Cloud services and other Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions are huge right now. Office 365 has now reached over 200 million monthly active users, up from just 60 million active users in November 20151. This shift is largely due to the functionality it provides in terms of working from anywhere, collaborating with ease, always having up to date software, the manageable monthly cost, improved security features, and the ability to mix and match the features that best suit your needs. If your company is ready to jump onto the cloud, then you’ll first need to understand how to manage your email Migration. Despite being relatively old tech, email is still a prominent and essential part of the business landscape so the migration needs to be as smooth as possible.

Migration Methods

There are several ways to handle your email migration. Let’s take a look at the most common migration methods.

Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) migration

You can use Exchange Online PowerShell or the Exchange Admin Center to migrate the data within your users’ mailboxes to Office 365.

Staged Migration

If you plan to migrate all mailboxes eventually, but want to do it over several weeks or even months, then a staged migration is the best option for your business. It’s important to note that you can’t opt for a staged migration if you plan to upgrade from Exchange Server 2003, 2007, 2010, or 2013 to Office 365.

Cutover Migration

This approach is favoured for companies who want to migrate over a period of days and plan to move the mailboxes for their whole organization. However, the recommended number of mailboxes you should migrate in a cutover migration is 150, despite the maximum being 2000 mailboxes. This is because performance starts to suffer over 150 mailboxes.

Hybrid Migration

A hybrid migration is somewhere in between on-premise and full Office 365. You can choose the level of administrative control you retain from your on-premise solution, as well as the part of Office 365 you want access to. This is a common approach for companies who are unsure whether the cloud is the right fit for their business.

Third-Party Migration

This approach utilizes tools from third parties to conduct the migration. Several third-parties provide these migration services including Binary Tree, BitTitan, Matalogix, SkyKick, and more.
What Factors Affect Migration Performance?

Migration can take anywhere from several hours to several days depending on the size of the mailbox. However, other factors can also affect the performance of your migration.

• Gmail has limits on how much data can be extracted within a certain time frame which can slow the process down.

• The number of mail items can also affect the speed of the migration, even when the mailboxes are the same size.

• Your data migration engine may have its own set of limitations that slow down the migration.

• Your overall network performance and firewall configurations can also slow down the migration. Even if you have a fast network, if it suffers from stability issues then this can also slow the migration.

Get Migrating!

This article isn’t an exhaustive step-by-step guide to migration but rather an overview to help you get on your way with migrating your on-premise email over to Office 365.

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