Migrating to Office 365 can really boost your organization’s productivity, but it is not without its challenges. The cloud version of Microsoft offers many benefits such as overall flexibility, increased collaboration, and organized data store.  In fact, Microsoft Office 365 is the most common business productivity software. In order to make sure that your migration to O365 goes as smoothly as possible, we come up with a list of challenges so that you may plan accordingly with your IT Managed Services Provider.  

What type of Migration Do You Need? 

Like most things, migrating to Office 365 requires a bit of planning. Discerning what type of environment you will be working in is useful information when it comes to determining your overall migration strategy whether you employ a cutover, staged, or a hybrid migration. Microsoft has tools in place to help you with every stage of the migration process. Additionally, making sure that you have an accurate inventory of your assets will be vital to your migration success. 

So what types of Migration possibilities are there? 

Cutover Migration: 

This means you choose to move ALL of your data at once to Office 365. The number of users your organization has will determine the best way to accomplish this, with either the Setup wizard or Exchange Admin Center (EAC). 

Staged Migration: 

You can also elect to move all of your Exchange Mailbox database in batches, or stages. This is helpful if you have large amounts of data to migrate. This gives admins some breathing room in the overall migration process before adopting a completely new system. It also conserves bandwidth in the process. 

Hybrid Migration: 

A hybrid migration means you migrate to Office 365 but still maintain an on-premises server. You can do this permanently or temporarily to reduce downtime and migrate your mailboxes in small batches. There are some system requirements to deploy this type of migration and older servers will also require upgrades before this type of migration is possible.  Hybrid migrations are ideal for organizations with large stores of data and ones that need an on-premises server to co-exist with the Exchange Online.  

Security and Compliance Requirements 

Migration to Office 365 for most organizations is best managed by a reputable IT Managed Services Provider like pim. Most migrations can be tricky and Microsoft support will not be adequate.  

IT professionals like pim will always check to make sure that your data is safe and secure.  Office 365 has the capability to utilize multi-factor authentication, anti-spam, encryption and rights management, as well as device management.  However, there are always security implications when migrating systems to O365, especially if you are in the financial or healthcare fields. You cannot risk the loss or exposure of any client/patient data. And while Microsoft can handle the migration of email, calendars and events, more sensitive data really should be completed by an IT professional prepared to handle the work in a secure manner.  

Bandwidth Concerns 

Most organizations have a large amount of data to be migrated, but the downtime required to do this migration can be costly. You may experience delays in the overall working processes of your business, if this is not well planned out. Again, utilizing and IT professional that can use migration tools specifically designed to mitigate this risk and make the SharePoint data migration process run more efficiently.  

pim is well equipped to handle all of your Microsoft Office 365 needs.  They are aware of the challenges involved and have experience in handling them with success.