breathing life into collaboration and
communication.

But this success poses challenges for governance. Organizations are faced with rapidly growing
amounts of inactive teams and groups, unused accounts belonging to external users, as well as
difficulties trying to identify unknown publicly shared content. In an increasingly remote world,
this problem is not limited to Teams but the entire Microsoft ecosystem. Here are a few examples:

• Unused teams
• Unused SharePoint sites
• Expired groups
• Unused files
• Unused flows and Power Apps
• Unused licenses

There are many different ways users can create

resources such as groups, teams, channels, and
SharePoint sites through multiple endpoints. For
example, a site collection is automatically created
once a group is made and visa-versa, and the
same goes with teams channels and chats. It is so
easy for cloud sprawl to get out of control, and it
often proliferates at a rate that goes unnoticed
by both users and IT, often until it is too late.

Essential Cloud Governance Planning: Declutter Microsoft 365 | 04

Here are a few examples we have seen at Rencore, when we’re working with our customers to
overcome these governance issues:

• Creating teams per job interview – An organization created new teams for each and every
interview, in order to help share relevant information to all stakeholders involved and ensure
that interviews were carried out effectively. However, at a large organization where there is a
lot of turnover, this quickly involves creating a lot of teams. Without being aware of it, the
organization was suddenly sitting on a mountain of teams that had been forgotten about. This
is further complicated by the fact that these teams channels often involved sensitive data such
as PII (personally identifiable information). For compliance with data privacy regulation, such
as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), this was an urgent problem in need of
a rapid solution.

Without being aware of it, the organization was suddenly

sitting on a mountain of teams that had been forgotten about.

• Exploring the possibilities of Power Automate – Another common problem area that we
see is an abundance of flows that have been built but no longer serve a purpose. Particularly
during the initial launch of a powerful tool like Power Automate, organizations often allow
users to play around with flows to see what’s possible or to train users how to operate the
new technology. One user builds a flow to try something out, then another, and then suddenly
there are many flows in your environment that no one needs or uses. This is an ongoing
problem, because flows are often optimized, improved, and replaced when opportunities for
improving workflows arise. Also, projects or teams come and go or evolve over time, and the
processes and workflows once used are now no longer needed.

Essential Cloud Governance Planning: Declutter Microsoft 365 | 05

The role of collaboration
Collaboration plays a significant role in all of this. Among the main drivers of clutter and cloud
sprawl are collaboration and the success of Microsoft 365 adoption. Every idea shared, every
brainstorm session, and every new project causes another splurge in clutter that can soon be
forgotten but will continue to grow, unknown to users and IT.

Organizations need to find the right balance between encouraging the freedom to collaborate and
maintaining Microsoft 365 governance. Ideally, you don’t want to put a block on this kind of
productivity and creativity. But collaboration governance is key to ensuring that cloud sprawl
doesn’t get out of hand.

Organizations need a plan to declutter—for instance, a plan for what you want to do with unused
sites and teams once projects are finished. But this is easier said than done. We’ll look at why next.

Essential Cloud Governance Planning: Declutter Microsoft 365 | 06

THE CHALLENGE OF DECLUTTERING

There are many ways that clutter can hurt your business, including:

• Costs – There may be unused licenses or other resources that are unnecessarily costing
money. However, these are hard to identify amid all the clutter.

• Productivity – Unused resources make it hard for people to find what they are searching for.
Let’s say your desk is a mess and you cannot find the report you need. Now imagine this on a
digital and organization-wide scale when teams and sites are being created en masse.

• Maintenance – Organizations need to maintain the system and resources created. This
specialist work is time-intensive and costly.

• Compliance – When cloud sprawl is out of control, you may lose track of confidential data
such as PII. This can result in falling short of regulatory requirements and the organization may
suffer fines and reputational damage.

Ultimately, this all eventually means increased costs for

your business and a negative impact on the bottom line.

Organizations can reduce costs by decluttering. One

common example that illustrates this is that some
Microsoft 365 users have both E5 and E3 licenses but
only need E3 licenses. By resolving this, you can save on
licensing costs. It is imperative that organizations declut-
ter, but the process for doing so can be difficult.

Essential Cloud Governance Planning: Declutter Microsoft 365 | 07

Decluttering is its own challenge
As we have seen, clutter and cloud sprawl is a problem. But so too is decluttering. The process of
decluttering is not easy and serves up several challenges itself:

• Multiple admin centers – It is a challenge to identify relevant data and report on it manually.
Decluttering in Microsoft 365 is made difficult due to the number of admin centers organiza-
tions must manage. With separate admin centers for each Microsoft service, finding informa-
tion is a key challenge when handled manually. The problem is that data needs to be found
and identified quickly and easily. Time is of the essence, but it isn’t always obvious where to
start. If this task is performed manually, it might mean going from admin center to admin
center in search of the resource in question.

