Changing registrar / owner of our Office 365 how will I be affected?

[abers]

Hi all,

 

Firstly forgive me for my lack of knowledge on this subject...

 

When we moved to our broadband/filtering provider 3 years ago part of the package was Office 365.

 

We are now looking to potentially move away from the provider and I am concerned about how our Office 365 would be affected. I have been told by our provider we would need to save our mailboxes as they would all be deleted, but i find this hard to believe as i was under the impression Microsoft held all the data?

 

I believe our provider does all the liaising/ paying to MS on our behalf and when you go into our Office 365 admin settings > partner relationships their name is present.

 

They also come up as the registrar for us but we host our website through WIX so as far as the domain hosting goes I'm assuming that should be ok?

 

The registrar shouldn't make any difference should it?

 

I am just weary that we have a lovely working Office 365 with lots of happy inboxes and i do not want to loose it!

 

Thanks

Edited June 22, 2016 by abers

[Matt_Renato]

I'd go back and ask them for a bit more clarity on the situation, specifically why all your mailboxes would be deleted.

 

How are you getting users into Office 365? If it is linked to an Active Directory hosted by your provider there will be a bit of work involved removing the link and switching it back to your local AD, but this is doable without losing mailboxes. All the mailboxes are hosted in one of Microsoft's data centres as you assumed.

 

The partner relationship you mention sounds like the delegated access which MSP's can setup so that they can administer your tenancy without needing a direct login, this can easily be disabled if you are no longer under a support contract with the company.

[ellsandell]

Theoretically if they have set you up with a separate tenancy will delegated partner access it should be as easy as removing them in the partner section and will continue to work. Unless you are paying for any extra features or packages its all free so should have any bother carrying on without them.

 

As for the domain name - migrate to any provider and just make sure you take the existing MX records and your mail will continue to work. (The new partner/domain res seller should do this automatically).

[FN-GM]

If you have admin rights just reset all the passwords to the other accounts. They will be locked out so can't delete any data.

[abers]

Hi, thanks for all the replies and information.

 

We are on the free student and faculty subscription so by the looks of it they just 'manage' it for us.

 

I just add users manually via the office 365 admin console, no link to AD.

 

I queried it with Microsoft (that was a mission in itself) and they advised

 

1. Get new tenanat in Office 365

2. Change all users email address to onmicrosot domain on existing tenant.

3. Take backup of mailboxes from existing tenant to newly created tenant.

4. Remove domain from existing tenant.

5. Register domain on new tenant.

6. Cancel your old tenant.

 

which made absolutely no sense to me...

 

I think when the time comes i will just transfer our domain name to a new provider (is there anyone people recommend for ease of use with 365?)

 

Delete the partnership account from the old supplier and just carry on as normal?

 

I can't see, as we discussed how they could do delete or stop anything as its just a free subscription.

 

thanks!