BPOS to Office 365 Transition Guide for Enterprises Now Available

If you’ve been waiting for a more detailed document describing the transition process from BPOS to Office 365, the wait is over. Microsoft has released the BPOS-S to Office 365 Transtion Planning Guide for Enterprises. This guide is filled with lots of details about the migration.  It’s a big document coming in at 75 pages.  We’ll work to integrate some of these new details into our existing checklist found here.

Here are a few pieces of information we found interesting in the document (we suspect that some of these items will only apply to Tier 1 customers):

• As part of the defined transition approach, Microsoft has a pilot program that will permit you to identify a small number of test user mailboxes (5 to 10) for testing client connectivity in advance of the transition window. Your Microsoft TAM or Service Transition Manager (STM) will be able to coordinate with your transition team to transition these test users to the Office 365 service approximately 14 days in advance of the rest of your users.
• Note that unlike BPOS–S, Office 365 requires the User Principal Name (UPN) configured in your directory to precisely match at least one SMTP address configured for that user. If this is not the case, your transition may be delayed until your directory meets this and the other above requirements. The SMTP address selected to match the UPN does not need to be the primary SMTP address for that user. However it is critically important that a user’s UPN is not the SMTP address of a different user in BPOS –S. This could delay your transition or result in the loss of mail for one or the other user during transition unless corrected.
• Typical timing for the deployment of Lync is from T-60 thru to T- 14 timeframe, however you must not attempt to install it before you are confirmed to be in Microsoft’s pipeline for transition by receipt of a T-60 (or nearer timeframe) notice.
• Microsoft is closely monitoring the status of password changes by users in BPOS–S as transition approaches and your TAM or STM will be able to provide you an update on password change status across your population of users and identify those users who have yet to make a change.
• There is no ability to cancel, roll back, or indefinitely suspend transition once the transition is in the Microsoft pipeline. Microsoft will provide all customers the one-time ability to postpone the transition by 60 days, if necessary. Such a postponement must be requested before you reach the T-14 day milestone.