The 365Gov Show · Episode 01 · Live

Your M365 Tenant Is a Storage Unit(And You're Paying Rent on Junk)

Somewhere in your tenant there's a folder called Final_FINAL_v27, and you're paying rent on it. Join Microsoft MVP Alistair Pugin and guest Andy Huneycutt live to find where your Microsoft 365 storage really goes and what to clean up first.

Thursday, November 5, 202610 am PT · 1 pm ET · 6 pm GMT

Live, 60 minutesFree · Recording sent to all registrants

Hosted by Alistair Pugin, Microsoft MVP
with guest Andy Huneycutt

Save your seat

Can't make it live? Register anyway and we'll send you the recording.

The problem

Storage grows faster than headcount

If your tenant storage is growing like hair in the 90s, bigger every year with nobody quite sure why, somebody is paying for it.

Microsoft 365 storage grows because nobody owns content after it's created. Version history stacks up on every file. OneDrives belonging to people who left years ago sit untouched. Teams lose their last member and their owner. Meeting recordings get kept "just in case."

It all stays out of sight until a quota warning or an invoice arrives. With Microsoft's pay-as-you-go storage now in preview, that drift can turn into a recurring line on your bill unless someone governs ownership and lifecycle.

This episode puts names and numbers on where the space goes, then works through what to fix first.

What you'll walk away with

A cleanup plan you can start the next morning

Where your storage really goes

The four places tenant storage hides: version history, leavers’ OneDrives, ownerless Teams and sites, and meeting recordings.

What to check first

The settings to look at on day one, in the order that recovers the most space for the least risk.

Retention and your bill, in one conversation

How retention policies and holds keep content (and cost) alive, and how to tell records you must keep from clutter you can clear.

Questions to ask before you buy more storage

What to check before you sign off the next storage add-on request, so every gigabyte you pay for holds content someone still needs.

A straight answer on pay-as-you-go storage

Does Microsoft’s new pay-as-you-go storage preview fix the problem, or does it just send you a bigger bill? Alistair and Andy give their view and what they’d do with it.

On the show

We open the M365 storage unit nobody has opened since 2019

Segment 1

The Storage Trail

Version history nobody limits, OneDrives from people who left in 2023, Teams with no members and no owner, recordings kept forever.

Segment 2

The Compliance Wall

Common storage habits go up on the wall and get judged against what retention actually requires.

Segment 3

The Tenant Score

A tenant gets scored with the 365Gov Score, so you can see what the findings look like on real data.

Segment 4

The Recycle Bin Reveal

The Global Admin finds out what the Recycle Bin really does with everything he deletes.

Who should watch

Built for

Microsoft 365 and SharePoint admins, collaboration and digital workplace leads, IT operations managers, and anyone else who owns the M365 tenant day-to-day.

Also worth your time

IT finance, procurement, records managers, and CIOs looking at a storage add-on request and wondering what's behind it.

Host

Alistair Pugin

Alistair Pugin is a Microsoft MVP and Founder, specializing in Microsoft 365, cloud collaboration, and information management. With over 20 years of IT experience, he helps organizations improve productivity, governance, and collaboration.

Guest

Andy Huneycutt

Andy is a Microsoft MVP and Manager of IT AI Platform Engineering at Advocate Health, specializing in enterprise AI, Microsoft 365 Copilot, adoption, and governance. Andy is also President of Upskill Tech and co-host of 365 Deep Dive.

About the show

The 365Gov Show

Each episode, host Alistair Pugin and a guest take one Microsoft 365 governance problem and work it through on a real tenant, with practical steps you can take back to your own environment. Presented by ENow Software, makers of the free 365Gov Score.

Want a head start? Get your free 365Gov Score before the show and compare your tenant with the one we score.

Is it free?

Yes. The show is free to watch live and on demand.

Will there be a recording?

Yes. Everyone who registers gets the recording by email after the show, whether or not they attend live.

Can I ask questions?

Yes. Bring questions about your own tenant to the live chat. Alistair and Andy will take as many as time allows.

Do I need to prepare anything?

No. If you want to get more out of it, note your current used and available storage in the SharePoint admin center before the show.