Avoid a botched Office 365 migration by laying out a comprehensive plan to dodge these common issues.

If you’ve decided to migrate to Office 365, you’re not alone, as more than 60 million commercial customers currently use the cloud-based platform, according to the Redmond, WA computing giant. One of the top concerns you likely have is migrating the mountains of email you’ve accumulated over the years.

In this guide, we’ll address a number of concerns some of our customers have had when making the move to Office 365, and how, with a careful plan, migrating to Office 365 doesn’t have to be the headache that you may be envisioning.

A successful Office 365 migration requires careful planning

Some companies looking to move to the cloud will start the migration process without a real plan, which can lead to less than stellar results. As is the case with any migration process, whether it’s changing phone systems, moving offices, or migrating to Office 365, a careful plan should be drafted and approved by all of the key decision makers within a company. This migration plan should be vetted by IT managers to ensure it’s realistic and achievable.

Common problems seen when migrating email from Exchange to Office 365

At MessageOps, we’ve been a part of a large number of successful Office 365 migrations. This experience has unearthed a number of common problems we see when performing these moves. A few issues include:

Spotty network connection

A slow internet connection can drastically slow the movement of emails from Exchange to Office 365. However, there are ways to stage messages so that they’re uploaded in batches to avoid slow network issues.

Issues with the existing Exchange environment

If your existing Exchange environment has stability issues or corrupt database files, you could have issues when migrating to Office 365. These issues need to be considered and addressed prior to making the move.

Fear of email downtime

Occasionally, upper management will deliver the directive that email can never be down. There are best practices that can be used when migrating to Office 365 that address these concerns.

Unsupported Outlook clients

Many clients will still have old Office clients which don’t always play well with Office 365. While Microsoft has a number of workarounds to use clients such as Outlook 2003, for instance, it’s always better to upgrade clients to at least Outlook 2013 prior to migration to prevent any issues.

Compliance concerns

Many organizations may be hesitant to migrate to Office 365 due to compliance concerns related to HIPAA or other regulatory concerns. The compliance team at Microsoft has considered and complied with all of these concerns many times, and is more than capable of addressing them.

Bottom line: Successful Office 365 migrations take careful coordination

Some organizations assume that each Office 365 migration is the same and should be relatively easy prior to moving forward. The reality is that each organization’s networking, security, and infrastructure needs are unique, which in turn make all migrations to Office 365 unique. At MessageOps, we’ve worked with enough companies to know the red flags to watch out for during migration as well as the planning and remedies that will ensure your move is successful.

For more information about conducting a successful Office 365 migration, feel free to reach out to our team today.

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