Single Office 365 Tenant or Multiple Office 365 Tenant – Help Me to Decide (Office 365 Single Tenant vs Multi Tenant)
Summary: This article is dedicated to the user query i.e. “Office 365 single tenant vs multiple tenants comparisons” so if you are also looking for the same. Then go through this complete write-up to know the insights of tenants in Office 365 and which to choose between Office 365 single tenant and multiple tenants.
Table of Content
- PS: SaaS Architecture
- What is Microsoft Office 365 as a SAAS?
- What is Microsoft Office 365 Tenant or Single Tenant?
- What is Multiple Tenant in Office 365?
- Office 365 Single Tenant vs Multiple Tenant Comparison
- What if Your Organization Needs a Single Office 365 Tenant But You Have Multi Tenants?
- Concluding Thoughts
- FAQs
Office 365 is a business productivity suite of online services that are designed to work together to provide professional-level day-to-day services in the fields of messaging, file sharing, and online meetings. Moreover, this application suite includes features that allow administrators to add multiple users, manage passwords, licenses, and much more. This Software as a Service (SaaS)* lets users connect and use cloud-based applications over the Internet.
Moreover, it can be used both at work and for personal dealings, on private devices. Office 365 uses Tenant that works as a container for the items of an organization, for instance, domains, users, subscriptions, etc. So, an Office 365 tenant is a sandboxed environment for an organization and its assets.
However, when it comes to choosing between a single Office 365 tenant and multiple Office 365 tenants, users often get confused about what is right for them. Therefore, today we have come up with this article. Here, we will demonstrate the key differences between a single Office 365 tenant and multiple tenants along with the architecture.
PS: SaaS Architecture
What is Microsoft Office 365 as a SAAS?
Microsoft Office 365 is a Software as a Service that offers multiple services such as SharePoint Online, Lync Online, Exchange Online, and Office Professional Plus. Almost all online services comprise a set of features available on their on-premises counterparts. Online Services from Microsoft are subscription-based, hosted services, and on-demand applications that provide an organization a consistent experience across multiple devices. Some eminent services offered by Office 365 as a SaaS are the following:
- Hosted email – 25 GB of free storage space per user, business-class email3, shared calendars, and the capability to use your own domain name.
- Active Directory integration – To manage permissions and user credentials. Synchronization with Active Directory and Single sign-on.
- Simple file sharing – SkyDrive Pro provides each user with 7 GB of free storage that can be accessed from anywhere.
- Office Web Apps – Create/ edit Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote files using a web browser.
- Office Mobile Apps – To access, read, and view Excel, Word, and PowerPoint files on iPhones and Windows Phones.
- Web Conferencing – To conduct meetings over the web with the help of HD video conferencing, instant messaging, and screen sharing.
- Public Website – To spread the business with a website, which is easy to set up, using own company domain name and site mailboxes.
- E-Discovery Center – Applications to support compliance. Search SharePoint sites as well as Exchange mailboxes.
- Business Intelligence – Create and manage the interactive dashboards along with multiple data sources.
What is Microsoft Office 365 Tenant or Single Tenant?
Office 365 Tenant works for an organization and generates an environment for the assets. It is inside the overall Data Center. While creating a tenant for an organization, first users need to create a Microsoft Office 365 account. For this, they have to find out the domain that is available. Generally, organizations opt for a domain that they use everywhere including their mail, websites, etc. To create a tenant for an organization, it will register two different DNS entries by default. To give an illustration:
Suppose the tenant’s name is Syscloud. So, the DNS entry that will be created is the following:
- syscloud.onmicrosoft.com
Here, the name of the tenant is syscloud. Hence, the default domain name for the Tenant will be syscloud.onmicrosoft.com. After this, if the admin adds any other user then, they will have an email address/ login credentials of user@syscloud.onmicrosoft.com.
Tenant is free of cost and the cost only comes while purchasing a subscription for the tenant and the cost varies according to the number of licenses. It might be SharePoint Online, Office 365 Subscription, Power BI, Exchange, and much more.
What is Multiple Tenant in Office 365?
There are several organizations for whom a single Office 365 tenant may not be sufficient. In certain situations, guaranteeing that data that is stored in the cloud is within certain regions, may imply that the organization needs to provision mailboxes or else manage the end users in more than a single tenant.
The basic reason why companies should consider multiple tenants is when there is a global end-user base. Office 365 tenants are based upon the confines of a single region also, an organization might need their end users’ mailboxes to close to avoid the latency that is associated with traversing the Internet.
Another common reason to opt for multiple Office 365 tenants is to ensure that at-rest data stays inside the confines of a particular region to meet an organization’s local legislation. Some other possible reasons for multiple tenants include the following:
- Partnerships, Alliances, and Joint Ventures: When two or more companies agree to work simultaneously then, their users need to be integrated.
- Mergers and Acquisitions: Mergers and acquisitions cause multiple tenants to be displaced until the environments are unfilled.
