office 365: operation migration

Operation Migration Six lessons learned from migrating 20,000+ Microsoft® Office 365™ mailboxes

A conversation with Tim McKellips and Mack Ratcliffe

of Softchoice.

Connect with us today 1.800.268.7638 | www.softchoice.com | @softchoice 2

Software as a Service (SaaS) has revolutionized enterprise IT,

changing the way companies manage and deliver applications,

as well as enhancing end-user productivity by providing new

ways of consuming data and enabling collaboration across

multiple devices from virtually any place, any time.

With the introduction of Microsoft Office 365, many companies

are taking the opportunity to address their larger SaaS strategy,

which introduces new business process and technology

challenges. As Microsoft Practice Leads at Softchoice (one of

the world’s leading managed service providers) Tim McKellips

and Mack Ratcliffe have led SaaS implementation initiatives

for hundreds of companies, and have learned six valuable

lessons along the way.

Operation Migration | Introduction

https://twitter.com/Mckellip

https://twitter.com/mack_ratcliffe


&Tim McKellips

Twitter: @Mckellip

LinkedIn: Tim McKellips

Tim McKellips has spent his entire 16-year

IT career in the Microsoft technology and

professional services arena, starting as an

Exchange 5.5 and Windows NT consultant, then

serving as the director of a Microsoft practice

in Central and Eastern US before coming to

Softchoice in 2007. Tim leads the Technical

Services team at Softchoice, defining strategy

and methodology for complex Professional

Services solutions—with a focus as the

Microsoft Practice Lead for North America. Tim

relishes living the stereotype of a gadget and

technology enthusiast. For fun, he and his family

are slowly renovating their century old cottage

in northern Wisconsin.

Mack Ratcliffe

Twitter: @mack_ratcliffe

LinkedIn: Mack Ratcliffe

As a Services Practice at Softchoice, Mack

Rackcliffe is responsible for setting the technical

strategy for Softchoice’s SaaS business and

developing managed services for Microsoft

Office 365 and Azure platforms. Over the course

of his 15-year career, Mack has worked in a

variety of sales and technology focused roles.

He has provided application support for custom

B2C and B2B ecommerce platforms, served

as a Senior Systems Engineer responsible for

designing and managing Microsoft and VMware

infrastructure. When Mack first joined Softchoice

he worked as a Senior Microsoft Solutions

Architect. Mack loves travelling, surfing in

Southern California and holds a Master’s of

Science in Information Systems.

About Tim and Mack.


Migrating from on-premise infrastructure to cloud-based infrastructure is a

significant undertaking, due in part to more substantive integration of cloud and

mobile technologies into companies’ key business processes and systems than

ever before. Gone are the days where we could spend most of our time building

in a server room and cutting planning time short. The old carpentry maxim “plan

twice and cut once” has never been more important than in these complex

cloud-based systems. And once we understand and meet the technical business

requirements, there are other considerations.

Yes, with these requirements identified, now we need to understand any

necessary regulatory or compliance issues that must be considered along the way.

When key systems are moved outside an organization’s firewall into a SaaS model,

customers often overlook the differences and unique requirements of designing

Authentication versus Authorization or Access. Providing Single Sign-On (SSO) for

end users and developing a company-wide identity-management solution that

accounts for both current and future SaaS or IaaS initiatives is absolutely crucial to

putting a winning technology solution in place.

1 Careful planning is the key to success.

Planning Must Be a Priority.Lesson 1

Tim

Mack


Right. A foundational aspect of a network is making sure that only the right

people have access to the right resources, and that you have the ability to audit,

report, and re-certify the access permissions over time. When you only focus

on Authentication (i.e. you are who you say you are) without thinking about

Authorization (i.e. what you have access to), you miss the point. It’s like this: you

might have a valid driver’s license, but that doesn’t mean you get to drive my car!

The Authorization issue is key. And it’s important to think about this in the

context of future SaaS implementations. By design, SaaS applications are very

easy for users to acquire and use. All of a sudden your users’ lives are easier,

but those same application’s could be causing compliance issues or exposing

important company data. It’s crucial that the IT team spends time planning how

to manage and extend their organization’s identity management strategy into

those applications. It’s no longer just about Office 365—it needs to be about your

SaaS strategy for the next three to five years. These aren’t new concepts for IT

management, but they’re the details that can be overlooked if companies don’t do

proper planning. It really comes down to this: we have to be more diligent as we

trust the cloud more and more.

