GSuite Centralisation - Is it worth it?

[CoolSquall]

Evening,

 

I've just taken two schools into my MAT that are all using GSuite, our internal Trust is using GSuite, to those that have been brave enough to migrate to a single tenancy, was it worth it and would you recommend others to do so?

 

Seems like a lot of work for little benefit, unless I'm missing a huge benefit!

 

Thanks

[Mr.Ben]

Maybe not for 3. I had 33 separate tenancies and did the work and would say that at that size it's a must!

[CoolSquall]

Maybe not for 3. I had 33 separate tenancies and did the work and would say that at that size it's a must!

 

At what number did you decide to move across to single? Was it the entire 33 or did you start small and scale up?

 

33 though, fairly new here but you people never fail to amaze me!

[Mr.Ben]

It was all a bit of a mess, so large parts became a clean break. SSO and user provisioning is from Azure.

 

In my first few weeks here I did some research, found that all schools were separated. That was 10, and each new school thats come in has had theirs migrated over, although generally we go for a 'clean break' with as little migration as possible where possible.

[CoolSquall]

It was all a bit of a mess, so large parts became a clean break. SSO and user provisioning is from Azure.

 

In my first few weeks here I did some research, found that all schools were separated. That was 10, and each new school thats come in has had theirs migrated over, although generally we go for a 'clean break' with as little migration as possible where possible.

 

Well, I tip my hat to you because that's an achievement. Maybe I should give it some thought if we become 5 upwards!

[rogerdnixon]

It makes life much simpler if they are all on the same G Suite setup. We have 24 schools, 2 teacher training orgs, central team + various hangers-on. When a new school joins they have to migrate in - simple enough if they don't use G Suite, bit more tricky if they do. We sync O365 users from G Suite so they can login to InTune managed PCs where people still use PCs (most use ChromeOS).

 

The only downside is that some policies can only be set globally - but not really a big deal in my experience compared to the massive time saving of not having to do things 30 odd times. One thing to get right is your directories - these can be based on Groups and each of our schools has a staff and a student directory based on some backend groups which are populated by scheduled GAM scripts. So staff get staff across the Trust + there schools students and students just get their school.

[Zoom7000]

There's no harm in migrating as many schools as you want under 1 single G Suite domain. Like Roger said, it would make life a lot simpler. In fact, the whole of Malaysia is under 1 G Suite domain with approximately 1.2 million users!

 

More closer to home though... I manage a single G Suite domain with 2 schools in our Trust. Definitely recommend you do it that way.

[CoolSquall]

Had a look through all the Google guides, they all seem very straightforward email wise but GSuite is another scary story!

 

Thanks for your suggestions!