Any one with larger o365 Deployment.

Is it me or does MS documentation suck donkey gonads? OPE is a joke.

Requirements for DirSync a bit over blown if you need ADFS.

Still need onsite servers.

Costs of implementing VS SPLA and on premise I am having a hard time actually finding the benefits of 0365.

Administration requires high degree of knowledge of Exchange, Sharepoint, AD ,powershell or greater on 0365 and with out DirSync you have double amount of administration. How does MS expect SMBs to actually do this?. So far I am not impressed at all. I am just having a hard time justifying it to myself how do you convince a client?

Wrench00 said:

Is it me or does MS documentation suck donkey dicks?

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I'm sorry. What is it that makes you think that posting profanity is appropriate?

You have posted elsewhere that English is not your first language. You need to learn that conversational and written English are very different. What your co-workers say is very different from what they would write. Most English speakers posting in technical forums like this will perceive written profanity as rude if not outright insulting. And just in case we're not clear on this, though it may be a perfectly acceptable pastime in your culture, English speakers will perceive the idea of fellating a donkey as profane.

Please, in the future show some consideration for our delicate sensibilities and try to put your observations and requests in more neutral language.

If you feel the need to play Moderator, at least get the rules correct.

(7) No CUSSING in the thread title. It is permitted in the thread body, but please refrain from using excessive profanity dammit.

Oops! My bad! Scolding duly noted, and deserved.

Wrench00, I apologize for bawling you out for doing something you're permitted to do by the forum rules. I was over the line. Again, I'm sorry about that.

Define "larger"

Have had no issues with it for what I would classify as small deployments (<50 users). AD Federation is actually not that bad to setup if you have a mature AD environment you are working with. There also is really no need for ADFS on smaller deployments and in that case it is way more cost effective on the front end and long haul by not having onsite exchange to setup and maintain.

We also are looking at it on a larger scale for an organization (5k+ users). The advantages there are cost (when factoring in licensing, storage (users will get a big bump in mailbox size), etc.), management (there is a lot of manual babysitting with exchange onsite at this scale), and backup/retention (let MS handle it).

Main thing is you cannot look at it as just the same old exchange/etc. you are used to. If you do that, it will be a PITA to manage and seem inflexible.

Beta tested it through the move from BPOS to Office 365. If you're starting from scratch, it's really not that bad. Yes, you'll need a dirsync box if you don't want to have to create users, an ADFS box (or cluster) and an ADFS Proxy or TMG box in the DMZ, if you don't want your users to have to use multiple accounts. But once they're setup, there's really no maintenance on any of them other then normal patching.

Now doing a hybrid deployment and migrating users from on prem to 365 and back can get really messy. Also, when your users use public folders for tons of things and 365 doesn't support them at all and the solution they want you to use is move everything to sharepoint, it starts to become more trouble then it's worth. Really depends on your needs and what you're used to.

Thank you for answering. I am looking for deployments of 60 to 150 users. None of the systems are scratch clean all inherited so I would be doing 100% hybrid I couldn't imagine having to keep track of users on two platforms.

Sharepoint being fairly limited is another downside.

What about UI change did you guys have 2010 owa and get stuck with 2013 owa?

We had a 2003 infrastructure at the time and deployed an onprem 2010 CAS server to run in a hybrid config. Once we migrated a few up, we found it was next to impossible to migrate a user back into 2003, so we ended up dropping a 2010 mailbox server in, so that we could migrate users back and forth.

BPOS was 2007 and 365 is 2010, I haven't logged on in close to a year, so I'm not sure if they upgraded it to 2013 OWA yet?

I just sat down and did the calculations for O365 for 75+ users vs SPLA and found the costs were actually much higher if ran in house. Only advantage was 0365 was bigger mailboxes, but the cons were just not worth it after factoring in additional server costs for ADFS. Plus Canadian customers are not very keen on the fact MS keeps your data who knows where.

Speaking of Office 365, is there a way to de-shitify the Outlook mailbox look? Outlook.com / Live UI was very good. The 365/2013 look doesn't even highlight new email.

bigdogchris said:

Speaking of Office 365, is there a way to de-shitify the Outlook mailbox look? Outlook.com / Live UI was very good. The 365/2013 look doesn't even highlight new email.

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I don't think there is.. Here is another gigantic caveat of o365 you get stuck with the crappy ui when Microsoft updates. I think its hideous beyond belief.