Microsoft Office Suite has been the heart of all businesses for a very long time. With evolving technology, Microsoft has developed a newer variant of the Microsoft Suite known as Office 365 which works with the power for the cloud. Office 365 is built on a subscription-based model, which means that businesses have to pay a monthly subscription fee to use it. Also, it provides a lot of flexibility to the businesses, as the businesses can make a custom bundle and end up paying for only what they use.
Due to these added benefits that businesses get with the latest offering by Microsoft, the Tenant To Tenant Migration processes have increased. With several migrations every day, many of them fail or go through difficulties, which affect the business workflows. Below are some pieces of advice and recommendations that every business and tenant admin should follow for a successful and smooth migration.
Office 365 is usually a company’s primary and major step into the public cloud. That transfer is usually followed by several doubts and issues, but Microsoft has constantly made sure to have every client’s data separate from the others and that approach has been established to be a very efficient way of improving security. Yet now it looks like virtually every business is utilizing Office 365. As they start experiencing mergers, divestitures, or acquisitions the strict division of AD tenants is very challenging and complicated. Hence, the migration of users and data from one tenant to another is a difficult task.
So here are some tips for an Efficient Tenant to Tenant Migration:
Determine what needs to Migrate
Businesses should get into specific details of every data, application, and other files so that they have an overview of what is important and is being utilized. Generating a report on this can help the business, as they would come across the files and applications that are not useful and henceforth can leave them. There are thousands of business-to-businesses and business-to-consumer accounts in the source tenant which take up terabytes of spaces. Businesses should sort them out as it would help them save a lot of storage too and streamline the migration process. As all the unnecessary data would b not migrated, the process would also speed up as the files in the migration process would we less
Determine the scope of migration
Every business should have a basic understanding of what the migration process is, and what exactly will be taking place. Similarly, they should also decide what should be included in the migration project. the businesses should survey what would be included in the migration process, whether it would be only the email accounts or emails or the data of other applications such as SharePoint too. Once they have an overview of all the details, they can produce an estimated time and the requirements for the completion of the Migration process and work towards it accordingly. Businesses can use SharePoint Migration Services to migrate SharePoint from one Tenant to another.
Migration Monitoring and Progress Reports
As the migration process takes place, it is advisable to track the progress of the process. Businesses should opt for migration services providers who provide a dashboard to businesses, on which they can track the real-time progress of the Migration taking place. This way businesses know what is taking place and how much time to expect as they would have the real-time progress report in the dashboard.
Backup Existing Tenant
One of the important recommendations for all the businesses who plan for migration is having a backup of the Source tenant. Businesses should make sure that they include all the important data such as users, group memberships, end-users, and so on.
Consider the helpdesk capacity during the migration process.
Here is another point that you should be aware of that users will require assistance. Initially, your helpdesk staff may cover just a few questions about the migration process. But once the process is initiated, there will be plenty of calls and issue tickets, so make sure that the helpdesk is staffed properly and available all the time depending on the number of mailboxes or accounts you are migrating on a designated day.
Invest in the ideal tools
As mentioned earlier the requirement for an enterprise backup and recovery solution, but you will have to invest in other tools as well but keep in mind that you still require precise planning and expertise. Additionally, for a safe migration solution, you will require tools for the process, auditing as well as reporting, and management after the migration. Remember not to manage any of these processes with PowerShell scripts, and the tools will remain to make your work simpler and your system more secure and reliable long after the migration is done.
However, migrations are both complicated and crucial, and the majority of IT professionals have limited expertise with them. It is better to involve a third-party migration service to ensure that there is no significant data loss, and the migration is carried out successfully. Investing little funds for getting assistance from the experts with successful track records for complicated migration would be an ideal decision to make which will be worth the money when your migration is finished on budget, on schedule, and with the least effects on your business processes.
The majority of the businesses that adopt the Microsoft cloud also prefer to keep some part of their on-premises IT system, including Active Directory (AD). Microsoft states that 75% of clients with a minimum of 500 users have a hybrid AD system and their on-premises AD continues to be the primary source of authorization and authentication, and they sync that on-premises AD to Azure AD with the help of Azure AD Connect. Generally, having one or two hybrid systems further complicates the process of migration through a merger or acquisition.
As you see, these were some of the recommendations that can help businesses to carry out the migration process smoothly without any hindrances. Apps4Rent provides reliable migration services with round-the-clock support. They also offer cloud computing solutions such as Cloud Based Desktop with top-notch security and regular maintenance.
