We have had a number of customers that have asked about Delegated Administration and is it something that they want?\u00a0 I\u2019ll answer this in the reverse order and say, yes, you want it!\u00a0 But, as usual, there is a bit more to it than a simple \u201cyes\u201d.<\/p>\n
Delegated Administration is the method that Microsoft provides for Microsoft Partners to \u201cconnect\u201d to an organization\u2019s O365 tenancy and \u201cadminister\u201d the tenancy on behalf of the organization.\u00a0 The key word here is \u201cdelegated\u201d; the Partner does not \u201ctake over\u201d your tenancy nor does the Partner replace your primary administrator.\u00a0 The Partner is there as an adjunct to your normal administrator.\u00a0 The whole point of Delegated Admin is to give your desired Partner the ability to easily connect to your tenancy and take care of the issues that you want them to handle.\u00a0 You should note that you can drop or change Delegated Administrators at your pleasure, you are not \u201cstuck with\u201d a particular Partner.\u00a0 And, yes, Microsoft does \u201cpay\u201d a fee to Delegated Administrators on a monthly basis but it is NOT \u201cbig money\u201d.\u00a0 Trust me, you can\u2019t sustain a business on Delegated Administrator fees; the fee is just a sweetener.<\/p>\n
Anyway, back to the discussion at hand.\u00a0 Why would you want a Delegated Administrator?\u00a0 The answer is pretty easy \u2026 while O365 does \u201chide\u201d a lot of the nuts and bolts of the backend pieces (Exchange, SharePoint, Lync) there is still an ongoing need for \u201ceducated administration\u201d.\u00a0 O365 makes some things easy but other things are still fairly complex simply because the underlying building blocks are complex (hey, Exchange is still Exchange).\u00a0 And your Delegated Administrator can also be your \u201cinterface\u201d into Microsoft if there are any issues.<\/p>\n
There is nothing that a Delegated Administrator can do that your own authorized administrators cannot do; large organizations with lots of in-house Microsoft talent probably don\u2019t need a Delegated Administrator as they will task some of that in-house talent with the job of being the O365 administrators.\u00a0 Smaller organizations that don\u2019t have the in-house talent are probably better suited to the Delegated Administrator model and there are lots of Microsoft Partners, like itgroove, that would be pleased to work with you to ensure your O365 experience is the best it can be.\u00a0 They\u2019ll be there when you make the jump to O365 and on down the road after you land onmicrosoft.com.<\/p>\n
Finally, and this is a point I want to really make very clear, there is no requirement <\/em>from Microsoft that you have a Delegated Administrator.\u00a0 You are under no obligation to appoint one.\u00a0 I know there are companies out there that are offering various types of services that require you to appoint them as your Delegate Administrator but that is their<\/em> requirement, not Microsoft\u2019s.\u00a0 In the end the choice is yours.<\/p>\n My recommendation is to work with a Delegated Administrator at least for your jump into O365 simply because there is much that can go sideways during the migration and its always nice to have someone that has \u201cbeen there, done that\u201d to help navigate the minefield.\u00a0 After that the decision is yours about how you move forward.<\/p>\n CORRECTION: \u00a0Sean has pointed out that I am incorrect in stating that a delegated admin is compensated by Microsoft. \u00a0There is a mechanism whereby Microsoft does compensate a Partner that is a Delegated Admin if they are also the “Referring Partner” (the Partner onboards you to O365 through an “invitation” process and also acts as your Delegated Admin). \u00a0However, there is no direct compensation for being just a Delegated Admin. \u00a0My apologies for the misstatement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"