What would it take to get your boss to move to office 365?
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@Nara said:
Usage of retention policies tends to cut down total email storage for well-established organizations.
Most companies keep too much data. There is something to be said for forcing users to destroy old e-mail.
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I don't know how big a deal this is for us Europeans:
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/cloud-services/microsoft-earns-first-european-cloud-privacy-approval-1241792It certainly makes me feel more warm and fuzzy towards Microsoft.
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My users hate me. If you're not in administration, you only get 200 megs of email. I've had no push back from my boss on this either, as regular staff should only be using email for a few internal notices, not storing jokes, etc.
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Good stuff. Keep everyone lean and prevent them from using Exchange as their document management system. I presume you can you restrict mailbox sizes on O365?
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Yes. There are controls around retention.
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Although one of the benefits is massive size. Once you can cost effectively store communications a lot if companies find it to be very valuable.
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If people store documents in the correct place, whether that be Sharepoint, a file server, or some other document management system, then I don't see how anyone could need a 50gb mailbox?
Also, I imagine big mailboxes will also prove a nightmare should you decide to migrate away from O365 back to on-site or to another provider. How easy is it to migrate from O365 to Google Apps, for example?
Just because you can have a big mailbox, doesn't mean you should. Or do we think good mailbox management is a thing of the past - everyone should just keep everything forever?
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I'm not sure what "we" think. But businesses (not IT departments) tend to think that big is better and that IT is obsoleting itself by being a stumbling block. Even if it isn't documents people need to keep a lot of communications in large businesses.
And all hosted providers are doing 25GB or higher. Gmail changed how people think about mail and they now expect persistence.
Good email hygiene is definitely still important. But overly cumbersome email restrictions is not the answer, I don't think. You need a balance. Good practices but liberal rules. IT needs to enable work as much as possible and only be a blocker when necessary.
Now that big email storage is cheap and backups are included it need not be the concern that it used to be.
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I think that no matter what direction you go migrations are increasingly painful. Every solution aims at huge storage today.
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@Dashrender said:
My users hate me. If you're not in administration, you only get 200 megs of email. I've had no push back from my boss on this either, as regular staff should only be using email for a few internal notices, not storing jokes, etc.
Holy crap! I've only been with the company since November, delete anything not worth retaining, and am at 695MB. Mailboxes that small encourage users to make a legion of PST files.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I'm not sure what "we" think. But businesses (not IT departments) tend to think that big is better and that IT is obsoleting itself by being a stumbling block. Even if it isn't documents people need to keep a lot of communications in large businesses.
We = the collective awesomeness of Mango Lassi!
Like a lot of SMBs, we don't have an IT department, so I guess I'm reasonably well aligned with the needs and wants of "the business". We're trying to implement a "lean" culture into the organisation, so definitely think smaller is better, and sometimes we'll use IT limitations (either real or contrived) as a means of forcing through changes on those users who are less keen on working under a changing environment. That's not an ideal strategy, but it can work. I'm not saying that mailbox size matters that much either way, but I'd be interested to hear about the working practices of anyone who gets anywhere near a 50GB mailbox. My biggest bugbear is probably when someone sends an Excel spreadsheet as an attachment to 20 different users, instead of just linking to it - things can quickly get out of control. Email can be the enemy of collaboration.
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Yeah. I agree with @alexntg at 200MB you pretty much force bad things to happen. When I was with a major bank we would receive over 100MB ever eighteen hours. That's extreme but still.
No matter how we want email to be treated, most users have to interact with other users who don't work that way. And their mailboxes fill up fast and they are probably required to retain some things. Bosses tend to expect you to maintain communications threads with people.
I can't imagine trying to work within only a few hundred megabytes of email storage.
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@Minion-Queen what would it take? For one client it was an exchange outage that took mail down for 4 days. Loss in income was substantial. The board then asked some tough questions - and now that client is an O365 client. The costs that would have been spent upgrading Exchange were such that O365 was a no brainer.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
I'm not sure what "we" think. But businesses (not IT departments) tend to think that big is better and that IT is obsoleting itself by being a stumbling block. Even if it isn't documents people need to keep a lot of communications in large businesses.
