Microsoft Office 365: Exchange Online Implementation and Migration: With this guide, you can transfer Microsoft Exchange from your internal system to the cloud, smoothly and knowledgeably. The step-by-step, comprehensive approach makes implementation and migration a painless process.

Support is only available via the Office 365 community site. Some syndication partners however may offer level 1 support as part of the subscription (for example, Telstra in Australia).

There is a hard limit of 50 users in the small business plan and there is no way around it. If you ever need to go above 50—the entire organization would have to be completely migrated out of Office 365 and back in to a new tenant.

While the SharePoint functionality of the small business plan is relatively on par with the enterprise capabilities there are a few key limitations that may require you to move up plans.

Only two site collections are possible—one for private or intranet use and one for the public facing website. This is generally not a concern for most organizations under 50 in size, however it can potentially be an issue for organizations that may have separation of business units and security groups.

Additional storage cannot be purchased. The default storage allocation for SharePoint Online is 10 GB as a base platform plus 500 MB contributed for every user. So if you have 50 users the maximum amount of storage you could possibly have in your site collection is 35 GB (10 GB + (50 x 0.5 GB).

Another limitation is that SSL certificates are not provided or supported, meaning that any traffic between your device and your SharePoint Online site is unencrypted.

If you run an Active Directory environment in your office—you cannot replicate the user accounts to Office 365, and that user and password management will be done separately. Replicating your user's accounts to Office 365 enables you to simplify the overall management of your environment and provisioning of users. Often at times, this is less of an issue for small businesses.

Largely this also means that Active Directory Federation Services (leveraging on-premise Active Directory credentials) is not supported; however this is usually out of the realm of small businesses.

However, if your organization runs Microsoft Small Business Server 2011 Essentials—there is an add-on pack that integrates with Office 365 and synchronizes users and passwords.

For small businesses, no access to the Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) console may not be a great concern, however the FOPE console is the rich management and reporting functionality that allows organizations to understand and manage their e-mail security.

For customers using the Office 365 for Small Businesses plan—there is no ability to mix and match individual licenses.

Unlike the enterprise plans, Office 365 for small businesses does not allow for the addition of a mailbox archive on top of the existing 25 GB mailbox. What is possible however is to segment the existing mailbox into an archive area (for example, 5 GB of your 25 GB) which is only available when online with Outlook or via Outlook Web App.

If customers using Office 365 for small businesses use BlackBerry smartphones then the only option available is to use the BlackBerry Individual Service (BIS) for synchronization of e-mails wirelessly. This does not support synchronization of calendar and contact items as the BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) does under the Office 365 for Enterprises plan.

The chances are you are only working with Microsoft if you have a large set, or a combination of licenses, you need to purchase. An example of this would be if you are an enterprise customer seeking specific contract requirements and a combination of licenses, outside of Office 365, in a suite for your users. Specific contract requirements and suites of licenses are typically sold as Enterprise Agreements (EA). The benefit of an EA is that it allows an organization to leverage a number of Microsoft products, for a single per seat cost. If you are an EA customer or plan to be one, the sign-up process is different. When you sign up for an EA, you will typically receive an e-mail with two options:

If you already purchased licenses in an existing account, it may be difficult for you to have Microsoft attach licenses to this account. Microsoft may ask you to recreate an account, in this scenario.

If you are working with a Microsoft deployment partner, there is a good possibility the Microsoft deployment partner will be able to help you through this process. A Microsoft deployment partner has the ability to send you a customized link. This link can be a trial or a set of licenses to be purchased. The benefits of a Microsoft deployment partner sending you a link are twofold. The partner can help ensure you have the right licenses and the partner obtains benefits while being associated with your subscription. Those benefits include subscription notifications for changes/upgrades and there are financial benefits. The notifications/changes are of benefit, as the partner can work closely with your organization to ensure you are prepared for the upcoming changes. The financial benefits a partner receives are specifically related to the partner being an advisor for your subscription.

The last option is to sign up for the service directly. The chances are you are taking this approach if you are not signing an EA or are not working with a Microsoft deployment partner, and are planning to trial, or move to, this service on your own. Often at times, organizations sign up for the service ahead of working with a partner or Microsoft on licensing. If you have signed up for a trial service, but plan to work with a partner or Microsoft, it is recommended not to purchase licenses until you have requested their advise on how to proceed. The impacts of purchasing a license prior to engaging Microsoft or a partner can mean reallocating enabled accounts or a delay in how soon Microsoft can apply the EA licenses.

In all cases, we'll leverage the Office 365 admin portal https://portal.microsoftonline.com/Admin in a similar method. Before we get started with the Office 365 admin portal, we need to sign up for the service.