The Time Is Now for Office 365 Migration

By | Managed Services News

Apr 13

How organizations handle Office 365 migration is the difference between a swift, efficient upgrade with minimal disruption and downtime–or a long, costly process.

In this two-part blog series, we’ll begin by exploring the reasons why now, more than ever, organizations should have a strategy in place for migrating IT operations to the cloud–starting with migrating email workloads to Office 365–and the challenges associated with such an Office 365 migration move. In the second part we’ll examine the ways to overcome these challenges, and the benefits associated with third-party managed migrations.

The business case for Office 365 migration is strong and one that MSPs are well-versed in: increased mobility; simple scalability; reduced management, maintenance and IT costs; better security; and an estimated 112% ROI over three years, according to A Forrester Total Economic Impact Study Commissioned By Microsoft in October 2018

With an enormous recent influx of remote workers, it’s not a question of “if” but “when” your customers should move IT operations to the cloud. Their next decision will be the most important one, because how they handle the migration is the difference between a swift, efficient upgrade for the company with minimal disruption and downtime–or a long, costly process fraught with complications, setbacks and company-wide disruption.

The biggest challenges organizations face during an Office 365 migration:

  1. User disruption. Email is critical to carry out many normal business functions. It’s frustrating for users when email goes out for 15 minutes; imagine that disruption scaled up throughout a migration project that lasts months. It’s a risk that organizations can’t afford to take. Ensuring users maintain uninterrupted access to email throughout the migration is crucial.
  2. The “human” factor presents a wide margin for error. Not every aspect of a migration can be automated, and some tasks are extremely detail oriented and arduous. Typically there is not a lot of in-house experience around migrations; the manual and repetitive tasks increase the risk for error, which can result in user disruption, extended timelines, and, in some cases, permanent data loss, which is a big no-no for user satisfaction as well as regulatory compliance.
  3. Migrations are extremely time consuming. When performed in-house, the migration process can become a full-time job, and IT departments cannot ignore day-to-day operations. The migration process must be managed in a way that keeps the IT department available for routine tasks as well as any urgent needs.
  4. Decentralized and complex data sources. While most organizations are on top of the email migration portion of a digital transformation, oftentimes the dispersed third-party archive systems and PST files are forgotten. If this related data isn’t also migrated to the cloud, there’s a missing piece to the puzzle that could hinder productivity and a positive user experience. These systems and their data require even more expertise to move. Take PST files, for example: Locating and eradicating PST files is a slow, painful process. Typically, these files are sprawled all over the network (as well as on local devices and network shares). These files can be corrupted or password-protected, and Microsoft does not have a native tool to aid in easy discovery. Similarly, with third-party archives, deep knowledge of both the source system and target system are required to migrate data quickly and without error or disruption.
  5. Unforeseen complications can extend project timelines and costs. Sometimes these issues are predictable, but not in all cases. Instability with Exchange, any misconfiguration problems or data corruption combined with potential issues with your source system/files (archive systems, PST files) can throw a wrench in even the best laid plans, pushing out your completion date and throwing your customers’ budget (and potentially your margins) out the window.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this blog series, where we will unpack how to successfully mitigate these challenges to achieve a swift, efficient migration.

To learn more about our migration best practices and tips check out our Data Migration Risk Assessment Template with our checklist to help ensure successful migration projects.

Contact us today to speak with a migration specialist, and keep your customers moving with Quadrotech.

 Nick Dishman is the Vice President of Channel Sales for Quadrotech in North America. He has been with Quadrotech since 2014 and has over 13 years of experience with Channel Sales in technology.

Quadrotech is a global software vendor that has migrated millions of users and petabytes of data to Office 365 with its industry-leading archive, mailbox, PST file, and tenant-to-tenant migration tools. Alongside these, our SaaS Management Platform, Nova, enables partners and their customers to get the most value from their Office 365 investment. Learn more at quadrotech-it.com.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.

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