{"id":12107,"date":"2019-05-29T18:48:39","date_gmt":"2019-05-29T18:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/?p=12107"},"modified":"2022-10-14T18:28:55","modified_gmt":"2022-10-14T22:28:55","slug":"strategies-for-successful-cloud-to-cloud-migrations-when-coexistence-makes-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/cloud-computing\/strategies-for-successful-cloud-to-cloud-migrations-when-coexistence-makes-sense.html","title":{"rendered":"Strategies for Successful Cloud-to-Cloud Migrations: When Coexistence Makes Sense"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Guest Post<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Bitglass, a leading Cloud Access Security Broker, use of Microsoft Office 365 globally grew from 34 percent in 2016 to 56 percent in 2018<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a clear indication that a large and\ngrowing number of organizations are relying on the cloud for workplace\nproductivity. It also validates a trend we\u2019re seeing at BitTitan: the increase in\ncloud-to-cloud migrations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often a merger, acquisition or divestiture is\nthe impetus for moving from one cloud to another. There\u2019s a need to bring an\nentire company or business unit into another company\u2019s environment. If both utilize\nOffice 365, this calls for a tenant-to-tenant (T2T) migration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The T2T migration involves moving mailboxes,\nOneDrive or SharePoint instances, personal archives or Personal Storage Tables\n(PSTs), and other data associated with various cloud applications from one\nOffice 365 tenant to another. They are often time-consuming, high-stakes projects.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, steps can be taken to minimize the\nrisk of problems and make the process smoother for all involved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To\nCoexist or Not<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal of any migration is a seamless\ntransition that preserves business continuity through the change. It used to be\nthat IT admins would move everyone at once over the weekend or at another time\nthat wouldn\u2019t be disruptive. Today, however, with so many organizations doing\nbusiness globally or allowing mobile and remote workers to log in any time day\nor night, there are often no good times to launch a migration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kris Harness, founder and president with KDH\nConsulting agrees. \u201cThe old model of shutting things down on Friday night,\nmigrating over the weekend and reopening for business on Monday morning is\nseldom an option,\u201d says Harness. \u201cIncreasingly, we need to take a staged\napproach where groups of users or departments are migrated in phases at\nseparate times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this staged approach works well for IT\nteams who want to avoid disrupting business operations, the drawback is that some\nusers within the organization remain on the source while others have migrated\nto the new destination, creating major communication problems. That\u2019s where\ncoexistence  is essential in ensuring a\nseamless migration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also the option of combining\ncoexistence with selective migration of older, archived or less-essential items.\nThis can shorten the time window required for the most critical parts of the migration.\nTypical scenarios include pre-migrating items older than 90 days, or migrating\nonly the most recent 60 days of email and backfilling the rest of the mailboxes\nand data after the fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By enabling coexistence between two Office 365\ntenants throughout the migration, the IT team eliminates end-user disruption\nthroughout the entire process, and has greater flexibility over when and how to\naccomplish the transition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How\nCoexistence Works<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coexistence seamlessly handles the two biggest\nproblems that IT managers face. Throughout migration, it ensures emails are\nrouted to the correct inbox, and maintains constant visibility to the free\/busy\ninformation in users\u2019 calendars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To implement coexistence, the process is simple. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, enable organizational sharing on the Office 365 tenants. Create\nmail-enabled contacts with an external address that resolves back to the source\nmailbox, so the unmigrated users have a mailbox on the source and a mail-enabled\ncontact on the destination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As each user\u2019s data is migrated, remove the mail-enabled contact\nfrom the destination and create an Office 365-licensed user account. This\ncreates the mailbox so you can migrate the mail items into it. Since the user remains\non the source, there is still a forward from the destination back to the\nsource. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the migration is completed, the mailbox on the source can be\nremoved (replaced with a mail-enabled contact, with an external address of the\ndestination mailbox) or a kept in place with a forward to the new destination\nmailbox. Now the user needs to reconfigure their devices to the new destination\nOffice 365 mailbox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Domain\nName: Same or Different?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The critical factor that allows coexistence is\nwhether the Source and Destination domains are the same or different. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If they\u2019re different \u2014 as is most often the\ncase with a merger, acquisition or divestiture \u2014 then a staged migration with\ncoexistence as outlined above is a great option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If they\u2019re the same, then coexistence can\u2019t\nhappen, because Microsoft stipulates that a domain name can only exist on one\ntenant at a time. Admins who want to perform a T2T migration and use the same domain\nname are essentially limited to a cutover-style migration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key to success with any<\/em> migration is careful preplanning. Beforehand, select the\nstrategy that will work for you: a cutover, or a staged approach (with or\nwithout coexistence). Next, map out the entire migration process and make sure\nthe timelines are realistic. Once you begin the migration, be sure that required\ntechnical resources are on hand and communicate clearly with end users. This\nshould ensure that your migration will be \nsmooth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kelsey\nEpps is a senior technical partner strategist with BitTitan. A 20-year IT\nindustry veteran, Kelsey works with MSPs and IT specialists on the technical\npreplanning aspects of the most complex migrations projects.<\/em>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Post According to Bitglass, a leading Cloud Access Security Broker, use of Microsoft Office 365 globally grew from 34 percent in 2016 to 56 percent in 2018. This is a clear indication that a large and growing number of organizations are relying on the cloud for workplace productivity. It also validates a trend we\u2019re<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":12109,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[1738,1720,1909],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12107"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12108,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12107\/revisions\/12108"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}