Migrating to a cloud-based email server is a must-have for every business today. Apart from the boost in business productivity, it offers numerous benefits to enterprises in terms of time and OPEX.
However, many Office 365/microsoft 365 subscribers prefer to migrate emails from outlook to Office 365 mailbox. In fact, the gleaming feature of Office 365 cloud server are pushing them to migrate to Office 365 as fast as possible.
Likewise, from many on-premise email servers, businesses are migrating to Office 365 rapidly such as Outlook, Exchange server, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Gmail, G Suite, Lotus domino, Lotus notes, SmartCloud, GroupWise, Zimbra, yahoo mail, Cyrus, amazon work mail and much more.
Today, Office 365 email migration is a common scenario for many businesses. It is also known as data migration from another email client-server to Office 365 server.
Most email clients do not support migration, and you will have to maintain the existing email accounts yourself if you have to migrate your emails.
In this blog, let’s check what the ways to migrate emails to Office 365 premises and its methods are:
If counting, we can find plenty of reasons for migrating to Office 365. The advantage of leveraging Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, enhanced IT security, multi-user collaboration, and much more.
With office 365, every user can leverage the benefit of technological advantages that AL and ML give today. The intelligent use cases of Microsoft graph that helps to access information that frequently defined around the platform help to recognize the way companies talk internally.
Plus, the intelligent auto-meeting scheduler, intelligent detection of deliveries, email sorting, and intelligent email search result are some of it. The additional AI-driven features help to get the email read metrics by the reader and email open count with clarity.
As the style and modes of cyberattacks are increasing, robust email security is a quintessential feature that users expect from all email servers.
Office 365 is filling the needs by adding the most efficient security feature such as litigation hold (secures business mailboxes unlimitedly), anti-spoofing with sender validation tools such as SPF, DKIM, DMARC, auditing (mailbox), encryption (SSL/TSL), multi-factor authentication with notification, intensive mobile device security policies(controlled access), Microsoft secure source support, etc.
Office 365 is one of the most efficient and easy to use email tool with a whole lot of team collaboration options.
The two-way synchronization between the user devices with calendar, emails, contacts, and notes, easy-to-setup out of office tools with outlook, multi-platform support (Windows, iOS, Android), multiple device support(5 devices at a time), contact, mailbox and calendar sharing, address list (global), Shared mailboxes (with access control to specific roles), Teams, Skype, SharePoint, OneDrive with integration, storage, 150MB mail attachment capacity, etc., gives a larger space to collaborate unlimitedly.
Moving to a cloud platform means you got a bigger space with a lot of freedom. Companies that migrate to Office 365 is enjoying that broad space unlimitedly today.
Microsoft Office 365 opens the possibility to access the company data files from anywhere. Employees can work from any corner of the world with an internet connection, which begets more productivity and accessibility.
Businesses can migrate to Office 365 from any mail server or systems. They can import email data, files, calendar, contacts to the Office 365 mailbox through different methods. However, the best fitting ways have to be found based on your requirement.
Anyhow, Whether you choose cutover migration, staged migration or hybrid migration while choosing the method, there are few factors that you have to consider such as
To migrate to office 365 users have various methods in place. To transfer the emails, calendars, data, contacts from the existing email server to Office 365 there are primarily three methods such as cutover, staged migration, hybrid migration.
Cutover migration enables the users to send everything at once. This is the suggested mode of office 365 migration in case you are migrating the entire email data to Office 365, and you wish to manage the users in Office 365.
In this method, the email contacts and groups in the on-premise exchange system can be migrated. Importantly, this method to migrate to office 365 is most suitable for the users running exchange 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013, with mailboxes less than 2000.
This method is more recommended for the exchange server 2003 and 2007 users. Plus, this the best office 365 migration method for those who plan for step by step migration of mailboxes to Office 365.
Staged migration help to migrate data in batches, and it facilitates the users to send and receive emails from on-premise users and vice-versa, even their mailboxes are move on Office 365 with on-premise synchronization techniques.
Hybrid migration is most suitable for exchange 2010, 2013, and 2016 users. This method of Office 365 migration uses an integrated exchange server and Office 365 infra.
In the hybrid migration process, it allows the mailboxes in the on-premises exchange to on-site or exchange to office 365 migration or vice versa. Plus, these methods help to synchronize and manger user accounts of both environments.
Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) migration method allows any user to migrate users/emails from any other(Gmail/Yahoo, etc.) email system that supports IMAP migration.
The users can make use of the admin center/ exchange online PowerShell to migrate the data and mailboxes from the IMAP system to Office 365 environment.
However, the negative part in IMAP migration methods it transfers only email data from the source inbox. So, if the users want to transfer calendar, contacts, and tasks, they need to migrate it manually.
As it implies, third-party email data migration is completely based on external tools. They have distinctive protocols and features. Some are far better than the native in-built migration tools, and some are the same as those.
For example, Transcend is popular as the best email migration tool, which gives the best result than most of the native data migration tools.
Email migration is a complex process that demands a lot of considerations. Based on the migration method, source systems, sever demands the migration process requires meticulous attention though out
So, migrating to Office 365 is not as easy as it reads. It takes a lot of complex planning, procurement, execution, and maintenance. Even though email server providers are offering in-built email migration tools and software, it won’t start and end as we pan.
So it is always good to get help from a migration support provider with the good domain expertise to migrate to Office 365.
Medha Hosting gives extensive support for all your Office 365 migration requirements. We have years of expertise in data migration domains and done tens and thousands of Office 365 migration with high data fidelity, minimal time, and cost. Please feel free to reach us to migrate to Office 365 from any email client-server/system.
