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Is your organization contemplating a migration to Google Apps or other cloud-based email system? What is your game plan? What hurdles have you had to consider and overcome?
Hi Mark,
Well written article; where could I share my experience about the migration to Google Apps for the benefit of others?
I work for a group of small companies (3 under one umbrella) with 63 users on three domains. We completed the migration three months ago and so far everything is going well except a few small features that some advanced users miss from the old system. But thanks to the preparation, education of users and well planning everything went smoothly.
I wish I had a place where to write up my experience. As a comment to your article that will be too long.
Thanks,
Well written article; where could I share my experience about the migration to Google Apps for the benefit of others?
I work for a group of small companies (3 under one umbrella) with 63 users on three domains. We completed the migration three months ago and so far everything is going well except a few small features that some advanced users miss from the old system. But thanks to the preparation, education of users and well planning everything went smoothly.
I wish I had a place where to write up my experience. As a comment to your article that will be too long.
Thanks,
Really, I am sorry they decided to move things offsite. While the cloud may have its place, I personally am not fond of not being in control of your data. I still have several SBS03 installations out there and we have had to upgrade the disks several times, everything is working as it should and there are no immediate upgrade plans for either. In fact, I have another potential client that would do well by getting a used SBS03 server as it would keep their costs down and aside from MS dropping support on it, is a great entry level server.
Anyway, I was wonder if you would be willing to share what you ended up with as far as billable hours. Did you bill separately at a different rate for the research, and then another rate for the onsite work? Are you willing to share the total number of hours billed for this job?
I tend to give away the house just to get the job and in today's economy getting the job has not been easy therefore doing a bit of starving here. In most cases my research has not been billable and that is a huge part of the project.
I would just like to know how others are doing. Otherwise, good article and I am looking forward to part two. Can't say I agree with the move to the cloud, but while I may not be doing it, I am aware of many that are and have been very happy with it. So the jury is still out for me.
Thanks,
Rob
Anyway, I was wonder if you would be willing to share what you ended up with as far as billable hours. Did you bill separately at a different rate for the research, and then another rate for the onsite work? Are you willing to share the total number of hours billed for this job?
I tend to give away the house just to get the job and in today's economy getting the job has not been easy therefore doing a bit of starving here. In most cases my research has not been billable and that is a huge part of the project.
I would just like to know how others are doing. Otherwise, good article and I am looking forward to part two. Can't say I agree with the move to the cloud, but while I may not be doing it, I am aware of many that are and have been very happy with it. So the jury is still out for me.
Thanks,
Rob
Hi Robert, thanks for the comments. I agree that not having complete control of company data can be problematic; the "local" vs "cloud" arguments gets more complex with larger organizations, due to regulatory concerns, privacy and SLAs with the provider. At my day job with a financial company where 200+ servers are present, for instance, the cloud would not be a good fit for us. It's an option, but not a 100% "cure-all" - for instance (despite some marketing claims elsewhere), concerns about availability can be equally applied whether data is kept locally or out on the web (which is why I still keep my critical files with me on a flash drive in case internet access to my Dropbox account is unavailable).
In terms of hours spent on the Google Apps migration, it totaled about 20, including research (which I do factor into the billing process), planning, testing, migration, reconfiguration and documentation. I bill at one flat rate for all work aspects involved except for verbal discussions, follow up questions, etc. I think it represents good will towards the customer not to nickel-and-dime them for that 12 minute phone call to clarify documentation, for instance. On the other hand, research is a vital part of the project; it would be great if we IT pros just automatically had all relevant technological details embedded in our heads (solid state drive maybe as clients may assume, but that would be like architects designing a building plan without conducting a site survey of the location, the materials involved, etc.
I know what you mean about it being a tough economy - best of luck with your efforts!
In terms of hours spent on the Google Apps migration, it totaled about 20, including research (which I do factor into the billing process), planning, testing, migration, reconfiguration and documentation. I bill at one flat rate for all work aspects involved except for verbal discussions, follow up questions, etc. I think it represents good will towards the customer not to nickel-and-dime them for that 12 minute phone call to clarify documentation, for instance. On the other hand, research is a vital part of the project; it would be great if we IT pros just automatically had all relevant technological details embedded in our heads (solid state drive maybe
as clients may assume, but that would be like architects designing a building plan without conducting a site survey of the location, the materials involved, etc.I know what you mean about it being a tough economy - best of luck with your efforts!