We = the collective awesomeness of Mango Lassi!
Like a lot of SMBs, we don't have an IT department, so I guess I'm reasonably well aligned with the needs and wants of "the business". We're trying to implement a "lean" culture into the organisation, so definitely think smaller is better, and sometimes we'll use IT limitations (either real or contrived) as a means of forcing through changes on those users who are less keen on working under a changing environment. That's not an ideal strategy, but it can work. I'm not saying that mailbox size matters that much either way, but I'd be interested to hear about the working practices of anyone who gets anywhere near a 50GB mailbox. My biggest bugbear is probably when someone sends an Excel spreadsheet as an attachment to 20 different users, instead of just linking to it - things can quickly get out of control. Email can be the enemy of collaboration.
It is 25GB typically. And rarely do people approach it. But it provides comfort.
The Excel file to twenty recipients issue is mostly handled these days through database linking internally in current Exchange and file system dedupe outside of it. It isn't the issue it used to be.
We've found that using Sharepoint via Office 365 is what stopped it for us. You do all the file sharing from there or from inside of the document and it fixes that particular email issue.
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There are plenty of users that get clogged up with their email. They're the ones with thousands of things in their inbox and a fair chunk of them are unread. Offer them help by being there to teach them how to manage email, and if they take you up on it, even later on, it's a win. If they don't, they'll just drown in email, miss important things, and have their careers suffer because of it.
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@Nara said:
There are plenty of users that get clogged up with their email. They're the ones with thousands of things in their inbox and a fair chunk of them are unread. Offer them help by being there to teach them how to manage email, and if they take you up on it, even later on, it's a win. If they don't, they'll just drown in email, miss important things, and have their careers suffer because of it.
Or they are the owner/vp of a SMB.
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This reminds me - I recently had a conversation with a FTSE 250 that's considering moving to Office 365. It's being debated at present. They have the internal skillset and infrastructure needed for in-house Exchange, but are looking at streamlining and reducing IT complexity in general. I'm interested in seeing which way they go with it.
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@Nara said:
There are plenty of users that get clogged up with their email. They're the ones with thousands of things in their inbox and a fair chunk of them are unread. Offer them help by being there to teach them how to manage email, and if they take you up on it, even later on, it's a win. If they don't, they'll just drown in email, miss important things, and have their careers suffer because of it.
Having worked at a major Wall St. financial firm, 14,000 emails per day, per person is what they actually sent. Having a thousand in your inbox is what you faced just for having stepped away for lunch. SMBs rarely deal with that kind of volume but as companies get larger it is more and more common. But even in NTG which is quite small I get around 400 per day.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
I'd be interested to hear about the working practices of anyone who gets anywhere near a 50GB mailbox. My biggest bugbear is probably when someone sends an Excel spreadsheet as an attachment to 20 different users, instead of just linking to it - things can quickly get out of control. Email can be the enemy of collaboration.
It is 25GB typically. And rarely do people approach it.
50GB according to Microsoft's website. My e-mail is a mess, but I'm pretty good at using Search, so not really a problem.
OK, given hosted e-mail is a no-brainer, there are 3 options:
- Office 365
- Google Apps for Business
- A.N. Other
You all seem keen on 1. Anyone using, or have good/bad experiences of, Google? I'm off to spend the day at their new Soho offices next week (http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/we-love-googles-new-london-hq-designed-by-penson-studios) and would like a bit of background to the advantages and disadvantages. The main one is that Microsoft Office is very good, though that is partly just because it's what I'm familiar with. I'm not sure I'd want to give it up. My brother's company is seriously considering Google at the moment - I think they have about 500 users and several IT staff, so the savings would be pretty large potentially.
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Obviously you can still use Microsoft Office with Google, but I don't see the point. If you want to stick with Office, you're always better off using Office 365 for e-mail. Google Apps only makes financial sense if you're going "all in". Mix and matching products from Microsoft and Google doesn't really work.