For many customers Office 365 is just the first of many ‘sanctioned’ SaaS

applications, so it’s a good time to establish security and governance best

practices for the dozens of other cloud-based applications that are already in your

environment or coming soon. In our experience, Office 365 is often the compelling

event that pushes organization to establish a longer-term SaaS management

strategy, as well as a great end-user experience through things like SSO.

“”

It really comes down to this: we have to be more diligent as we trust the cloud more and more.

Tim

Mack

Tim

Operation Migration | Lesson 1: Planning Must Be a Priority.


2Do No Harm.Lesson 2

Consider the impacts on

existing systems and future SaaS

implementations.

Tim

Mack

To ensure a successful migration, smart companies need to first understand

what the solution can and can’t do before determining its feasibility. This

includes understanding the potential impacts on existing systems and business

processes. So, before adopting an appropriate cloud strategy, always consider

the organization’s short and long-term strategic goals around messaging, unified

communications, and collaboration. When migrating from Exchange to Office

365, for example, it’s critical for companies to fully understand the intricacies of

how various systems and applications interface with email beyond just employee

communications. Application and system interaction with a messaging platform

is often vitally important for an organization to consider in determining the most

appropriate future state architecture and migration plan.

And as we mentioned earlier, there may be additional requirements around

authentication, identity, and security that impact existing systems, and companies

may need to consider additional SaaS management infrastructure to support these

new requirements. The challenge with SaaS is that it’s really fast and easy to get

things up and running—but you need to understand the ramifications of what

you’ve let loose in the world.


Sure, and it’s different for every company. The only consistent thing about any two

Office 365 migrations is that everyone ends up on Office 365. Where they start is

completely unique, like a fingerprint. Differences come into play with what type

of business it is, what their current systems are, how the company interacts with

customers, the business requirements around uptime, things like that. A fertilizer

company and a ticket reseller use email completely differently. We’ve never had

two customers that are similar enough to reuse the same exact steps, though we

do use our well-tested methodologies, which are critical to success.

It’s important to remember that the individual business commitment is what

drives the architecture you need to build and deploy. Minutes of downtime for one

kind of company would be catastrophic, and would require an entirely different

architecture than might be required by a company that is less reliant on email. You

need to work backwards to meet your SLA requirements. A fast food restaurant

and a catering company both need kitchens, but they’re open different hours,

serve different customers and have different needs entirely.

What we’ve found in working with so many different customer environments is

that there’s often opportunity to think creatively about schedules and budgets

when you consider the entire application ecosystem. We had a customer who

wanted to migrate to Office 365, but couldn’t justify the spend. We helped them

look at their environment and we identified another application that would

become redundant if they migrated, so they were able to free up budget dollars

without losing key network functionality.

Tim

Tim

Mack

“”

The challenge with SaaS is that it’s really fast and easy to get things up and running— but you need to understand the ramifications of what you’ve let loose in the world.

Operation Migration | Lesson 2: Do No Harm.


Migrating a system of any kind introduces complexities into the entire

environment. Even with careful planning, a major implementation project

is usually more challenging than it might appear in the documentation and

project plans. It’s impossible to test every possible scenario and real-world

use case thoroughly. Here’s an example we came across recently; there’s a

messaging protocol used by many different applications (MAPI), and Microsoft

no longer supports server-to-server MAPI with Office 365. Companies that

are migrating from earlier versions of Exchange will need to consider any

application that uses email, from scheduling to ERP or whatever systems

they rely on every day, and make sure they have a plan for messaging with

these applications.

The good thing is that Microsoft has always been open to collaboration.

Office 365 works well with a wide range of third-party systems to fill in the

gaps around your specific business needs. But you need to work with people

who really understand both what problems you’re trying to solve and what

other applications can help you get there. This is part of the solution we offer

through the Softchoice Cloud.

3Nothing Exists in a Vacuum.Lesson 3

Cloud-based technologies bring some specific new

challenges and opportunities.

Mack

Tim


Mack

Tim

Understanding the ecosystem of SaaS applications can be especially important

to address some of the net new challenges that arise when you move from

on-premise to the cloud. One issue that comes up frequently for our clients is

the question of data encryption at rest. Office 365 encrypts data in transport, but

doesn’t encrypt data at rest on the disk. This isn’t an issue for everyone, but for

companies with this specific compliance requirement, it can be a showstopper. In

this case, we’d recommend a third-party solution like CipherCloud, who we partner

with, to add this functionality.

With the shift to the cloud, IT management responsibilities evolve from the

traditional realm of overseeing machines to managing larger business processes.

