[AusNOG] [AUSNOG] o365 experience

[Chad Kelly]

On 6/19/2018 11:39 AM, ausnog-request at lists.ausnog.net wrote:

> I'd be interested to hear general opinions and lessons learned from o365
> migrations. So far as I've seen, the architecture (network and services) is
> complex, and user experience can never equal local Exchange.
>
> So much so it leaves me wondering if the effort of migration can be
> justified? At the end of the day, you need a performant service, not finger
> pointing between networks and services, and blaming performance on
> insufficient network/proxy scale out.
This really depends, how many users are we talking about, if you are 
talking about migrations with thousands of users on a large corporate 
network, then I would suggest using Azure Express Route for Office365 
and setting up a direct connection with Microsoft. That way you can 
avoid using the public internet altogether and you get prodictable 
performance and an SLA, ok this is starting to sound like a sales pitch 
now but anyway.
Also Skykick is outstanding as well, it will automate both migrations 
and backups so you don't need to worry about anything and its only 
available to Microsoft Partners so they don't sell to retail customers. 
Using Skykick can also greatly increase your margins which is the main 
thing.
Also, its not just Exchange, the main thing MS want you to be flogging 
to customers is the added extras, such as the full office sweet that you 
get with the premium licenses, they also discourage selling the Exchange 
Online 1 and two plans, because for an extra few dollars a month you can 
sell the Business Essentials Package which comes with the free online 
office products.
The entire point of O365 is that its a software as a service product so 
they don't want you to worry about the network or the servers, though 
given this is a networking mailing list and that a lot of you are 
dealing with large enterprises you should all have direct connectivity 
to Azure and Office365.
Obviously if its a small business client with a handful of users, then 
you probably don't need direct connectivity, however for situations ware 
your internet link is being saturated then I would recommend it.
Also with Skykick the data is stored within Azure in Sydney or Melbourne 
for Au tenants and Skykick creates the Tenants automatically with the 
migration.
Regards Chad.

-- 
Chad Kelly
Manager
CPK Web Services
Phone 03 5273 0246
Web www.cpkws.com.au