It's very brave of you to lay bare yourself and your thinking. Personally I would steer clear of Outlook 2011 it looks lovely and makes the user feel like she's at the helm of the Enterprise but Apple's minimalist Mail is so much better, especially working with Gmail IMAP. ActiveSync on SBS2003 is a doddle and works great with the iPhone but it's even better with Gmail. Personally I want my customers to ditch SBS as fast as possible because I believe it's a flawed pile of poo. I once restored the backup to a VM (as a test) but it wouldn't even let me log in without activating the installation with MS. How often do you test your SBS backups? Disaster recovery is a nightmare compared with Gmail. SBS is always sold as OEM so you can't legally re-install it on new hardware. Recovering a load of 25 GB mailboxes from a tape backup would take months. Roll on part two, I'm sure it will be a success! What killed it for me with one migration I had planned was that the company director had over 900 folders in her mailbox. Step one for me now is to show the foolishness of filing mail into subfolders - it's a total waste of time.
If you expect any server built probably around 2003 or 2004 to carry multiple server applications to function 9 years later as well as the day you bought it, then nice dreaming. The server should of been replaced with a stronger server to begin with.
You change your client computers probably every 3-5 years. They are faster than before. Why not the server?
[You can get a nice quad core Xeon server with gobbs of RAM and you wouldn't have to worry about the server for a long time.]
You can't blame the server but who ever is managing the server. Except for a compsany that is barely surviving you won't find too many companies with servers that are that old.
You change your client computers probably every 3-5 years. They are faster than before. Why not the server?
[You can get a nice quad core Xeon server with gobbs of RAM and you wouldn't have to worry about the server for a long time.]
You can't blame the server but who ever is managing the server. Except for a compsany that is barely surviving you won't find too many companies with servers that are that old.
I find the article decent except that there is no discussion on the decision making process on choosing Gmail vs. Office365. It's as if you made your decision to go to Gmail before doing the research and there was no consultation with your customer between the two services. I'd love to see an expansion of that decision making process and the customer's "choice" in the matter.
One other thing... that chart has a few inaccuracies. For example, the point about mobile device support. Office365 supports the full range of Exchange ActiveSync devices which is actually a longer list of full fidelity devices than Google supports. Saying that Office365 only supports Windows Phone & Blackberry devices is misleading at best.
The chart also lists the different Office 365 clients incorrectly. Comparing "Exchange Online" to "Outlook Web App" in the same line, while also calling it "stupid" (BTW, the writer is really calling their own knowledge out at this point) shows the lack of fundamental understanding of the product. Outlook Web App is the web/browser based e-mail interface to Exchange Online... similar, but far superior to, Gmail's browser based e-mail.
One other thing... that chart has a few inaccuracies. For example, the point about mobile device support. Office365 supports the full range of Exchange ActiveSync devices which is actually a longer list of full fidelity devices than Google supports. Saying that Office365 only supports Windows Phone & Blackberry devices is misleading at best.
The chart also lists the different Office 365 clients incorrectly. Comparing "Exchange Online" to "Outlook Web App" in the same line, while also calling it "stupid" (BTW, the writer is really calling their own knowledge out at this point) shows the lack of fundamental understanding of the product. Outlook Web App is the web/browser based e-mail interface to Exchange Online... similar, but far superior to, Gmail's browser based e-mail.
Just to be clear about things - the chart is taken from a previously published TechRepublic Blog post and was created by a different contributor.
Thanks Mark... I still question the consultative decision making process that went into the decision with your client. Overall it seems as if a snap decision was made for Gmail over Office 365.
Also, do you have a link to the original article/author of that chart? These are blatantly incorrect bits of information that honestly seem quite biased against Office 365 and an uneducated person could be using it as their point of reference between the two services. An accurate comparison should have been used.
Also, do you have a link to the original article/author of that chart? These are blatantly incorrect bits of information that honestly seem quite biased against Office 365 and an uneducated person could be using it as their point of reference between the two services. An accurate comparison should have been used.
Anyone who doesn't use IE is stuck with a cut down version of OWA. This is typical of MS products and for cross platform equality you're much better off with Gmail. For instance Office 365 doesn't work with older versions of iOS. On the other hand MS products look nice though I think Google are paying more attention to design now. Google+ on the iPhone bears witness to this.
