Ridiculous client, ridiculous 365 mailbox size.

[brandonkick]

OK, file storage, that's a different topic than this thead which is email. Focusing on email, what other major email platforms out there have comparable storage to 365? And..importantly...work well when those mailboxes get very large?

But derailing over to file storage, yeah Sharepoint isn't cheap...but Sharepoint isn't just a plain old file server either! There are a whole suite of services that make collaboration easy with it, Office apps are cloud site aware, Defender security guarding against malware/ransomware, versioning, ability to share files, integrated with office apps, mobile device apps, it's a highly functional storage. Can't compare it to junk cheap online storage like...oh, I dunno...I don't play in that arena, maybe something like JungleDisk was. If you just want "plain old storage"...to stay in the 365 stack, look at AzureFiles, cold storage, or ...stepping outside of 365, Egnyte or Datto Workplace.

No argument there at all... I'm not saying it's not a good service or that it's outright unjustifiable. It just feels like the price is steep for the extra 1TB of storage space. I guess that's all relative though.

For my single use case, and I get it... one client vs some of you who have 50 or 100 clients or maybe more... it's a limited perspective... but it was far more reasonable just to massage their data (clean up just enough of the junk / duplicates and migrate some of it into OneDrive instead of Sharepoint) than to double up on their monthly M365 bill.

But I 100% get it. SharePoint isn't just a simple online storage space. Much more functionality behind it.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

There's always Azure files for those clients with oodles of stuff that don't really fit into the Sharepoint/Teams way of storing. Can pretty much replace the "old fashioned mapped drive to the local file server" with Azure Files...do that big-old-bucket of files thing.

 

[callthatgirl]

@Sky-Knight I don't understand your comment, you get people who try to chargeback after you fixed their issue?

 

[brandonkick]

@brandonkick You sold a client on an E level sub instead of just selling them Exchange Online Plan 2. Most of the expense on the mail storage side was you not choosing the correct license, that is if minimizing cost was the primary motivator and all you needed was a larger mailbox.

The rest of what you're doing is EXACTLY what you should be doing. Our role in this process as managers of cloud spend is essential.

@callthatgirl I'm not a fan of local PSTs because they add far too much complexity to maintain over time. Anyone that's doing the managed service thing is constantly beat up to maintain this sort of thing, and clients get grumpy when they're made to pay for that poor decision over and over again. If it's a one off, sure! But any sort of long term relationship with a client is negatively impacted by this reality. Doesn't help that there is no such thing as a reliable backup of local PST files, you can snap the entire system, but it can and does corrupt those files on a regular basis. Then you're restoring multiple points in time trying to find one that works... more hours to bill... more negative attention from the client.

That isn't to say I haven't done or won't do all of the above... sometimes your only choice is to let a client be stupid and let their wallet force them into being sane later. But it's not a process that's grown my business, indeed most of the time it shrinks it.

Wait... what?

They have.... 17 licenses for M365 Business Standard... and 2 Exchange Online Plan 2 licenses for two shared mailboxes they needed.

I don't think I sold them an E level sub? I'm not even sure what that is.

My client doesn't need or use archival storage, or anything like that.....

The whole mission was to get them off of their local synology storage which was doing some inexplicably crazy things (which I've posted about here in the past, asking for help) that I never could solve. No real major damage done, but they were fed up with the gamble (me too) so when they asked me for a quote on building another synology box I instead pitched them going to 365.

This would have been their 3rd Synology box, and the first two had exactly the same problem. One single user randomly had files reverting. And usually excel spreadsheets. I know its not user error, and not shenanigans on the users part. I know the problem persisted across two different synology units and 3 different workstations for that user (including multiple windows reloads, and brand new machines), checking offline file version settings... checking group policy settings..... Synology support told me they never heard of such a thing happening, couldn't figure it out. The client even approached me about having other IT specialists come in to see if they could solve it. The two or three they talked two wanted nothing to do with it... said it sounded like nothing they ever heard before and was likely going to take a lot of hours in the attempt to figure it out with no promises. One just flat out said no.... that wasn't something they were interested in taking on.

Going to 365 was win win. Replaced their Rackspace bill (about $70 a month) and their synology with problems and what was really nice was it got EVERYONE on the latest versions of the office apps and made managing that licensing much easier. They had some people on 2013.... some on 16, some on 0365.... yeah. Their monthly bill right now is about $225 on O365... take off the $70 and your looking $155 a month for the "upgrade". Money well spent.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@Sky-Knight I don't understand your comment, you get people who try to chargeback after you fixed their issue?

Yes ma'am! All the time!

@brandonkick My bad I must have misread something, or gotten my wires crossed on another post. I can't quite figure it out either, it's been one of those Fridays!

 

[callthatgirl]

@Sky-Knight Stop you're doing something really wrong bro!