Managed Migration: a Fast and Safe Approach to Migrating Your Customers to Office 365

In last month’s blog, “The Time Is Now to Migrate to Office 365,” we touched on the recent drive to migrate to the cloud as well as the challenges that companies face when migrating email data to Office 365. In the second part of our two-part series, we delve into the ways you can overcome challenges associated with Office 365 migrations and the benefits of choosing a third-party managed migration service to handle your customers’ projects.

What is a managed migration and how does it address the associated challenges?

A market-leading managed migration service will conduct the project from beginning to end, and typically includes a dedicated operations team to ensure a smooth-running project with experienced consultants for faster setup and operation. Many migration vendors allow MSPs and customers to run the migration software themselves, but with minimal training and experience (especially when dealing with complex migrations) that approach can lead back to the very challenges you and your customers were trying to avoid in the first place.

As an MSP, the vendor you choose to partner with will ultimately determine the amount of services that you will need to provide in relation to the migration. If your vendor doesn’t provide managed migrations, you’ll be left to handle all aspects of the migration service, which can be difficult for MSPs to manage and scale if they don’t have the necessary technical resources and it isn’t their core competency.

If you work with a vendor that does provide managed migrations (like Quadrotech), there’s no need to provide these technical services. This means you can focus on formal project management, the Office 365 rollout and other activities that add value to your customer. We know how important it is that you, as a trusted advisor that owns the relationship with the end user, expertly guide your customer to a qualified vendor and reduce any potential friction down the road.

How you and your customers will benefit from a managed migration.

Working with an experienced migration vendor partner reduces risk, ensuring the job is done right the first time with reduced errors and increased efficacy. You and your customers both likely have competent and highly capable IT staff, but it’s unlikely you have hundreds of migration projects under your belt. Furthermore, is it worth the time and cost for your team to train and gain technical skills for a migration project that will likely only be partially transferrable to a future customer’s project? Probably not.

Unfortunately, migrations are not exempt from Murphy’s Law, and you want those handling the migration to be well-versed and prepared to handle complex and irregular situations that arise. In the wise words of our CTO, Paul Robichaux, “I don’t want to do my own heart surgery or my own appendectomy, and I’m sure you don’t want to, either.”

While migrations can sometimes be viewed as “routine,” and a skilled technical resource likely could “figure it out,” in practice,