Office 365 Enterprise - your thoughts

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4567319

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Hello everyone,

We're looking at implementing Office 365 at a client. 300+ installs

I'm getting conflicting info from different sources so if you have any experience with it please share.

- Does it still work when the internet is offline? From what I understand we get the Desktop versions of apps here so stuff like Excel, Access and Project should work offline?

- Did you encounter any other restrictions or issues?

- Anyone regret going the 365 route?

In this case cost is not the most sensitive issue. The licensing and hardware is a bit messy so its going to cost a fortune anyway.
 
Hey, I've also bee waiting in baited breath for some feedback. We are on the verge of entering into an Agreement with MS for 450+ users. I must admit the idea of an online Lync, SharePoint, Exchange and the productivity suite (accessible across 5 devices per license) is romantic. We already have licenses for the desktop versions of the Productivity Suite and I'm hoping that there's an 'offline' state of sorts that synchronizes to the '0365 cloud' when online.

...forgoing the cost of deploying Exchange, Lync and SharePoint on-premises is rather a refreshing one.
 
It does work offline, it just needs to contact the Office 365 activation servers once every 30 days to confirm that the user still has a license assigned to his account.

It's the exact same product as Office 2013 so no restrictions there.

I've deployed it at quite a few clients already and everyone is very happy with it. We also use it internally and it's one of the best moves we've made.

See here for help on deploying the software from a local network: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219423(v=office.15).aspx

Currently on-site at a client deploying it for 800 users
 
Thanks grim

How do you handle the signup? Do your clients do it direct with MS via the website or is it via a MS partner?
 
Partner is better as there is more rebates and more importantly you own the billing relationship with the end customer.
 
4567319 said:
Thanks grim

How do you handle the signup? Do your clients do it direct with MS via the website or is it via a MS partner?
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Depends, some clients have already purchased the licenses other purchase the licenses through us.

If they have already purchased the licenses we send them a form to complete so that we become the partner of record once we've finished the implementation. If they are purchasing through us, we send them the link to sign up from the partner portal on O365.
 
We also use Office 365 Enterprise. It's one of the best moves we've ever made.

Each user gets the full MS Office application suite for up to 5 PCs and devices. So it's all the desktop Office you've always known, with 25GB for Outlook, plus Lync, plus SharePoint (called OneDrive for Business, with 1 terabyte of disk space per user). Always up-to-date, always latest version, plus 24x7 support.

The value for money is even better when you factor in the savings at the server end - no need for an on-premise Exchange server and attendant hardware, software, support and maintenance costs.

For users, the best thing of all is they can now access their mail on any machine or device. Everything is in sync, everywhere.

Over the past year we've implemented over 18 000 Office 365 users in SA. Without exception, the response is "this is fantastic. Love it!".
 
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We are running 140 users and it works beautifully! we have had it for almost 2 years and we have had no downtime. Everything just works!
 
Ramcat said:
We are running 140 users and it works beautifully! we have had it for almost 2 years and we have had no downtime. Everything just works!
Click to expand...

MS should really consider changing their slogan to "It just works", their latest offerings are amazingly simple to implement and administrate. Loving it.
 
Arthur said:
We also use Office 365 Enterprise. It's one of the best moves we've ever made.

Each user gets the full MS Office application suite for up to 5 PCs and devices. So it's all the desktop Office you've always known, with 25GB for Outlook, plus Lync, plus SharePoint (called OneDrive for Business, with 1 terabyte of disk space per user). Always up-to-date, always latest version, plus 24x7 support.

The value for money is even better when you factor in the savings at the server end - no need for an on-premise Exchange server and attendant hardware, software, support and maintenance costs.

For users, the best thing of all is they can now access their mail on any machine or device. Everything is in sync, everywhere.

Over the past year we've implemented over 18 000 Office 365 users in SA. Without exception, the response is "this is fantastic. Love it!".
Click to expand...

Would you recommend office 365 enterprise for SharePoint online instead of SharePoint on premises?
 
I guess it depends on your specific requirements, shared doc sizes, and available WAN bw and performance - and what you want to spend on maintaining the on-premise SP server. Of course you can have rules for local copies, etc if required. It's kinda hard to answer without knowing more about your environment and requirements. But the O365 / OneDrive for Business / SP works well. The only (small) issue we had in the early days was certain no-allowed characters in filenames.

We'll probably move our website to SP sometime this year.
 
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Arthur said:
I guess it depends on your specific requirements, shared doc sizes, and available WAN bw and performance - and what you want to spend on maintaining the on-premise SP server. Of course you can have rules for local copies, etc if required. It's kinda hard to answer without knowing more about your environment and requirements. But the O365 / OneDrive for Business / SP works well. The only (small) issue we had in the early days was certain no-allowed characters in filenames.

We'll probably move our website to SP sometime this year.
Click to expand...

We currently have a Exchange server with basic folder sharing for our documents . We are looking at implementing either Sharepoint online or SharePoint on premises solution. I have done some research on SharePoint online however I have read that there are some limitations to it.
 
Thanks for all the replies. We need Office 365 with Project Online. Initial setup will be for 200 users on Office and about 50 with Project Online included. If anyone is interested in sending a quote please drop me a PM.

The company is based in Midrand
 
The business I'm working for also needs a quote for Office 365. We are only 11 users. If anybody is willing to help/quote please send me a PM. We are based in Steeldale, Alberton.
 
Skipped through the other posts to tell you that mail transfer is going to be a bitch. Good luck and have fun :)
 
I've just stumbled on this post now and sent a few PMs to osome of the guys in here.

What do you feel your performance is like?
Latency? Bandwidth use? User experience?

Reason I ask is that I sell Riverbed to speed up O365 and have clients that without the Riverbed, cannot work correctly. I'm not talking a little boost and some bandwidth saving, I'm talking night/day ... 30x faster ... 90% bandwidth saving.

It's specifically for enterprise and ideally 50+ user O365 deployments.

I'll install for you at no charge and run a POC to show you how it works. If you can be a reference site, I'll organise better pricing.
 
Arthur said:
Waddaya mean mail transfer's gonna be a bitch? Not so.
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I still haven't figured out an easy solution to transfer from our old mail provider. Nothing we've tried works. We were using Zoho Mail as it worked well with our CRM system but are trialling Office 365. Very, very happy so far, other than the mail migration being nigh on impossible so far.
 
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