What would it take to get your boss to move to office 365?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@JaredBusch said:
Why are you not using Open License anyway? Granted the math works out better for Office 365 unless you count never upgrading.
We initially went with Office H&B 2010 on OEM licences because H&B wasn't available under open licence, so it was a significant price saving. I should probably get an open licence agreement now though and get Office 2013 Standard, but I tend to only need new licences when one of our old machines dies (as the OEM Office licence dies with it). Especially as dealing with retail editions is now completely horrible. How does the price of Standard compare to H&B?
Nothing compares price wise to H&B. H&B is like $150 for the life of the PC (but it's like OEM, it's legally bound to one machine and can't be moved like the older licenses). A standard Open License for Office is like $300-400, but included imaging rights and KMS key management which is very convenient when you have more than about 5 or 10 computers.
Very small businesses (10 or less computers) are probably always going to steer clear of VL or O365 copies of Office because it is significantly more expensive than the Product Card versions. Assuming they keep a PC running for 7 years, they'll buy their one version for ~$150 and never upgrade again, where with VL without SA it's be at least $300/ea and with O365 It's $144/user/year (for seven years that's $1008).
As much as Scott says - if you are going the route of using MS products you need to commit to what that direction means - very small businesses like these are rarely willing to do what is recommended and will only do what is needed right now.
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The one thing we find with a lot of SMB's these days is that they need to keep their licenses current. A good portion of them need to keep up with current versions for their cloud software compatibility, so buying a product card version every 2 years gets very expensive very quickly. We now have very few customers that have not moved to O365 due to the cost of making that investment on office not to mention combining that with their email costs. Having a small business with maybe a 1 man IT shop, running an internal email server just doesn't make sense for them due to time investment and initial cost investment and upkeep.
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I completely agree that once you get a SMB to move to O365 and assuming they can't get away with just the online versions of Office, that the requirements of the cloud solution will force them to keep up. But those same customers could go with something like Rackspace email and probably get away with using Office/Outlook 2013 for the next 10 years with IMAP (as much as I want to see email protocols improve, I just don't see it happening).
This really only applies to offices that are 10 or less. Once you get over that size, the re image rights really become worthwhile, etc.
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I did around 70 installs of new HP PCs with Office 2010 OEM a while ago and found it very quick, simple, cheap and convenient. As I said earlier, I won't be doing it again, and will move to O365 for everything, but at the moment we don't have any problems running Office 2010 and Exchange 2010. How long we will be able to get away with running Office 2010, I'm really not sure. I actually prefer 2010 to 2013.
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Funny, I just found out that my other office IS using Office 365, and I was made to purchase a license of Office 2013 through MSVLSC last year.........
They bought the Midsize Business edition too. Chalk another failure to communicate up on the board.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I did around 70 installs of new HP PCs with Office 2010 OEM a while ago and found it very quick, simple, cheap and convenient. As I said earlier, I won't be doing it again, and will move to O365 for everything, but at the moment we don't have any problems running Office 2010 and Exchange 2010. How long we will be able to get away with running Office 2010, I'm really not sure. I actually prefer 2010 to 2013.
Pretty much everyone prefers 2010. 2013 is a major technology change as they try to figure out how to run in the browser.
2010 works with Office 365's Exchange and likely will for quite a long time.
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@Bill-Kindle said:
Funny, I just found out that my other office IS using Office 365, and I was made to purchase a license of Office 2013 through MSVLSC last year.........
They bought the Midsize Business edition too. Chalk another failure to communicate up on the board.
Just shows how important it is to always have IT sitting at the table for these decisions.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Bill-Kindle said:
Funny, I just found out that my other office IS using Office 365, and I was made to purchase a license of Office 2013 through MSVLSC last year.........
They bought the Midsize Business edition too. Chalk another failure to communicate up on the board.
Just shows how important it is to always have IT sitting at the table for these decisions.
The problem is getting the invitation.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Bill-Kindle said:
Funny, I just found out that my other office IS using Office 365, and I was made to purchase a license of Office 2013 through MSVLSC last year.........
They bought the Midsize Business edition too. Chalk another failure to communicate up on the board.
Just shows how important it is to always have IT sitting at the table for these decisions.
It was the main IT person (same guy who had firewall problems back in October
) who forgot to tell me. -
@JaredBusch said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
They've already scrapped Office OEM licences, and have effectively scrapped Office retail licences (though I'm still clinging on to them by my finger nails).
Why are you not using Open License anyway? Granted the math works out better for Office 365 unless you count never upgrading.
This is a good point. I think I will start signing users up for O365 as and when I need new Office licences for them, rather than trying to soldier on with Retail licences. So I'll be using O365 purely for Office licencing, and continuing to use our on-site Exchange for e-mail.