• Ongoing and constant – Your IT environment will constantly grow as your organizations
evolves over time. It is a never-ending story, as users keep collaborating with each other and
using Microsoft 365 functionality to get work done. You always have to stay on top of it, which
is extremely difficult and almost impossible to manage manually.

• Not scalable – Manual labor does not scale easily, especially if it requires highly skilled person-
nel. Undertaking the clean-up processes, identifying what can be archived or removed, and
taking the necessary action requires expertise and experience.

Data scattered in Ongoing and constant Manual processes are

multiple admin centers environment monitoring not scalable

Essential Cloud Governance Planning: Declutter Microsoft 365: Declutter Microsoft 365 | 08
Many governance approaches are outdated
Traditionally, governance is a relatively static operation. A traditional approach might involve the
creation of a long PDF document with a governance plan for each Microsoft service. Not only does
this require technical skill, but it is a laborious and time-intensive process for the person who
creates it. It is also a time-intensive process for every person who must refer to this document. This
does not reflect the requirements of the modern business user, such as speed, agility, and flexibili-
ty. And this is only the governance plan. Collecting information, crunching that data, and then
acting on it are also still largely manual—and time-consuming—activities.

The traditional manner of IT governance must be adapted to solve these problems. Let’s see why
and how this can be overcome.

Essential Cloud Governance Planning: Declutter Microsoft 365 | 09

GOVERNANCE SOLUTIONS:
WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS?

How do organizations overcome the governance challenges outlined above? There are three
options.

1. Out of the box

2. DIY governance
3. Third-party tools

There are significant limitations to the first two. As an organization’s environment grows, these two
approaches become exceptionally difficult and at times impossible to manage. What’s more, cloud
sprawl can increase rapidly and in an unpredictable manner as collaboration takes off, which causes
further strain on the first two options.

What’s more, cloud sprawl can increase rapidly and in

an unpredictable manner as collaboration takes off

Let’s explore why, before turning to why third-party tools can offer the best solution. As we men-
tioned before, it’s vital to find a solution that can facilitate dynamic collaboration and doesn’t
restrain productivity.

Essential Cloud Governance Planning: Declutter Microsoft 365 | 10

1. Out of the box DIY options require custom work to automate
governance processes, but this is an ongoing
challenge. Managing this requires expertise
The first solution is attempting to get a handle
and experience to keep on top of things. It
on cloud sprawl using the tools that are
might require consultancy work, which is a
provided with Microsoft 365. The main prob-
considerable cost. Also, managing these DIY
lem here is one we have already highlighted.
solutions distracts IT from other valuable work.
Each Microsoft service has its own admin
center. These also only provide static reports,
To avoid manually searching admin centers for
which offer limited insights and are not
information, the DIY approach involves build-
actionable. This therefore requires someone
ing custom PowerShell scripts to gather the
to carry out repetitive, time-intensive
data for you. This stage can therefore be
work—on a constant basis. As user adoption
automated, but it is only one step in the
grows and collaboration flourishes, this gets
process. The information might be put into an
out of hand very quickly.
Excel spreadsheet or a SharePoint list, but
someone still has to act on that data.
2. DIY governance
At this stage, it might be worth seeing what
For most organizations, governance in Micro- tools are available to help you best automate
soft 365 out of the box is simply not good not only the discovery of data but also interpret
enough. This leads them to opt for the second results and report in a business-friendly way.
solution: DIY governance.

Out of the box DIY governance with Third-party

Governance scripting. governance tools

Essential Cloud Governance Planning: Declutter Microsoft 365 | 11

A quick example

Think of a scenario where scripts determine a governance issue where a team only has one owner
but requires two. This insight may have been reached faster than via an out the box approach but
now someone needs to go into Excel and manually act on it. They might need to send an email to
owners or users. Or they might need to prepare reports for meetings to explain to stakeholders
and management. Whatever the action is, it still takes a lot of manual work to resolve, and this
isn’t scalable or sufficient to cover the extent of the problem that cloud sprawl poses.

Building the necessary PowerShell scripts requires extensive experience and ongoing training.
Unfortunately, you don’t just build these PowerShell script once—they must be maintained and
optimized as the technology and your organization itself evolves. For instance, a script might be
built to identify resources in SharePoint, but your organization later migrates to Teams for
document management. Now you have to rebuild the script for this new situation. This work will
often require consultancy work and the requisite costs.

