Step by Step guide for Migrating to Office 365

Since its first release, Office 365 has advanced significantly in terms of features and usefulness. It is no longer frowned upon to migrate to the cloud. Businesses employ cloud apps because they are thought to be quite useful. Office 365 to Office 365 migration appears to be a good choice for clients, with so many perks, such as those stated below.

However, because haste leads to waste, careful procedures must get followed before Office 365 migration. There are a few considerations to keep in mind, including data backup, data loss, and security concerns. We’ll go over how to be prepared for any situation in-depth in this article.

Microsoft 365 advantage over Exchange

Legacy Microsoft may discontinue support for Exchange Servers and Windows Server environments. The current migration tools may not be compatible with older versions of Exchange and Exchange 2003.
In any organization, collaboration is the talk of the town. Any project requires teamwork, talks, presentations, and meetings. In addition to the standard mailbox, Office 365 provides various tools to facilitate these tasks, including SharePoint, Groups, Teams, and OneDrive.
Cloud storage serves as a virtual backup and is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Infrastructure or pricey server upkeep is not a problem.
Upgrades happen in the background and in real-time, with the end-user barely noticing.
With the newest upgrades and security fixes, data security is always up to date.

Types of Migrations from Exchange to Office 365

There are some extraordinary and crucial issues to consider before rushing for Office 365 migration. Decide what works best for you and ask yourself a few questions that are specific to your need.

How much will the relocation operation cost, and how long will it take?
What is the size of the data that needs to get migrated?
What Exchange Server version do you currently have?
Is everyone ready for the migration?

Now, let’s take a look at the different options available for Office 365 migration.

There are different manual ways for Exchange to Office 365 migration. A few are listed below.

Cutover Migration: All mailboxes, contacts, and distribution groups from Exchange versions 2003, 2007, 2010, and 2013 can get transferred to Office 365 in one go. You can migrate 150 mailboxes with the setup wizard, and you can migrate more than 150 to 2000 mailboxes with Exchange Admin Center. Because of the time it takes, this migration gets not recommended for users with more than 2000 mailboxes.
Staged Migration: Also known as batch migration, this method involves migrating all mailbox databases in phases. It’s quite handy for Exchange versions 2003 and 2007, and it can move over 2000 mailboxes in stages.
Hybrid Migration: This migration allows you to move large mailboxes (more than 150 mailboxes) in a short amount of time. For the years 2007, 2010, and 2013, this approach is available.

These methods are free to use, but a novice will find some difficulties while performing Office 365 migration through the native methods. To reduce complexity the way to migrate mailboxes from Exchange to Office 365, the user can use the professional third-party tool. But going towards looking for the third-party software, first check out about limitation of manual methods.

Limitations of a manual method for Office 365 migration

You can use Microsoft Exchange Deployment Assistant to organize your move if you have Exchange 2010 or higher. Cutover migrations, for example, allow for direct mailbox migrations from a source Exchange server to Exchange online, however, this is only possible for a small number of mailboxes.

For native Microsoft migration, one must have a strong command of Powershell scripts. Without a doubt, practicing the abilities is the best way to learn them. However, without prior experience, it may be time-consuming or possibly result in data loss.
To move mails selectively, there are no filter options available. If a user has just conducted migration, the entire mailbox must get migrated, which may not be very beneficial.
Data loss and network concerns are additional problems with native techniques. If a migration process gets paused in the middle, there is no way to resume where it left off.

There is various other limitation while using a native tool for Office 365 migration. Now we will move towards introducing the professional tool that efficiently migrates Exchange mailboxes into Office 365 accounts.

Shoviv’s Office 365 Migration tool. The perfect choice!

Look no further if you’re looking to migrate your Exchange Server data to Office 365. The most effective method is to use the Shoviv Office 365 Migration tool. This tool is quite useful and convenient for migrating data without the complexities that the native technique entails. The following are some of the outstanding features of this Office 365 Migration tool.

This tool can assist you in seamlessly Exchange to Office 365 migration. It enables users to migrate single or many emails to the specified destination.
Folder mapping is a function of the software that allows users to move data from one folder to another.
It comes with an Incremental Export/Backup feature.
A message class and item date-based filtering feature are available in this software.
It offers a search feature that lets you quickly find source mailbox files based on your preferences.
The application works with all versions of the Windows operating system and Exchange Server.
The software includes free technical support via Live Chat, Emails, and a Contact-Us Form available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
This software’s free trial edition will give you a good understanding of the capabilities it offers. Users can migrate and save the first 50 items per folder in the free trial edition.

Conclusion

You can begin the migration after you have received all of the relevant information about the Exchange to Office 365 transfer. However, you should be aware that it is not a simple procedure, and you can expect numerous hurdles, hazards, and setbacks along the way. You may make the conversion easier with the help of professional Office 365 migration tools.