530 The Microsoft 365 Journey to the Cloud (Part 1)

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here. Not with another episode of the podcast, but a very special session that we are calling chats with a guru and I am joined by our good friend from the community, Diana Giles from Skyline IT management. Giles, how are you? 

Diana Giles 

I'm great. How are you? 

Marvin Bee 

I am doing good so this is a session and it's actually going to be a series of sessions that Giles and I came up with where? We thought, you know what? People always have questions about 365 in the cloud in Azure. And we decided, why don't we put together something and it'll be kind of a conversation kind of a teaching session. You, Giles, as the 365 guru helping the Yahoo like me make that transition because. Believe it or not. A lot of my clients, most of my clients, still have physical servers. We have not yet lifted anybody 100% to the cloud. Of course we're doing 365 for e-mail. I've got a client or two doing SharePoint, but they're not 100% cloud, so this would be a great opportunity to chat and teach about 365. Does that sound good? 

Diana Giles 

That sounds great. 

Marvin Bee 

All right, so why don't we go ahead and start with your background and explain to people. Who you are, Skyline IT management and how you became that three. 65 guru. 

Diana Giles 

Yes, well, let's see. I've had my business for quite some time, but it was, you know, mainly part time after I left my IT job staying with my kids and. Yeah, my business slowly so slowly grew from the computer monkey to skyline IT management. When I made the transition and around 2019 to kind of move away from break fix as a model and move toward an MSP model and. Then during that process I became a, you know, affiliated with PACs 8 and they provided some wonderful resources, training really kind of, you know, letting us know. O as an MSP community, what Microsoft 365 and their cloud offerings really could do, not only for our business, but really for our clients. And then therefore for our business. And I really embraced it. I saw that that was where the future was and it was really a good opportunity. I thought. Or most of my clients, at least the ones you know who could move fully. We always have some that can't for various reasons. Line of business apps and things like that, but even that is changing even that some of those line of business apps we're getting you know through Azure or other options we have. You know, we're even able to move some things we. Didn't think we could. Before, so that was just kind of when I got my feet wet and I started working on the Microsoft 365 administrator expert certification. And really, that was just, you know, for me so that I could be able to really kind of feel like I was informed enough to be that expert for my clients. And as I've done that, I've also kind of worked with some other organizations to help them make that transition as well. Maybe they didn't want to put in the time. Or, you know, they didn't have the resources or time to do it themselves. Those and so they've hired me to work on that for them as well. So I've done some cloud migrations and tenant setups for some other companies as well as my own and like I guess that answered you. 

Marvin Bee 

Question now when you talk about lifting them to the cloud, are you doing 100% cloud? Meaning, you're doing their data; you're doing their Active Directory. Anything else that you're throwing up in the cloud for them? 

Diana Giles 

Yes, I mean, just if they have most of my clients that are cloud only do not have a line of business app. But I have had one recently where they had kind of a custom app and so I contracted with another company, in fact we. Did a podcast. About that with Kristen from solutions to. Move their app. To Azure so you know that those are the kinds of things that I would do if somebody had an app like that and needed to move it to the cloud. If it was able to. So I'm pretty much only taking on new clients that are either. They're ready to move to the cloud. Want to ditch their server, or are already free? 

Speaker 

Of a server. 

Marvin Bee 

OK, so that explains a lot for me because most of my clients still have a line of business app that is tied to the terrestrial server and they've not yet figured out a way to migrate their apps to the cloud. But it's coming. So of course I wanted to learn a little bit about that. Let's first talk about the benefits of moving somebody to the cloud. Obviously, we know that with e-mail. You know you can get your e-mail from anywhere. Any device you just, you know, open up your outlook or an app or something and you can get the e-mail. What types of other things can users benefit from moving fully to the Azure cloud? 

