#Microsoft365 #Office365 Whatever they say – you won’t have enough – cause you’re only human. The more we have the more we want. The faster you become, the faster you want to be. But lets be realistic. How much is enough to actually function and stop complaining?

For previous posts in my #Microsoft365Challenge go to the index page.

DISCLAIMER:  I WRITE ARTICLES ABOUT OFFICE / MICROSOFT 365. CONTENT IS ACCURATE AT TIME OF PUBLICATION, HOWEVER UPDATES AND NEW ADDITIONS HAPPEN DAILY WHICH COULD CHANGE THE ACCURACY OR RELEVANCE. PLEASE KEEP THIS IN MIND WHEN USING MY BLOGS AS GUIDELINES.

 Microsoft / Office 365

Whenever talking to companies about moving to Office 365, one of the first questions that come up is around bandwidth. Especially in South Africa, because keep in mind, for any items not synced to my local desktop or SharePoint sites and online apps – I have to go all the way to Ireland for it. And yes, I’ve always wanted to go to Ireland, but not like this 🙁

Great news though, our Datacenters are coming. Like winter – but MUCH better. So as soon as I (and my clients) have migrated back to the South African datacenters – it will be much better.

My Bandwidth

I’ve been working on Office 365 for 6 years. I also work on many clients’ tenants on a daily basis, build their SharePoint Intranets and Teams, write about 2 articles a day of which most are YouTube video clips which get uploaded and spend a fair amount of time on Twitter, LinkedIn and FaceBook. I also do weekly webinars and participate in many online conferences and video/audio meetings in Microsoft teams etc.

Comfortably!

Sometimes on FaceBook friends will share screenshots of their speed tests. Which normally results in me spitting my coffee out. Below you’ll see a screenshot of my latest results (at home, which is also my office). Some of the big companies I work with have between 50 and 100 download and similar upload (for a couple of hundred users / location). Not me, I live with an average of 10 Download and 1 Upload. When it drops to 2 Down and 0.1 up I can’t open SharePoint pages anymore – then I’ll phone my service provider, get ugly on Twitter etc. and hopefully someone resets my line and I can work again.

Why am I showing your this? Because you need to appreciate what you have an stop complaining. Yes, there’s been times that I had to copy OneDrive files to my C:Drive cause it simply wasn’t working, or had to tether off my phone to be able to work on SharePoint – but that is much better now. And not just because of my network, also due to the improvements on Office 365 side. Thanks for that Microsoft.

Of course I don’t have 500 users in my home trying to access Office 365 etc. So this speed won’t do for a business, I understand that.

On-Premises vs Cloud

Let’s talk about that decision you’ve made.

So you want a car that works with solar panels, but your country doesn’t have much sunshine – that’s gonna be a problem. Or now you’re complaining that the car doesn’t work on days when you’re home, it’s overcast and you can’t tap into your Office’s provided sunshine. Battery doesn’t last long enough to pull you through to that next sunny day?

Understand the Pros and Cons of your decision, then make it work. Don’t go Cloud and then spend most of your time complaining about having to access the Cloud?

What we can do to make it better

First we need to understand what’s causing something to be slow. Could be your computer is in bad shape, needs RAM, hard drive space, unnecessary apps running in the background, full recycle bin, dirty desktop, too much in cache, old software – or slow network.

To access the https://Office.com portal – you’re going to the web. Even if you’ve synced OneDrive and cached a lot of emails etc., the data still lies somewhere on a server in a datacenter – somewhere in the world.

Office also accesses the web for a lot of the cool stuff it’s doing. For example Smart Lookup and Researcher, or Design Ideas in PowerPoint. No magic potion (bandwidth), no magic. It’s as simple as that.

So yes, Office 365 wants more juice – but if you want a faster car – you’re gonna use more fuel. It’s as easy as that. Ensure that the bandwidth allocation strategies included in your QOS is taking Office 365 in consideration – and not seeing it as normal web traffic.

So I actually cannot tell you what is enough, but have a look at the resources I’ve shared below, to help you make those decisions, because there are many ways to make it better.

Some great resources to get you started:

Purpose of this blog challenge:  I will write 365 blogs in 365 days around Microsoft 365. I did a similar challenge with Office 365, blogs can be found here. I won’t just be talking about the new Microsoft 365 subscription model. I will be sharing any news, tips and tricks around Office / Office 365 / Windows / Mobility and Security. And let’s not forget all the great new Apps & services available.  A lot of what I’ll share on Office and SharePoint will also be applicable to none “Office 365” versions.

You can also find me contributing to REgarding 365. I’m a member of a group of enthusiasts, sharing their stories, thoughts and opinions about Microsoft 365. Catch us at https://regarding365.com | @regarding365 on Twitter and regarding365 on YouTube