Are there any real advantages for the average SMB in choosing the E3 plan over the "Midsize Business" plan (apart from the terrible name of the latter)?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@JaredBusch said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
They've already scrapped Office OEM licences, and have effectively scrapped Office retail licences (though I'm still clinging on to them by my finger nails).
Why are you not using Open License anyway? Granted the math works out better for Office 365 unless you count never upgrading.
This is a good point. I think I will start signing users up for O365 as and when I need new Office licences for them, rather than trying to soldier on with Retail licences. So I'll be using O365 purely for Office licencing, and continuing to use our on-site Exchange for e-mail.
Are there any real advantages for the average SMB in choosing the E3 plan over the "Midsize Business" plan (apart from the terrible name of the latter)?
If you're keeping onsite Exchange, why not simply sell them the Office Pro Plus only version of O365 - It's $12/user/month - might as well save that $8/user/month if you're not going to use it.
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@Dashrender said:
If you're keeping onsite Exchange, why not simply sell them the Office Pro Plus only version of O365 - It's $12/user/month - might as well save that $8/user/month if you're not going to use it.
In the UK, Pro Plus is GBP 10.10 per month and Midsize Business is GBP 9.80. So Midsize Business is actually cheaper, even though it includes loads of extra features. That seems a bit crazy? Another reason for not going with Pro Plus is I don't want any pain as and when I upgrade to hosted Exchange. I've been bitten by "changing plans" pain before.
I still find "Midsize Business" a really annoying name for a product though.
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That is definitely bizarre pricing.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@Dashrender said:
If you're keeping onsite Exchange, why not simply sell them the Office Pro Plus only version of O365 - It's $12/user/month - might as well save that $8/user/month if you're not going to use it.
In the UK, Pro Plus is GBP 10.10 per month and Midsize Business is GBP 9.80. So Midsize Business is actually cheaper, even though it includes loads of extra features. That seems a bit crazy? Another reason for not going with Pro Plus is I don't want any pain as and when I upgrade to hosted Exchange. I've been bitten by "changing plans" pain before.
I still find "Midsize Business" a really annoying name for a product though.
Is midsize what you really want? you won't find yourself getting bit by the 'changing plans' already mentioned?
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Mid size also cannot mix plans.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Mid size also cannot mix plans.
Yep, so if you get a copier that needs to scan to email, you'll be paying full price instead of putting them on the $4 per month EOP1.
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I just told them I was doing it. But after 12 years, I don't get questioned as much.
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@alexntg said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Mid size also cannot mix plans.
Yep, so if you get a copier that needs to scan to email, you'll be paying full price instead of putting them on the $4 per month EOP1.
Yeah. Those are the kinds of caveats that people really don't think through.
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@alexntg said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Mid size also cannot mix plans.
Yep, so if you get a copier that needs to scan to email, you'll be paying full price instead of putting them on the $4 per month EOP1.
You can do un authenticated SMTP to office 365 on the small business plans, you just have to set up a connector and restrict it to an IP or IP block. I have ours restricted to a /29
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@scottalanmiller said:
@alexntg said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Mid size also cannot mix plans.
Yep, so if you get a copier that needs to scan to email, you'll be paying full price instead of putting them on the $4 per month EOP1.
Yeah. Those are the kinds of caveats that people really don't think through.
What do you mean, mix plans? I think you've hit on a great reason why your boss might not want to move to Office 365. Too many caveats. With on-site Exchange there are no caveats. You get an awesome enterprise class e-mail system that is guaranteed to do everything an SMB might want, both now and in the future.
Again, it's the little things that annoy me. Microsoft introduced an awesome product in "Midsize Business" that is specifically designed for mid size businesses (as the name suggests). But it you were a loyal early adopter and signed up to an Enterprise plan before they released this product, Microsoft won't let you switch. EVER! You'll be paying thousands of dollars extra a year for the rest of your life. Why is that? It's like a punishment for being a loyal early adopter.
I think a boss should question whether he wants to trust all of his mission critical data to a company that treats its customers this way. Even if they're ok today, what if you don't like them in five years time. By then you'll have hundred of megabytes of data on their servers - it's going to be really difficult to switch to another provider. Does O365 come with any restrictions on how much subscription charges can rise per annum?
PS. I presume I won't have any problem setting up e-mail from copiers on the Midsize plan? I've googled but can't find any information. Is it just a case that I'd have to pay full price for an extra user for each copier? Honestly, it sometimes feels like you need a Masters degree in Microsoft licencing just to understand this stuff. That might be fine for you pros, but I'm a generalist trying to run a small manufacturing business here and could do without the hassle.
I can really see the appeal of the simplicity of Google Apps. It's an inferior product, but at least you know what you're getting.