Diana Giles 

Yeah, well, it really a lot of it. It involves security because, you know, as you know, it's kind of like comparing on Prem exchange to exchange online. There's just a lot more security built into the online you know, cloud version. We've been doing that for a while, so. You can take it a step further with. Everything else as well. It's a lot of it is convenience being able to have access to your data from whatever device, but then also on the company side, there's a security data security there so that you don't have to necessarily be concerned that your staff would have access on their phones. To company data because it can be managed by. Microsoft 365 business premium and the security controls you get with mobile device management if you want or just application management so that the company data can be wiped from that device without touching their personal information. But if somebody would relieve you know they've got that control. So that's. You know another thing? And when I talk about it, as far as like the Microsoft 365 cloud, because most of the people listening to this podcast, I would say are familiar with Microsoft. 365. But I'm kind of comparing basically Business Standard or even business basic and you know the limitations to that versus the cloud. When I talk about taking somebody to Microsoft 365, you know, in a cloud environment, we're talking about business premium. At least that's you know what I talk. About, obviously larger organizations might be, you know, doing, you know, E3 or E5, but for small business 1 to 300 users, business premium is going to be this cloud option. And the way that I explained it to people, you know, like my clients is that that server is now. The Microsoft Cloud and so business premium kind of takes the place of that on Prem server because you know, yes, it is more expensive per user. And that kind of thing. But the authentication, the security controls and all of that that you had with the server on premises now are going to be handled by Azure. AD and the. The whole, you know, Microsoft 360. 5 cloud so I think it is one of the hardest things to convey to clients. But not so much. You know us in in tech, but to our clients is because they just think of Microsoft 365 as Word Excel, you know outlook and it's that's really such a tiny part of it when you're looking at business premium and everything that. It can do. 

Marvin Bee 

So I was going to ask you to explain a little more, but you started to do some of that and of course. This is obviously much different than just simply getting your e-mail with an exchange online. One or two plan and you mentioned the difference between 365 business basic. Business Standard. Business premium versus the E3D5, it's all confusing. It's a lot of licenses and of course the customers. You know, have a hard time with it. I have a customer that I just onboarded that had most of their licenses as the business basic. Which they thought was just fine for them. If somebody needed to go, you know, to work with word or excel, they would use the web version. Come to find out a bunch of them we're using. And office Pro plus license. That just started expiring on them, so we've been upgrading a lot of them to just the Business Standard. Because their only mindset is well, we just need the apps. So you're talking about going beyond the apps and actually doing management now. I've looked at this and I know that there's device management in there, but what actually is built into the premium license that's more than the state. 

Diana Giles 

365. And it's really it's really pretty significant. It's hard to get your mind around it without kind of a visual representation, which there is we can put in the show notes or however you want to do it. There's some really good websites that are a good website that you can go to that really lay it out. Very clearly and you. And you can really see the difference. So I can either show that if you want, or we can just. Put it in the notes. But it aside from just the apps, obviously when you're getting into the business premium aspect of it, besides the security because business premium includes Microsoft Defender. For business in there as well. But you also have all of these policies that you can deploy conditional access, which is very significant in providing security to who can log into your Microsoft account. And in addition to all of the security, which it is really extensive. You also have much more you know as far as compliance goes and how the buckets of data can be controlled. The kinds of things that you can do with labels and deciding, you know protecting against information as far as PII. And, you know, deciding who has access in your company, even to certain information, you know, maybe the accounting team has access to certain data, but the others don't and. All of that can. Be, you know, controlled with Microsoft Purview, which is basically the compliance piece. Of Microsoft 365 and then there is of course the Intune and the mobile device management, which does not necessarily. I mean, you can do extensive mobile device management which you know we always do on the Windows machines. When people log. And to their Microsoft account on their computer, they are logging in essentially like you did with the same type of controls, I might argue even better controls into Azure AD that are controlling that authentication and that access to that device and all of the data on it. But in addition to that, with Intune you can also control the you know applications and devices as far as like iOS devices, people who have, or companies who. Of company phones or if they just want to allow their staff to use their personal devices, you can just do mobile application management and control what is allowed, preventing for example. Then being able to copy and paste company information, you know into some other place. On that device. So let's see what else? Well, besides SharePoint also. So your storage, your data storage that you know we're used to the file, the server acting as. A file server. Often so now SharePoint takes the place of that with SharePoint also comes OneDrive and. Those are, you know, very much related, so. You've got the ability. To have your data accessible from whatever device you might be. Working at and that's, you know, really great for people when they're traveling and that kind of thing or work from home situations. And then of course. There's teams, which is a whole other, you know, kind of platform to itself almost, but that is, you know definitely another part of Microsoft 365. 

Marvin Bee 

OK, so that was a mouthful. 

Diana Giles 

I know. 

Marvin Bee 

All of these are separate. So I know that we're used to hearing in tune, and you're talking about in tune as. The deployment and the MDM together. 

Diana Giles 

Yes, it's as much as you want it. To be I. You know you can use Intune strictly for. Deploying windows. Or you can, you know, carry it through to other devices like you know iOS. You can do complete mobile device management if you want to with apples program or with Google Play. You know there's a significant amount of setup involved. In doing that. This would be for corporate devices, or you can simply just control the access to the app to the company data on the personal device using mobile application management. 