This introduces significant new responsibilities in the areas which security,

authentication and identity, access control, and application workflow, can be

enormously challenging for teams who had previously focused mostly on server

performance and uptime. We see a lot of challenges around data residency, data

privacy, regulatory, and compliance issues.

4Moving from On-Premise to the Cloud Brings New Challenges.

Lesson 4

Acknowledge the net new

challenges that occur during cloud

migration.


Here’s another example: many companies have a regulatory requirement to save a

copy of every email that comes in and goes out of the organization. The traditional

way to do this is with a practice called, “journaling.” This saves a copy of every

message to a separate mailbox, which in some cases gets archived, sometimes

not. You can’t do this in Office 365 because there’s a 50GB limit on the mailbox

size. That particular mailbox would get filled up instantly. So customers who don’t

want to manage this on-premise—and can’t journal into Office 365—are forced

to figure out alternatives. This is one of the reasons why we’ve partnered with

Mimecast. Mimecast is a leader in security and archiving—and is a solution we

offer through Softchoice Cloud.

Mack

“”

IT management responsibilities evolve from the traditional realm of overseeing machines to managing larger business processes.

Operation Migration | Lesson 4: Moving from On-Premise to the Cloud Brings New Challenges.


5Mind the Gap. Lesson 5

The people we work with are generally very smart IT executives. They have

a sophisticated understanding of both the current state and future state of

their enterprise environment. What can be more challenging, however, even

for the smartest folks, is understanding exactly what is needed to support the

organization as it moves between these two states.

This gap state can be a real challenge. Companies who can plan appropriately

for this period are better positioned to encourage adoption of—and compliance

with—new business and technology processes. We worked with a customer

who migrated thousands of employees from Exchange to Office 365.

Because of their own internal support requirements, they opted to migrate

one department at a time. Although they prepared appropriately for email

to function during the transition, they assumed it would be acceptable for

interdepartmental scheduling to be unavailable during the brief transition as

each department came on board. They found out the hard way from angry

users that this was not acceptable.

And for most of these kinds of situations, there are tools we can recommend

for managing uptime and system availability during a migration. There are

ways to get creative about this, and to make sure users feel supported. It’s all

about working together to make a sustainable migration plan.

Tim

Mack

Tim

Ensure a smooth

transition period between your current

and future states.


6Planning for Day 2 and Beyond is the Key to Success.

Lesson 6

Plan for post-launch

insights, support, and success.

Mack

Tim

We also make sure to remind clients that once the excitement of a successful

launch day is past, that’s when the real work begins. Changes in business and

technical processes will require additional help desk and training support for end

users. There will be new usage and storage quotas to track. In addition to new

ongoing licensing and user management procedures. Companies may no longer

need to purchase additional servers to run on-premise software, but will continue

to need investment and oversight in maximizing Internet capacity—and managing

network edge devices.

Another thing to keep in mind is that migration is a great opportunity for business

intelligence. We encourage companies to use the data that Office 365 and other

SaaS applications provide to gain actionable insights on usage and trends across

their environment. This kind of thing can be a big win for IT management within

the rest of the organization—by not only understanding the creation of data, but

how that information is consumed as well.


Implementing Office 365 and other SaaS applications can be challenging. Mack, Tim, and the other experts at Softchoice have migrated tens of thousands of customer mailboxes to Office 365, and offer some valuable takeaways for companies considering migration:

Operation Migration | Overview

Careful planning is the key to success.

Consider the impacts on

existing systems and future SaaS

implementations.

Cloud-based technologies bring some specific new

challenges and opportunities.

Acknowledge the net new

challenges that occur during cloud

migration.

Ensure a smooth

transition period between your current

and future states.

Plan for post-launch

insights, support, and success.

Lesson 1

Lesson 4

Lesson 2

Lesson 5

Lesson 3

Lesson 6


About Softchoice.With over 40 locations across the U.S. and Canada, Softchoice

is one of North America’s largest providers of IT solutions

and services. The company’s holistic approach to technology

includes solution design, implementation, and managed

services. Through unique offerings like Softchoice Cloud, and

deep expertise in Microsoft Office 365, Softchoice makes it

easy for organizations to source, implement, and manage

the right cloud solutions for their business.

©2014 Softchoice. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Other guides in this series:

» How to choose a Microsoft Office 365™ Migration Partner : Moving to the Cloud without Risking

Productivity, Collaboration or Security

»The Essential Guide to Licensing Microsoft Office 365™ in the Cloud

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