SBS 2011 and E1 Plan for Non profits.

Question

I've got a charitable client who has SBS2011. The 75 user limit has not been a problem until now.
They now need all their staff, most of whom are in satellite locations, to each have an Exchange email address. However Office 365 Enterprise
E1 PLan for Non Profits would be free for them. 
My question is this; can they use Active Directory integration with SBS 2011 on E1 plan for 350 users, even though SBS 2011 has a 75 user limit? We would just want them all listed in the Global Address Book etc.
There only other alternative is to spend money on new hardware to upgrade to standard server and full blown exchange to get around the 75 user limit on SBS 2011.

Answer 1

You could achieve this by migrating the email from the local SBS to Office365, and then adding the additional (non-SBS) users directly in Office365 - that way all users would be in the same Global Address list.
You have the choice of either:
1. setting up the Office365 users completely separate from your AD (ie just create all users under Office365, and migrate over the email from those who had onsite mailboxes using something like MigrationWiz)
or
2. using the MS migration approach and setting up DirSync on a local server to sync the onsite AD users with Office365, migrating their email over, and then adding the additional Office365-only users directly via the Office365 admin portal
With either option, as long as your onsite user count remains within the SBS 75 user limit, it won't be an issue.
Hope that helps
John
-- John Murdoch APOJ Ltd