Marvin Bee 

Alright, so let me just ask this question just because it's rattling around in my head. I'm sure somebody else has it as well for companies that still do a lot of their work at an office. It sounds like this might be a bit much. I see this as something where you've got mobile users you've got multiple office. Is you've got people that are in and out of the office all the time, and if you want to be able to manage stuff and not have to touch them and have it tied to their Microsoft account or their e-mail, this would be a great thing to do for companies that are still kind of tied to in office space and they're going to have shared files. Locally, does it make sense to do all of this, or is there a hybrid way where you can kind of sync some of it to the cloud and have it available when needed? 

Diana Giles 

Well, the answer is yes to both. I mean, yes. You can do the hybrid something called the. Azure AD sync. So you can actually get the advantages of you know the. Microsoft 365. Cloud along with your server and so that is definitely possible, but I would say even if you have an office where. Nobody is working from home and very, you know, few people even. Travel or have a laptop? You still get a significant amount of benefit, I think, from just how the devices authenticate and or and that they perform and how you can control them as far as what you know applications are automatically deployed for, for the staff there. If you have ever seen an autopilot, you know, restore after having to, you know, either take a device away or just refresh a device because of problems. And then when you deploy autopilot and it just all comes back and it's all there, it's. Very nice. I mean, and that of course is on the IT management side, but that also makes it easier for the users as well they benefit from that too. 

Marvin Bee 

All right, now. Another side question that just popped up there needs to be Internet access for this, right? So if somebody is working from home, they. You know, they decide to go on a vacation to the mountains of Georgia and stuff. What if there's no good Wi-Fi? Can they still function? 

Diana Giles 

They can function. There's going to be some things that they're not going to be able to do obviously. I mean, if you don't have the Internet, you're not going to be able to get your e-mail, you can just, you know, work offline. You're going to have to look for your files that are on the computer. You would be limited to the ones that. Were already there in OneDrive, you wouldn't have access to. What they call. Files on demand where you, you know, have a placeholder for a file and you click on it and it pulls it. Down from the cloud. So you would be limited to. You'd just be working offline, but you could still get on your computer and all of that. 

Marvin Bee 

1. You mentioned files on demand, so. That's we didn't talk about that earlier, so. Tell me. 

Diana Giles 

That's kind of, yeah, that would. Be kind of part of the OneDrive and SharePoint. So you have the option when you're using OneDrive every user. I guess will back up. A little bit. Every user in Microsoft 3. 65 would have a TB. Of storage for. Them personally and when we say personally in this regard, this is business personal, not their home pictures and things like that, but they're the company files that they personally use not accessible to everybody. So you get a TB there. Well, you can decide. Let's say you have a device that's only got 256 gigabytes. On it, maybe they have, you know, 600 gigabytes of data. So you utilize files on demand. They still have all. Of their, you know, whole TB available to them. But the files are only the. That they use all the time are the ones that are. Kept on the device so. They'll be they'll indicate differently in File Explorer you'll have a green check mark or you'll have a blue cloud. You know, depending on whether it is on the device or available to be on the. So that's files on demand. 

Marvin Bee 

All right, the reason I thought of that is because most of the. Desktops and laptops that are being deployed, at least in my client, those users are coming only with 500 gigs of solid-state drive storage. My first thought is if we're going to make everybody you know use their Microsoft Account 365 premium, they're going to use that TB of data, then they probably should have a TB of local storage. Which has been but the file on demand makes it to where they don't. 

Diana Giles 

No, they don't have to. 

Marvin Bee 

Now you know. 

Diana Giles 

If they've touched it in the last 30 days, it'll. Be on their computer, otherwise it'll go back to. The cloud and then they can have access to it again. If they need it. 

Marvin Bee 

Right is that set by default or do we need to set that when we? Set up the user. 

Diana Giles 

Well, when you set. Up the user and you log them into OneDrive for the first time. You go through. The settings are kind of a little wizard and decide how to how you want it to be done. It's also something that you set up in the configurations when you're doing if you're doing like an Intune deployment. So it would be part of that. Places configuration on how you want one. Drive to be. Set up so for example, one thing that I really like when it's appropriate is and this is kind of related because SharePoint and OneDrive are very much related. SharePoint would be the company storage files. You can set up an automatic. Deployment when that machine is set up through Intune that the SharePoint files automatically sync to that machine in File Explorer, the company files. So you can do that if you want. You don't have to. Those are the kind of things that you can like even with OneDrive. We were talking about the files on demand. Those can be. Set up as policies. In your deployment for your endpoints. 

