How to Create an Office 365 Migration Strategy

Migration projects are generally overwhelming for businesses. They need to move all their resources from one platform to a new platform. Migrating to Office 365 is also similar even if you are familiar with the MS ecosystem.

If you are completely moving to Office 365, then you need to move all of your content to either Office 365 cloud or to a hybrid solution. The decision will ultimately depend on your business needs. However, this is going to be the first hurdle during the migration process.

You should consider your business goals before deciding between public and hybrid infrastructure. If you are migrating to cloud services, then you will have higher availability. It will become very easy to scale up or down your resources. This is not possible with on-premises solutions.

You don’t need to worry about purchasing infrastructure hardware. Thus, this will help you in lowering down your costs. Your IT capacity can meet your future business growth without increasing infrastructure.

If you are using the hybrid solution, then you need to invest more time into management. It is your duty to manage patches and updates. However, you can upload your data to the cloud. This will ensure that your users can access your data from anywhere in the world.

How to Deploy Microsoft Office 365?

You need to first determine the environment that you are going to use. After that, you need to buy-in from the stakeholders and start planning the deployment process. We are going to give you a checklist that you can follow for deploying Microsoft Office 365.

1. Start with doing research

You should know about your current IT environment. There is an MS readiness check available on the Microsoft website that you can follow. There are various automated tools that will help you in gathering information about the services. You can check the configuration requirements for the MS services that you want to implement.

You should have a list of your IT assets. This will help you in creating a migration plan. Make sure that you know about the IT assets that you actually use.

2. Check your mailbox requirements

You should know about the mailbox item counts and size before moving to MS Office 365. This will help you in determining the time taken during the migration process. MS is also offering coexistence for the businesses that are currently using the Exchange Servers for email services.

3. Determine the best user identity model for your business

MS is offering various identity models to its users. You can use it for managing and setting up your user accounts. The main identity models are:

• Cloud identity will help you in managing Office 365 accounts only.
• Federated identity is using the single-sign-on approach. You can manage accounts from your on-premise network. Also, it is very easy to sync your accounts with Office 365. However, your users don’t need to log in every time they switch between different environments. All they need to do is login into one environment. After that, they can easily switch between different environments.
• The synchronized identity will help you in managing your on-premise accounts. It is very easy to sync them with your Office 365 account. However, users need to sign in every time they are switching between different environments.

4. Don’t impact your end-users

You should find the right migration tool for your business. It is never a give a good idea to cut-off yourself from the old source when you are moving your resources. This can cause a problem if you are moving large databases and datasets. You have to ensure that both the destination and source coexist together.

You should look for a tool that follows the best practices. This will ensure that the entire migration process will be smooth. It should support incremental migration. This will ensure that your users won’t get disrupted during the entire migration process. If your users are going to get disrupted during the migration process, then it will affect their productivity.

You should ensure that your business is moving during the migration process. Look for the best migration tools that are available in the market. This will help you in simplifying the migration process.

5. Validate and test

Your migration plan can never be complete without doing proper testing. You should test your plan and ensure that your plan is working properly. Make sure that you are validating all the mailbox items and users’ content before migrating your data. It is important to plan for remediation in case something goes wrong.

6. Train your users

If you are moving from an on-premise solution to a cloud solution, then everything is going to look different. Things are going to work differently in the cloud environment. Make sure that you are training your users before moving to the cloud. Your users should about the new processes and new technologies before you start the migration process.

7. Phased approach

You should never move all your applications and data in one breath. Office 365 will allow you to phase services and departments. This will ensure that you don’t need to move all your applications at once.

It will help you in simplifying the migration process. You can easily address issues if you are using the phased approach. It will ensure that you will have time for every problem. You can also learn from your mistakes during the migration process. This is not possible if you are moving all your applications together. You can train different departments at one time. This will help you in breaking down the training for services and software as you are rolling them out.

The migration project will be a less daunting task if you are using the phased approach. It will ensure that you won’t roll out something new without giving any training to your employees.

Conclusion

These are some tips that you can follow for creating an MS 365 migration plan. However, even small migration projects will lead to various issues. Sometimes you will face issues in the Active Directory. It is important to ensure that you are working with experts for solving this problem. Experienced MSPs like Bleuwire can help you in moving your applications and data to the cloud. They will help you in configuring your Office 365 environment. If you need more information regarding MS Office 365 migration, then you can contact Bleuwire.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™  services and solutions in how we can help your business.