Make a Smooth Transition to Office 365
Office 365 can provide a strong foundation for your business’s IT needs, serving up the core functionality. It can also improve your IT services delivery, reducing costs, making operations procedures easier, and providing flexibility in responding to changes in those business needs. Make your migration successful and ensure your users’ productivity with these tips for planning and executing the move to Office 365.
Evaluate and Plan the Migration
Agree on the scope of the migration: Depending on your specific business needs, including legal requirements and legacy content, you may not want to migrate all existing content to the Office 365 cloud-based service. You should assess the number of users, the size of their mailboxes as well as the number of file servers, applications and workflows to determine the impact of the migration.
Evaluate your network: Because Office 365 applications are so fundamental to business processes, reliable, high-speed network connectivity is crucial to successfully using it.
Evaluate security and compliance requirements: You may need to take additional steps to ensure your email security settings transfer to Office 365. Decide whether you will implement single sign-on.
Plan how to manage applications after the migration: You will still have to manage your applications after migrating to Office 365. Have a plan for how you will administer your applications and support your users.
Determine how you’ll verify data completeness and validity: A large part of the transition to Office 365 is the data migration. Know how you’ll verify that data wasn’t corrupted during the migration and that no needed data was left behind. If there’s data you aren’t transitioning on purpose, know how you’ll support access to that data.
Prepare Your On-Site Technology
Upgrade on-site versions of Microsoft software: Transitioning to Office 365 is easier when you have the latest on-premises versions. You may need to clean up your Active Directory accounts.
Prepare additional capacity: During the transition period, you’ll be loading the network with data migrations in addition to supporting routine business operations. Add additional capacity to ensure you don’t overload the system.
Execute Your Transition
Migrate data and set up Office 365 services: Follow your plan to migrate data and configure email and other application settings. Test and verify the successful migration.
Configure desktops and train your support team: Set up user desktops to work with Office 365 applications. Train your support team to respond to user questions about the new configuration.
Get Help to Make Sure You Make a Smooth Transition
There are lots of details in making the smooth transition to Office 365, and successful migrations take time to plan and execute. Prescient Solutions, a Microsoft Partner, is experienced in working with companies to make that migration. Our Office 365 services ensure you transition without any loss of data or productivity, and we can provide monitoring and support to make sure you use the applications successfully after the migration is complete. Contact us to learn more about how Office 365 can benefit your business and how to successfully integrate it into your business.
