Best Practices and Migration Tools for Office 365 Migration

Migrating to Office 365, one of the most widely used business productivity tools can be a challenge for most users. The most common ones include security concerns, compliance requirements, and selecting the type of migration, among others. Since Office 365 migration services is a significant undertaking, here are the best practices that would help users with a smooth migration process.

Going for the right licensing option

There are easily over 600 licensing options that Microsoft offers and choosing the one that’s right for the user or organization can be tricky. The best thing here would be to analyze the real functions and capabilities that the different work-groups of the organization need. By identifying the need for applications like Outlook on the web, Office 365ProPlus, SharePoint, etc., an informed choice can be made.

Correct preparations

There are multiple factors that need genuine consideration before the migration. An important one is the on-premises Exchange server version compatibility with the migration type - Cut-Over, Staged, or Hybrid. Other requirements include cleaning up of local Active Directory, cleaning up the data, and creating a new folder structure if the intent is to migrate a file share out to SharePoint.

Choosing a migration strategy

Depending on the needs and dynamics of the Office 365 Migration Services, the user has to select the best migration strategy from cutover migration, hybrid migration, and staged migration. ACutover migration is preferred when the user wants to move all their data at once, Staged migration is best for bulk migrations in batches when the data to be transferred is huge, and hybrid migration is the best when the user wants to manage both on-premises Exchange servers and Exchange Online.

Security and Compliance requirements

It’s one of the most vital actions that need to be executed flawlessly by the IT professionals in charge. There should be no loss of data and all measures relating to regulatory compliance should be met. Besides, the non-technical users must be trained so that they acquire at least a basic working knowledge of the tool.

The right bandwidth

If the data to be transferred is huge (say in terabytes), to attain higher efficiency it’s best to use technologies such as MAPI or other third-party migration tools.

Another factor that may trouble the user is how to choose the best tool for Office 365 migration. Here are a few of the tools that can be used for Office 365 Migration Services to enhance the experience of the user.

Mimecast Unified Email Management

An all-in-one solution for email management, this tool comes handy for on-premises, hosted, and Office 365 deployments. It offers tailored solutions for email security, email archiving, and email continuity through a fully-integrated subscription service.

CodeTwo Office 365 Migration

It offers a secure way to migrate data to Office 365 from Exchange Serve and migrate between Office 365 tenants. Features such as post-migration rescan, multi-language support, migration scheduling, and automatic mailbox matching expedite the processes and make it easy to execute.

Binary Tree Exchange Pro

Its focus on the migration process automation and efficiency is what makes Exchange Pro a handy tool for migration of data from Exchange to Office 365. Other attractions include a rich interface, user self-service web portals, advanced reporting, etc.

There are immense benefits of migrating data to the cloud-powered Microsoft Office 365 including high data security, enhanced productivity, and easy scaling of the business. By following the above-listed best practices for Office 365 Migration Services, the user gets a helpful list of suggestions for performing the migration.