Managing Office 365 Tasks

On average, organizations surveyed spent 22.3 hours per month on such management tasks as managing subscriptions, billing, security and a range of other maintenance and use functions. The largest organizations – those with at least 501 end users – reported the highest average time, at 34.3 hours. Meanwhile, organizations with 51 to 100 end users spent the least, at 8.78 hours while the smallest organizations – from one to 50 users – spent an average of 13.03 hours per month on the management activities.

Does this reinforce a case for small businesses to consider outsourcing their oversight of Office 365?

Pyle says yes, based on the survey results and anecdotally from the "hundreds" of help desk calls Message Ops fields from businesses of all sizes. "We receive and spend the most time with the smaller size accounts," he told ITBestOfBreed.

"The glaring thing … is that it doesn’t make sense for them [to spend more money]. Somebody else can do it for cheaper," he said.