A Step-By-Step Guide To Office 365 Migration

The use of Office 365 across the globe is growing rapidly, driven by the intense sales focus of Microsoft and its business partners, along with a clear value proposition for organizations of all sizes. While the uptake of Exchange Online is leading the early growth charge, there are significant opportunities for organizations to leverage additional components of Office 365. In this white paper, we present a step-by-step guide for migrating to Exchange Online and the other capabilities available in Office 365.

Any organization with established business processes, current on-premises infrastructure, and historical data under management faces a significant planning exercise before shifting to Office 365. There are numerous critical decisions to make while planning the shift to Office 365—including the approach to take, whether to involve an external consultancy, and the selection of third-party migration tools.

The migration process itself requires the appropriate mindset, approach, and a set of technical skills, tools, and experiences that are not always readily available among an organization’s current IT professionals—or as some early adopters have discovered, even among external IT consultants. Getting it right is important: if the migration process doesn’t work perfectly, staff won’t have the ability to read and respond to email, schedule meetings and book resources. These tasks are mission-critical for almost all organizations—so getting a migration right is essential.