Office 365 Quote

[Michael Klimchuk]

I took over a client who has 32 workstations currently running Office 2007. They are currently using Hosted Exchange Plan 1 for their email. With Office 2007 support ending and Outlook 2007 not being able to check Office 365 email after October 2017, I convinced the client to upgrade to Office 365. He would like a quote for upgrading the accounts to Office 365 as well as install the Office apps on the workstations. The reason for this post is that I would like to get ideas from others on how many hours do you think it would take you to complete this job. I am not concerned about pricing as my price is my price and already set with the client. Wondering what pitfalls or obstacles people have run into. Keep in mind that I am a Microsoft Partner and have signed up as a CSP with my tech vendor. Thanks in advance for the positive responses I will get. lol.

 

[Your PCMD]

You actually answered your own question.

He would like a quote for upgrading

I would like to get ideas from others on how many hours do you think it would take

I am not concerned about pricing as my price is my price and already set with the client.

 

[Michael Klimchuk]

You actually answered your own question.

Actually no I didnt lol. I said my pricing is all set meaning what I would charge hourly. What I am looking for is how many hours do you all think it would take you to do a job like this? I know there are variables as in any job that could make a job take longer or shorter amount of time. I am wondering how everyone would quote this. I know a variable is if it is done remotely or on-site. I hope to do it all remotely.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Need a TON more information, I haven't the slightest ideas on how many hours or days this might take without having critical information to help determine things.

*Horsepower of their computers. Are they good biz grade i5 or i7 CPUs..8 gigs of RAM, SSD? Nice and healthy and malware/adware/junkware free. Or at least decent 7,200 rpm drives? Good fast internet pipe? Uninstall Office and install the new office in relatively short order. Or are they glacially slow AMD or budget Intel CPU rigs with worn out hard drives with little cache on them and inadequate memory, lack of Windows updates, tons of junkware slowing them down. Where you could grow a beard in the time it takes to remove old Office and install latest Office on them?

Doing this onsite or have a remote RMM tool to remote in after hours? Or have to go onsite after hours? Or can get done during standard 9-5 hours?

Do you have the users credentials? Assuming you'll just move their existing O365 tenant within your CSP (or wipe 'n migrate). If so, have to consider size of their mailboxes, speed of internet pipe..and again..health/performance of their computers.

 

[Michael Klimchuk]

Great questions. This is for a pretty upscale hotel and the machines are actually pretty good machines, all i5 or above with minimum 4-8GB. Not sure of all the hard drives but definitely SATA so lets assume 5400RPM. Internet is very good, tests have been consistent at 50 or above. As I just took over this client the patching is sketchy. Seems the previous company were not updating the machines or servers as they should have. Machines seem devoid of malware or any viruses as they were running Trend Micro but until I get in there to clean I won't know 100%.

I am thinking of doing it on a Saturday remotely. I have been using SolarWinds MSP ever since the days it was HoundDog. I think logic would dictate to uninstall the previous version of Office 2007 and perform a clean install of Office 365. I do have admin credentials and I will also have their credentials as well as I will need to reset Outlook, setup signatures, import NK2 file if needed, etc.

With regards to CSP I need to change them to me which is 50 accounts in all. They are only going to use Office 365 for about 28-32 clients right now. Going to call my CSP rep today and talk to him about it.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

OK. Well hopefully they're 7,200 rpm drives....I'd wince in pain over 5,400 rpm.

So long as they're rather clean and healthy..this way it won't take you like..4 hours for just 1 workstation cuz it's infested with malware that prevents things from working correctly, browser redirects, DNS injections, etc.

See if you can migrate the tenant to yours, or you may have to start from scratch with a new tenant set their workstations to "download all" in the local cache file...save to PST...nuke their old tenant..give an hour..and then complete the new tenant. You would already create the new tenant and users..just under the default client@theirdomain.onmicrosoft.com and then once their prior tenant is nuked...you can set their public domain as the new default recipient domain and ripple that down to all the users. Several ways you can skin this cat....choose which works best for you in this situation.

 

[Michael Klimchuk]

What's nice is with the RMM service I can do as many computers as I feel comfortable with at one time. I could log in to all 32 at the same time if I wanted and keep switching back and forth to check on their status... although I have a feeling if anyone were to do that it would lead to a lot of issues including knowing where you left off at lol. I think I would work on 5 at a time.

 

[seedubya]

I would use BitTitan to manage the migration and, assuming that AD is in place, add a step to the BitTitan process to use the Office Deployment Tool for deploying Pro Plus to the workstations. If all of Brian's stipulations about fast, clean machines are met then I wouldn't see this taking more than a day in ideal circumstances, especially remotely with fast connections. There are plenty of scripts around to automate the removal of all versions of MS Office, too. Finally, BitTitan allows you to automate the setup of the Outlook profiles.