Actually John you're incorrect. OWA on Office 365 has full fidelity/works with any modern browser: Firefox, Safari, Chrome, or IE8/9. The same goes for Exchange Server 2010's OWA. Apple offers free upgrades for iOS devices, so why is it an issue to not support older, buggy, insecure devices?
Thanks for the feedback, and sorry for the delay on my reply.
I agree the decision making process as to why Google Apps was chosen over Office 365 could have been fleshed out further; I stated in the article that Office 365 "seemed to have more of a focus on collaboration." By this I meant that their emphasis on Office live collaboration, IM and conferencing seemed overkill - and geared more towards larger companies with a different sort of user base - when the bulk of our needs for this project involved email. Yes, Office 365 does do email too, and Google Apps also has some features we didn't plan to implement at that time, but we wanted to keep the target feature set as minimal as possible per our current strategy. Office 365 seems a fine product, so our selection of Google Apps shouldn't be seen as making the statement that Google Apps is the superior choice for every scenario; it was deemed the superior one for us.
Other considerations were the fact Google Apps has been around longer (2007 vs 2011 for Office365) and I felt there would be more of a user base to consult with for tips or problems; we appreciated the Google setup guides and help pages, which seemed custom-fit for our goals, and that as a small company our trial was intended to serve as a "proof of concept" to demo out the product offering by Google. We had a bit more flexibility in terms of how we could restructure our email to try out their solution since we have 5 users; such a decision would have been vastly different and more complex for a larger organization.
As it turns out, we did hit a couple of snags with the Google process, which will be discussed in future articles, so the story isn't finished just yet...
I agree the decision making process as to why Google Apps was chosen over Office 365 could have been fleshed out further; I stated in the article that Office 365 "seemed to have more of a focus on collaboration." By this I meant that their emphasis on Office live collaboration, IM and conferencing seemed overkill - and geared more towards larger companies with a different sort of user base - when the bulk of our needs for this project involved email. Yes, Office 365 does do email too, and Google Apps also has some features we didn't plan to implement at that time, but we wanted to keep the target feature set as minimal as possible per our current strategy. Office 365 seems a fine product, so our selection of Google Apps shouldn't be seen as making the statement that Google Apps is the superior choice for every scenario; it was deemed the superior one for us.
Other considerations were the fact Google Apps has been around longer (2007 vs 2011 for Office365) and I felt there would be more of a user base to consult with for tips or problems; we appreciated the Google setup guides and help pages, which seemed custom-fit for our goals, and that as a small company our trial was intended to serve as a "proof of concept" to demo out the product offering by Google. We had a bit more flexibility in terms of how we could restructure our email to try out their solution since we have 5 users; such a decision would have been vastly different and more complex for a larger organization.
As it turns out, we did hit a couple of snags with the Google process, which will be discussed in future articles, so the story isn't finished just yet...
Thanks for the clarity & background! That really helps. I think one thing Microsoft could do better is tie their public advertising of Office365 to it's real lineage/history. It's built on Exchange 2010, SharePoint 2010 and of coure Lync 2010... but with an online services approach. The online services for these have been around since BPOS (2007 or 2008 I think)... but in reality the lineage of each component goes back a lot farther:
Exchange: Late 1990's
SharePoint: Early 2000's
Lync: 2000 (IM was part of Exchange 2000 and it later was spun off into Office Communications Server)
Both are fine products if all one cares about is "email"... but in my experience it's typically a bit more complicated than that: calendaring, Outlook connectivity with full fidelity, IM & call conferencing with desktop sharing/powerpoint sharing w/ full fidelity, etc. etc. I find Office 365 (or it's component solutions on premises) to be more mature than what Google comes close to offering. I think Google wins people's hearts because it's "not Microsoft". That's been my experience at least.
Exchange: Late 1990's
SharePoint: Early 2000's
Lync: 2000 (IM was part of Exchange 2000 and it later was spun off into Office Communications Server)
Both are fine products if all one cares about is "email"... but in my experience it's typically a bit more complicated than that: calendaring, Outlook connectivity with full fidelity, IM & call conferencing with desktop sharing/powerpoint sharing w/ full fidelity, etc. etc. I find Office 365 (or it's component solutions on premises) to be more mature than what Google comes close to offering. I think Google wins people's hearts because it's "not Microsoft". That's been my experience at least.
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