Marvin Bee 

So the user would have a OneDrive. Set up with files on demand and they would have a SharePoint. I'm assuming it's a link or do you do map drives? 

Diana Giles 

It looks like essentially it looks like a mapped drive, but it's not. It's actually got a little building instead. Of the little. Blue cloud that you have with OneDrive. But that's how. You designate that it's, you know, company files and those can be it can be set up in your, you know configuration and Intune to make that happen. Automatically or it can be done manually too. 

Marvin Bee 

So I'm thinking of the client that I've got that we're talking about moving them to the cloud, they're. I mean, they're not a huge client, but they're big. I mean, there's more than 50 people there. They've got about 10 terabytes of local storage. So moving them to a cloud environment, throwing all their stuff up in, in SharePoint. I mean, does it make sense to have that much up there and then always syncing with this file on demand feature? 

Diana Giles 

Well, it's not necessarily going to be, you know it's. More like a. It's not like those files are going to, you know, always be there. They would have a placeholder, but one of the things. That we have to kind of think about when you're moving somebody from, you know, a file server to SharePoint as you do really have to take a look at what their data is and who needs access to that data. Is it being these files that only you know 1 user uses or the files that everybody uses and because you can, if everybody gets a TB of one drive, some of those files, if they're only being accessed by one person, then they should go in their OneDrive as opposed to going to the company SharePoint. So it is really important when you're looking at looking at moving somebody to the cloud to really take a look at the data and determine, you know, OK. First of all. Is there too much to move to the cloud and it it's not so much. It can depend on the quantity of the files in a particular bucket, right? I have a client or have a client that we could move a lot of their company files to SharePoint and sync them with File Explorer, but they had this one repository of. Miles, it was just too large. There was no way sinking would have been a nightmare. And so they go directly to SharePoint in a web browser for that particular bucket, if you will of files. Everything else syncs through File Explorer. As you know, each particular person needs. 

Marvin Bee 

OK, so wow, so getting started sounds like. A lot of work. 

Speaker 

Right. 

Diana Giles 

It really is. I mean, in doing your homework as far as really kind of taking a look at what their current layout is, what their current data and needs are is really. Really important because you know, it's very easy for us and I do it. I mean, I'm guilty of it where we say, oh, yeah, we can do that. Yeah, we can. Do that because we know what's possible. And then you kind of get down into the nitty gritty of how they actually use that data and OK, well, maybe that situation, OK, maybe that's better if we put the Synology on site for that. You know there can be those situations, you just have to evaluate everything really carefully. Ahead of time. 

Marvin Bee 

All right. Well, let's do this. Let's, let's get ready for a break here, and then we'll come back and dive a little bit more into what you actually do when you get started with the client. But before we do that, let's at least talk about. Is this something that's better to just if you get a client, you start fresh with them. Is it easier to start fresh and rebuild everything or is it possible to transition a client from on Prem to cloud? Without too much trouble. 

Diana Giles 

It depends obviously on the situation, but yes, it's very possible to transition them through, you know, the hybrid situation or just even if you're not going to do the. The hybrid, just to use the Azure AD sync to grab everything from the server and move them to you know the Microsoft Cloud if you're planning to eventually get rid of the server. Also if you know obviously we can bring them from Google Suite, you know Google Workforce if we want to so migrations are typically what? I guess what I do most of the time. We'll just, you know, do a migration through bit tighten and that kind of thing because usually I'm bringing somebody over from. Google Suite or even you know well, it's not really a migration with GoDaddy, but you know moving them over from GoDaddy or even splitting them off from another Microsoft tenant had to do that. It's it. It really does depend on the situation but. If you can start fresh, it's always nice just to have a clean slate, but it's certainly not necessary. You can take somebody who's just been on business stand. 3rd and upgrade them to business premium and then do the additional setup in their tenant. You know that's that. Now that you have all these out on features. Did that answer your question? 

Marvin Bee 

Better at it, right? So we're going to take a quick break here, folks. We ask you to come back and join us for our next session. And we've been talking with Dinah Giles from Skyline IT management. Her information will be in the show notes, and if you're watching the video, there is her. Website Address and she'll be able to answer any questions you have and assist you. If you are a managed service provider and you need assistance in migrating to your clients, she's happy to help. So Charles, we'll be back in just a second, alright? 

Diana Giles 

Sounds good.