Do you have an Office 365 migration in your future? Whether it’s being driven by M&A activity or simply your organization’s broader cloud commitment, you might be a little stressed about it, since you probably know full well that migrations that aren’t done right can take on a life of their own.
The good news is, you’re not alone as you plan to migrate to Office 365. We’ve seen our share of migrations over the years, and we rounded up a few of our migration experts from around the globe and for their best advice on overcoming the most common challenges. They narrowed it down to five key do’s and don’ts to simplify the sometimes daunting O365 migration process:
- Don’t skimp on preparation.
If you’ve done a migration in the past, then you already know this: Thorough preparation is critical. (Hopefully, you didn’t learn it the hard way!) Our migration experts identified seven key questions that you should make sure you get answers to during your preparation phase.
- Do plan for co-existence.
Like roadwork projects, migrations typically take weeks or months — but unlike road crews, who can sometimes shut down a portion of a highway while they make upgrades, you can’t shutter your business for a migration. As you migrate to O365, you need to enable users to stay productive throughout the project. For example, during a migration from on-prem Exchange to Exchange Online, users need to be able to communicate and schedule meetings, even though some of them have been migrated and others have not. If you use a tool with strong coexistence capabilities, then that collaboration is seamless. If not, you’ll hear about it from your users, but probably not in a positive way.
- Do minimize the impact on the business.
Seamless coexistence is essential to minimizing the impact of a migration on the business, but it’s by no means the only thing. You also need to ensure that the migration is complete and accurate, complete the project as quickly as possible, and be able to easily provide management with progress updates. You goal is to make your migration a non-event instead of a major event.
- Do implement the ABCs of security.
Your Office 365 migration is the perfect time to implement the security measures that were too difficult to do in your legacy environment, but that you know you should have in place. Three words: Audit. Backup. Control. They can make all the difference in making your new Office 365 environment secure.
- Don’t forget about post-migration management.
Migrating to Office 365 eliminates a lot of administrative responsibilities — but not all of them. You’ll want to have the right tools in place prior to your migration to ensure a secure and effective environment right out of the gate.
Dig deeper into all these lessons learned in our new Office 365 Migration Guide: Five key dos & don’ts for a success migration.