Simplifying Your Office 365 Migration

August 3, 2022

Why Migrate to Office 365?

Migrating to Office 365 can provide your business with multiple benefits, including improving your employee’s productivity (work anytime from anywhere), enhanced security and data compliance, immediate access to the latest Office 365 features and updates, and increased storage. In addition, you gain scalability and cost control, knowing precisely what to budget for, and you can customize plans to ensure each of your employees has access to the best workloads for their roles. You can also scale up or down instantly, which is helpful if you experience rapid growth or your business has seasonal fluctuations.

What’s the difference between Office 365 and Microsoft 365?

Recently, Microsoft changed the name of its product offerings to Microsoft 365. The primary difference between Office 365 and Microsoft 365 is that Microsoft 365 offers all the benefits of Office 365 but adds Windows 10 licenses and Enterprise Mobility and Security (EMS) tools. Microsoft 365 adds a layer of security for your users. It is a bit pricier than Office 365 but a more complete service package. Below is a quick comparison of Office 365 and Microsoft 365.

• Included in both – Office 365, email and calendar, meetings and voice, social and intranet, files and content, work management, compliance management
• Additional Microsoft 365 features – device and apps management, identity and access management, threat protection, security management

Migration Checklist to Ensure Success

You can ensure migration success by creating a checklist including timelines and responsibilities. Listed below are the critical elements of the checklist.

Prepare your organization 

This first step includes two critical items – making sure your hardware meets specific compatibility requirements and notifying your employees about the upcoming changes. Letting everyone within your organization know about the upcoming changes (and timeframe) will help as you begin to roll out your migration process. Preparing employees allows them time to ask how the change will impact them. Be sure to keep them informed throughout the process. Generally, employees do not like surprises.

Inventory everything 

You need an understanding of the current components in your environment. The list of things to inventory includes:

• User accounts (login names, email addresses) of current and recently departed employees
• All mailboxes (quantity and size)
• Client versions, specifications, and configurations (i.e., browsers, operating systems, applications, etc.)
• Network settings (DNS hosts, proxy or firewall settings, etc.)
• File storage details (location of file shares)
• Bandwidth
• Directory design
• Online communication platforms (messaging systems)
• Details of integrated applications (CRM, mail-enabled apps, etc.)

This step also includes deciding what information and data are moving to the cloud and what are not. You may consider storing excess data in a third-party archiver for later use.

Deploying Office 365

The tasks include adding your domain to Office/Microsoft 365. Create DNS records to reroute your domain traffic. Synchronize your servers and deploy your applications. Finally, make sure everything is operating and running smoothly. If you run into issues during deployment, Microsoft offers guidance.

After the migration

Test the entire suite for functionality. Answer employee questions to ensure they get the most out of Office 365.

Simplifying Your Migration

Migration to Microsoft/Office 365 can be a daunting task. Dewpoint has certified professionals able to assist you from planning through deployment. We make sure everything works as expected. Contact us if you need help determining the right product for your organization, compiling a complete checklist, or performing the migration.