Microsoft updates 3. Third-party tools

Microsoft changes quite frequently. Again, it Third-party tools can help solve many of
is the success of the technology that causes these problems. But organizations must find
its downside in governance terms. As a SaaS the right one for them. Ease of use and cost
solution, the Microsoft team is constantly are just some of the considerations that need
updating Microsoft 365, whether to improve to be taken. We explore this in the next
existing services, to add new functionality, or section.
update security to better protect against
cybersecurity threats. It requires extensive
knowledge to automate and make automa-
tions work and to keep them up and running
in relation to the constantly evolving Micro-
soft 365 platform.

Essential Cloud Governance Planning: Declutter Microsoft 365 | 12

DECLUTTER WITH THIRD-PARTY TOOLS

To remove things that you do not use so that you have more
space and can easily find things when you need them.

This is the Oxford Dictionary definition for the word “declutter”.

It is important to keep it in mind when thinking about what is required for a third-party governance
tool, as our goal here is to declutter. In terms of a governance solution, this means:

Let’s explore why, before turning to why third-party tools can offer the best solution. As we men-
tioned before, it’s vital to find a solution that can facilitate dynamic collaboration and doesn’t
restrain productivity.

• One central place for governance – the whole point is to reduce the need for searching
through different admin centers. A good governance solution will provide once central
location with a clear and easy-to-use interface, providing dashboards and everything you need
to take action.

• Flexible and customizable – governance solutions need to be able to adapt to changing

business needs and technology changes. In the current environment, where disruption is a big
concern, agility is crucial in helping the business adapt to change.

• Automation, automation, automation – the crucial ingredient is automation. Unlike

out-of-the-box governance or the DIY approach, third-party tools can provide automation to
solve violations of governance rules—not just report them. Automating reporting, resolving,
and monitoring, all in one place.

Essential Cloud Governance Planning: Declutter Microsoft 365 | 13

Introducing Rencore Governance
Rencore Governance can help organizations solve these challenges. Rencore Governance allows
you to attack these challenges on a regular, continuous, automated basis. To combat clutter,
automated checks are used to find the information and surface clutter such as:

• Unused flows and flows without owners

• Disabled Microsoft Teams owner accounts and teams without owners
• Unused sites
• Unowned SharePoint site collections and disabled owner accounts
• Unowned PowerApps
• OneDrive resources belonging to disabled user accounts

Rencore Governance retrieves data from a growing list of Microsoft services and then visualizes it
through user-friendly dashboards and reports—all in one place. It continuously monitors your
environment with fully adjustable checks and keeps everyone in the loop.

With Rencore Governance you get:

• Swift, simple, and secure data collection

• Clear reporting with actionable insights
• Automation to take action

With Microsoft 365 services adoption continuing to

rise, cloud sprawl becomes increasingly tough to
manage. For many organizations, Rencore Governance
is the key to balancing the need to unleash collabora-
tion and to keep track of ever-growing cloud sprawl.

It’s time to declutter, and Rencore Governance is your

best solution to simplifying Microsoft 365 governance.

Essential Cloud Governance Planning: Declutter Microsoft 365 | 14

To learn more about how Rencore Governance can help your
organization declutter and tackle cloud sprawl, get in touch with the
team at Rencore today.

You can also register for a free trial of Rencore Governance.

Email: info@rencore.com or visit: rencore.com/governance

Essential Cloud Governance Planning: Declutter Microsoft 365 | 15

About the author

Matthias is a Microsoft MVP, co-founder,

and CEO at Rencore.

Matthias’ mission is to helps enterprises stay

in control of their Microsoft collaboration
technology. Matthias and his team achieve
this by providing insights, advice, and actiona-
ble ways to manage platform growth.
Matthias is speaking at many conferences and
community events all over the world and is
one of the organizers of the European
Collaboration Summit.

linkedin.com/in/matthiaseinig
twitter.com/mattein

Essential Cloud Governance Planning: Declutter Microsoft 365 | 15

About Rencore

Rencore is a B2B software company providing award-winning solutions essential for

organizations to stay in control of Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Teams, Azure and the Power
Platform.

We empower organizations to identify, manage and mitigate the risks of uncontrolled platform
growth and customization by providing invaluable insights, advice, and tools to scale operations
through automation.

Rencore
Bayerstr. 71-73
80335 Munich, Germany

Email
support@rencore.com
sales@rencore.com

Phone
DE: +49 (0) 89-2154169-0
Fax: +49 (0) 89-2154169-99

rencore.com

Essential Cloud Governance Planning: Declutter Microsoft 365 | 16

 Check out all our publications
and resources to successfuly
Stay in control of Microsoft 365
collaboration technologies at:

rencore.com/media/materials

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