What would it take to get your boss to move to office 365?
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My boss hates, just down right hates reoccurring charges, no matter what they are for.
Considering after the initial investment into Exchange there has been very little if any additional outlay of cash to support it, moving to O365 would be a non starter until we have to replace the server it goes on. And even that's not a fair situation because currently our VM host has 3 other servers running on it with Exchange, so the upgrade would be for more than exchange alone.
We shelled out nearly $75K over 3 years for 85 users for Office Pro Plus and Exchange. Not counting the hardware (which we already had). O365 with local Office would have been ~$61K for those three years, then another $61K for the next, where our second 3 years will cost us around $25 for the SA renewal. I realize all of the other benefits to O365, and I probably would have pushed for it back then, but alas, we are where we are now.
All that said, if O365 was around (or at least a lot more known) when we moved to Exchange 3 years ago - there's a good chance I would have tried it at least (biggest concern is accessing other people calendars in cached mode).
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@Dashrender said:
My boss hates, just down right hates reoccurring charges, no matter what they are for.
Considering after the initial investment into Exchange there has been very little if any additional outlay of cash to support it, moving to O365 would be a non starter until we have to replace the server it goes on. And even that's not a fair situation because currently our VM host has 3 other servers running on it with Exchange, so the upgrade would be for more than exchange alone.
We shelled out nearly $75K over 3 years for 85 users for Office Pro Plus and Exchange. Not counting the hardware (which we already had). O365 with local Office would have been ~$61K for those three years, then another $61K for the next, where our second 3 years will cost us around $25 for the SA renewal. I realize all of the other benefits to O365, and I probably would have pushed for it back then, but alas, we are where we are now.
All that said, if O365 was around (or at least a lot more known) when we moved to Exchange 3 years ago - there's a good chance I would have tried it at least (biggest concern is accessing other people calendars in cached mode).
I share many of the same concerns as you. Our Exchange project only cost around $20k for 250 users which includes our SpamTitan Filter too. Granted we already had room for growth in our virtual environment.
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The additional things like Link and Sharepoint, etc can really make O365 worth while to those who already have an Exchange environment, but you really need to USE those things to make it pay off.
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We are an IT company so the only reason we did not switch to Office 365 was because we already had a SBS2011 server setup and no real need to spend the non-billable time to switch things.
Then MS changed their partner program this year and even our developer version of the program gets 5 free licenses. So as there are only 4 of us, I switched it last week. Need to finish moving the shares and such to a Server 2012 R2 VM and then shoot the SBS 2011 install one of these days.
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@Dashrender said:
The additional things like Link and Sharepoint, etc can really make O365 worth while to those who already have an Exchange environment, but you really need to USE those things to make it pay off.
I got a ticket from one of our branch managers the other day. She said she needs a calendar installed on her computer....
SHE HAS BEEN USING OUTLOOK FOR YEARS and didnt even know it had a calendar
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That probably means that people are not using calendar invites very efficiently.
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@scottalanmiller said:
That probably means that people are not using calendar invites very efficiently.
I would say about 10 people in our company know how to send out calendar invites lol. There really isnt a need for it at our branches. There are only 4-7 employees at each branch
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It would take a lot because of the recurring charges and the refusal to accept that we are moving into a more utility like services Era where you pay for only what you actually use. The small outfit I setup on Google Apps last year as a side project absolutely loves the idea now.
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@Bill-Kindle do you not have recurring charges now?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Bill-Kindle do you not have recurring charges now?
More likely, they are not being accounted for as such.
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Bill-Kindle do you not have recurring charges now?
More likely, they are not being accounted for as such.
and exchange only is $4/user/month. not too shabby. but i get that folks dont like MRR.
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@Hubtech said:
@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Bill-Kindle do you not have recurring charges now?
More likely, they are not being accounted for as such.
and exchange only is $4/user/month. not too shabby. but i get that folks dont like MRR.
MRR?
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Bill-Kindle do you not have recurring charges now?
More likely, they are not being accounted for as such.
Yeah, there is something about SaaS to the end user that people complain about monthly recurring costs but when it is hidden as an underpinning service they ignore it. This is one of those management / financial gaps that SMBs have so much of so often.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Hubtech said:
@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Bill-Kindle do you not have recurring charges now?
More likely, they are not being accounted for as such.
and exchange only is $4/user/month. not too shabby. but i get that folks dont like MRR.
MRR?
sorry, Monthly recurring charge. not monthly recurring revenue
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We like mrr!
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@Hubtech said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Hubtech said:
@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Bill-Kindle do you not have recurring charges now?
More likely, they are not being accounted for as such.
and exchange only is $4/user/month. not too shabby. but i get that folks dont like MRR.
MRR?
sorry, Monthly recurring charge. not monthly recurring revenue
Ah, that makes more sense.
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i
MRR -
@Minion-Queen said:
It never ceases to amaze me the stupid decisions management make for their IT needs. What would it take to talk your boss into letting you move to a easier to use, manage and support hosted email system?
You need proper buy in presented the proper way from just the right people. Even then, sometimes companies prefer to insource anything solely on principle. Sometimes it's a matter of timing. If you catch a company at a point where it's considering upgrading the existing system, another option may work, but if you miss that window, it's not going to budge. In some cases, a company has the talent and infrastructure in place to do Exchange properly, so making the switch may not be ideal.
What's the specific case you're working on (while withholding enough info to protect the guilty)?
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Presenting Total Cost of Ownership is a big deal. Don't let them focus on the irrelevant per month costs, show them the money that they are losing by being financially reckless by not focusing on the actual money but getting side tracked. And point out that successful enterprises do cost analysis and lean towards lowering risk rather than taking on risk and cost to remain legacy and less nimble.
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I just find O365 really annoying. It's little things that annoy me. I use it for one of our companies and quickly wanted to upgrade the plan. But I couldn't. What other companies refuses to upgrade you? I would have had to cancelled the plan I was on, created a new plan, and done some jiggery pokery to migrate from the old to the new. And O365 is supposed to be hassle free? It sounded like a logistical nightmare at the time, so didn't bother.
Even today, I went onto Microsoft.com to have a look around, and in the FAQs for O365 Small Business it says "Office 365 Small Business supports a maximum of 25 users. If you have more than 25 users or think you will soon you might want to consider Office 365 Enterprise E1.". No mention of Office 365 Midsize Business which supports up to 300 users? Why not? It's just little things like that that annoy me.
Another annoyance, I have to logon to download invoices every month. Occasionally they change the portal, which throws me. And the portal isn't the most intuitive anyway. And we have to pay by credit card, which is a pain, because there is a minimum monthly spend before Microsoft will allow you to pay on account. Why? Little things, I know, but they all add up.
Meanwhile, my onsite Exchange box sits in the corner and just works.
/rant
Saying that, we'll probably replace our Exchange 2010 box with O365 sometime next year.
