Migration of E-mail to Microsoft 365 

 

The Challenge

The client, a digital marketing agency with approximately 230 staff, were in the process of creating a new brand by merging three businesses together.  The new identity would be public in just 2 months, and the management team wanted all three businesses to start sending and receiving e-mails under the new brand on launch day.

The three businesses were running on completely separate infrastructure, using various technologies, so would need to be migrated to a new, centralised platform.  The client had looked into various options and advised they were looking to migrate their e-mail platform to Microsoft 365. 

The Solution

Working with the client, we put together a project plan, registered the new domain name and configured a Microsoft 365 tenant for them to migrate their e-mail platform to.

Beginning with one of the three companies, we configured Microsoft Azure AD Connect, which allowed us to synchronise User Credentials from their on-premises Active Directory to Microsoft 365, which will allow users to login with their usual username and password on the Microsoft 365 platform.

Over the course of the next two weeks, we then migrated all users from the company onto Microsoft 365, copying all e-mails/calendars/contacts/tasks across, ensuring no impact to users as they were migrated. 

E-mail Routing was then configured across all e-mail platforms, allowing users across the businesses that have not yet been migrated to Microsoft 365 to send/receive e-mails under the new brand, in addition to the users that have.

On the evening prior to launch day, the primary e-mail domain was modified across all platforms, and e-mail flow was tested.  When all users came in the following morning, all e-mails were working as normal, with the new primary e-mail address applied as they sent e-mails outbound, along with their new e-mail signatures.

Over the course of the next month, the remaining businesses were migrated to Microsoft 365 in the same manner as the first, ensuring user credentials were synchronised with their local Active Directories, and that all content from their mailboxes were migrated to the new platform with minimal disruption to the end users. 

The Result

The new brand was launched on time with all e-mail communication in and out of the business being sent/received under the new brand.  All users were able to use their existing mailboxes, with no further changes needing to be made to their existing in-house software applications.

The migration of all three businesses into one new Microsoft 365 tenant was successful with minimal downtime or disruption to the users.