- Data Sovereignty Regulations: Several countries have governmental regulations about where data must reside. Also, sometimes multinationals employ Office 365 tenants in two or more countries to comply.
- Ethical Firewall Requirements: A few organizations (like accounting, consulting, investments, banks, law firms, etc.) might use separate tenants to avoid internal conflicts of interest.
- Administrator Separation Enforcement: Sometimes organizations choose multiple tenants to enforce separation between admins.
Today, Microsoft made it possible to have a single Active Directory forest that is synchronized with multiple Office 365 tenants, possibly across geographic regions.
So, Which One is Better for Me: Single Office 365 Tenant or Multiple Office 365 Tenant?
If you’re not sure which Office 365 tenant is best for your business then, it is essential to understand the difference between them. So, let’s uncover some of the main differences in the following section:
Office 365 Single Tenant vs Multiple Tenant Comparison
| Single Office 365 Tenant | Multiple Office 365 Tenant |
|---|---|
| All users are treated by the same company | Users from other tenants are treated as guests (limited user experience) |
| Better user experience overall | Delve is limited to one Office 365 tenant |
| Seamless sharing experience | Shared mailboxes cannot be shared with users from different tenants |
| SharePoint Search will return results for all organizations and the new intelligent/modern search recommendations will have a full experience of all the organization’s content | SharePoint Search, as well as Term Store, are bound to a single tenant |
| Term Store can be used across the whole organization | External users cannot be pre-authorized on the SharePoint content; they have to follow the invitation workflow on a case-by-case basis via the email invitation. External will also be required to be enabled. |
| Users will have a single OneDrive for Business site | Users will have multiple OneDrive for Business sites (one for each tenant) |
| Using services like Flow, PowerApps, PowerBI, Stream, and Forms will be much easier | Trying to use services like Flow, PowerApps, PowerBI, Stream, and Forms will be much more complicated |
| Full Teams Experience (no need to switch between tenants) | Limited Teams Experience (needs to switch between tenants) |
| Full Experience in Office 365 Groups | Limited Experience in Office 365 Groups |
| Sync offline any document library in SharePoint | Can’t sync offline document libraries from multiple tenants |
| Users will have a single-user profile | Users will have multiple profiles which will become inconsistent |
It is evident from the above comparison that managing multiple Office 365 tenants can be a complex workload for admins. Especially when your organization does not need multiple Office 365 tenants. Let’s discuss the solution to this problem in the coming section.
What If Your Organization Needs a Single Office 365 Tenant But You Have Multi Tenants?
From a high level of technical standpoint, if an organization chooses to switch from multiple Office 365 tenant to one Office 365 then, organizations need to perform data migration between them. To successfully do this task, an organization needs to do Office 365 tenant to tenant migration. It will help administrators to easily manage the data of all users. For this operation, we suggest you SysTools Office 365 Merge Tool. It is not only the most secure and reliable software, but it also offers several smart features that make it outstanding.
Find Out the Below Steps to Merge Multiple Office 365 Tenants into One
Step 1. After downloading the software, launch it on your computer. Select Office 365 as the source and destination platform.
Step 2. Select the required mailbox items that you want to move to the single tenant. Apply date filter for selective data transfer, then click on next.
Step 3. Provide source Office 365 admin credentials to log in to the software. Validate required permission and click on next.
Step 4. Add user accounts from the source and destination and create mapping between them.
Step 5. Select user accounts validate them and click on Start Migration to initiate the process.
Concluding Thoughts
Multiple departments, sister companies, remote locations, and different agencies are some of the main factors due to which organizations use multiple Office 365 tenants. However, the situation becomes complex when it comes to choosing between a single Office 365 tenant and multiple tenants.
Hence, this article comprises complete information about single and multiple Office 365 tenants. Apart from this, we also have done a detailed comparison between the two single Office 365 tenants and multi-tenant. It totally depends on you which one is better single Office 365 tenant or multiple tenants for your organization.
FAQ
Q1. What is the difference between a Single Office 365 Tenant and Multiple Tenants?
A Single Office 365 Tenant refers to a single instance of Office 365 serving an entire organization, on the other hand Multiple Tenants involve separate instances for different entities or departments within an organization.
Q2. What are the advantages of having a Single Office 365 Tenant?
When your organization has a single Office 365 tenant then you experience the following benefits such as:
- It offers a more centralized management, which makes it easier for administration and consistent policies.
- It helps in simplifying the overall collaboration by enhancing the sharing and communication across the organization.
- Eventually it becomes cost effective and delivers cost savings on licensing and maintenance.
Q3. I have multiple Office 365 Tenants in my organization, how can I merge them into a single tenant?
If you have multiple tenants and you want to merge them into one, then you can use the above mentioned software to execute this task in just 5 steps as mentioned below.
- Step 1. Download and install the software on PC.
- Step 2. Choose Office 365 as the source and destination.
- Step 3. Enable required workload and apply date filter.
- Step 4. Login with Office 365 admin details and validate.
- Step 5. Create Mapping and select users and hit start button.
