Office 365 Step by Step Migration Methodology
Driven by the intense sales focus of Microsoft, the use of Office 365 across the globe is growing rapidly. For organizations of all sizes, Office 365 provides an enormous array of communication and collaboration services. By migrating to Microsoft Office 365, many of the leading enterprises have accelerated their performance at a rapid pace. This Microsoft’s cloud version of communications and collaboration suite is more preferred over other solutions since it is compatible with any existing infrastructure. And the ease of set up for mobile users and desktop users across varied platforms like Android, iPhone, Blackberry and Windows make it a promising choice for business people.
Migrating to Office 365 involves a careful study during pre-migration process and planning a definitive roadmap in mitigating issues with the present on-premise setup and executing the actual migration strategies. There is a steep learning curve for those who have not involved in the migration process of Office 365. For small medium businesses who are looking to leverage cloud technologies such as Office 365, Smart IMS can assist with minimal in-house IT support. At Smart IMS, we see the migration of Office 365 as a multi-phased project that require expertise in change management, project management, technical support and technical consulting.
The step-by-step Office 365 Migration Methodology involves:
Identifying the realities of migrating to Office 365:
In evaluating the shift to Office 365, a significant planning exercise is required from any organization that has an established business processes and current on-premise infrastructure. Numerous critical decisions such as selection of third party migration tools, involving an external consultancy and the approach required to implement are taken into consideration while planning a move to Office 365.
Identify the right usage of Office 365:
As mentioned earlier, Office 365 provides an array of capabilities for enabling 3 c’s such as communication, collaboration and compliance for enterprises. Identifying the right usage of Office 365 is a key in terms of migration. It is very vital to decide whether to use specific capabilities of Office 365 or use all the cloud services that are offered. It is also important to decide whether to opt for the hybrid approach that could either be a short-term strategy for migration or a long-term route for optimizing IT service delivery.
Identify the correct Office 365 plan that makes sense to your organization:
Procuring the correct Office 365 plan that suits the needs of enterprises play a key role for effective migration. With increasing levels of service coverage and capabilities, Microsoft offers varied plans for Office 365. Any enterprise that plans to use a hybrid configuration between Office 365 and on-premise servers must ideally select a plan that supports Azure AD to enable seamless identity management and administrative tasks between the environments.
Pre-migration checks and develop a migration plan:
Pre-migration checks and developing a migration plan include crucial tasks such as:
- Understanding the limitations in Office 365
- Check and review bandwidth availability and design
- Assess active directory health
- Assess exchange server health
- Assess share point server health
- Catalogue dependencies with other applications
- Availability of skilled IT staff
- Assess level of staff knowledge in Office 365
- Review compliance requirements
- Review data privacy requirements
- Assess firewall structure
- Develop a migration plan
- Develop a backup and recovery plan,
- Develop a disaster recovery/business continuity plan.
Migrate to Office 365:
Finally, the stage is set for actual migration to Office 365 which is usually carried out in phases. Most of the enterprises look at frequently shifting user mailboxes to Exchange online first and then migrate other aspects of exchange.
Achieve business value and drive effective use:
After successful migration, the key aspects involved in achieving business value and drive effective usage include:
- Senior Executive Support
- Develop departmental champions
- Provide user training
- Help users overcome problems
- Replacing outdated equipment
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About SmartIMS – ConnX
Smart IMS – ConnX is a technology solutions oriented company integrating Application Development, Cloud Transformation Services, Managed Services and Professional Services.
As a leader in the unified communications field, Smart IMS – ConnX consistently delivers applications to enable users to be mobile, agile and competitive, helping enterprises to increase revenues, improve efficiency and mitigate risks.
The company, headquartered in Plainsboro, New Jersey (US), with offices in India, Singapore, Sydney, deploys a global delivery model and deep domain expertise originating in the Trader Voice and Financial sector, with a focus on transforming traditional PBX to SIP-based telecommunications services.
Smart IMS serves Fortune 1000 as well as emerging organizations across industries and geographies to transform their business from traditional model to cloud and digital.
Our values and culture is focused to deliver quality, scalability, predictability in execution and an enhanced customer experience.
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