IT staff headcount for O365 management?

[Natalie_H]

Hi all. I have a customer who is trying to figure out How many engineers does it take to manage O365? I have NO idea how to answer this question because I'm sure that depends on several variables.

Does anyone have best practice resources, case studies, whitepapers or anything on this subject that I can share with him?

[#2]

Way too many variables to consider here, and hard to give a generic answer. For the initial stages, they can keep their existing staff as they will be occupied with migration/adoption tasks, helping users with all the new features, and so on. As their O365 adoption matures, there might be some space to optimize headcount as on-premises systems are being decommissioned, however they can also consider moving said staff to help with other areas such as Azure, the Power platform, etc.

[#3]

@Natalie_H Another "it depends" here - how many users? What parts of 365 are they wanting to use? Do they need any specific internal SLAs etc?

At work we have 2 of us looking after it, although I do most of it, and it doesn't take up a lot of our time. That's about 120 staff, 700 pupils, using Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams.

If they're used to Exchange on-premise then once the migration is completed I'd say it will need a lot less of their time and attention as Exchange did (at least in my experience).

[#4]

Thanks so much. That's the confirmation I needed. I pretty much gave my customer the same answer ..."way too many variables, to give a generic answer".

[#5]

Thank you @CoasterKaty. I appreciate the additional questions I need to go back and ask, as well as the example. Good feedback :)