Do We Need A Specialist To Handle Our Office 365 Migration?

If you believe that Microsoft Office 365 is right for your business in Chicagoland, then you must carefully plan your migration. Regardless of whatever benefits it may bring to your business, a poorly planned migration can result in lost data and lots of frustration.

We’ve migrated many of our clients to Office 365. We’ve been through it all, and we’ve seen everything. So now we can handle anything that comes our way. In other words, the team at Infiniwiz are Microsoft Office 365 Migration Specialists.

Why Is It Important To Use A Migration Specialist?

There are many considerations when migrating your data to any software suite, and the same is true with Microsoft Office 365. When it comes to a cloud-based suite like this, migrating to from your current IT environment is no small task.

What’s Involved In A Migration?

Before we begin, we’ll ask your leadership a set of questions to determine which plan is best for you and what needs to be migrated. There are a number of plans to choose from, but most of our clients use one of the four below:

1. Business Essentials: $7.95 per user per month which includes:

• Mobile installation of Office apps (up to 5 devices per user)
• Outlook email (50 GB of inbox storage per user and sent messages up to 150MB)
• OneDrive for Business (1 TB of cloud storage per user)
• Microsoft Teams
• HD video conferencing
• Yammer collaboration software
• Office online (browser-based suite of Office apps)
• Planner (project management platform that allows staff to plan projects, assign tasks, share files and communicate)
• Microsoft Flow (workflow automation app that allows users to automatically configure notifications, sync files, collect data without having to code the process)
• PowerApps (an application development platform that allows users to build business-specific web and mobile apps)

2. Business Premium: $14.95 per user per month
In addition to the complete desktop and online Office 365 suite of applications with Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, OneNote, Access (PC only), Publisher (PC only), SharePoint, and OneDrive, this plan offer includes:

• Business management and CRM tools: Outlook Customer Manager, Bookings, Invoicing and MileIQ
• The range of online services offered in lower-tier plans like ProPlus and Business Essentials

3. Enterprise E1: $8.00 per user per month
You’ll receive business services, email, file storage and sharing, Office Online, meetings and Instant Messaging, and more.

• You’ll get a 50GB mailbox per user, and you can send attachments up to 150MB. (Office applications aren’t included.)
• You can host online meetings with audio, HD video and web conferencing.
• Connect your teams with Microsoft Teams.
• Communicate using messaging, voice calls and video calls and let people know your availability with your online status.
• OneDrive for Business gives each user 1 TB of personal cloud storage that can be accessed from anywhere on any device.
• Yammer collaboration software and business applications allow your employees to connect, share information across teams and organize around projects.

4. Enterprise E3: $21.95 per user per month

In addition to Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access (PC only), Publisher (PC only) and OneDrive (1TB storage), this plan includes:

• Web-based and desktop versions of the above Microsoft applications
• Skype for Business client (service not included)
• Licenses for an unlimited number of users
• File storage and collaboration with OneDrive and SharePoint
• Additional apps and services listed under the Premium suite above, such as Microsoft Teams, Yammer, and Stream (providing users with the ability to stream video to team members and other contacts)
• Email hosting with 100GB of inbox storage and custom email domains
• Unlimited personal cloud storage
• Online video conferencing for up to 250 attendees
• Online meetings for up to 10,000 attendees through Skype Meeting Broadcast or Microsoft Teams live

What Information Will We Need To Gather Before The Migration?

Your List of Users

We’ll make a careful list of your users and what they do. This will help us ensure that everyone you want is included. You don’t want to discover later that you missed some people and now there aren’t enough licenses or log-ins to add them.

We’ll also need to know their names, email addresses, and if you would like users set up in specific groups.

Domain Registrar Information

Email is a central component of Microsoft Office 365. To ensure seamless changeover between your previous email client and Microsoft Outlook, we’ll need complete information on your domain registrar.

This is the time to provide domain register credential along with where your Domain Name Server (DNS) is being hosted. Who is your existing provider? Do you need to migrate from G Suite or a Pop email provider? We’ll also need to know how large your email archives are to determine the best way to import them.

What Plan Do You Want?

We can help you determine the best plan for you. As mentioned, most of our clients choose one of the four above. However, some also want us to install the Office Suite on-premises as a standalone.

Some also choose the email only plan for $4 a month per user. Outlook installs, and configurations are included with your migration along with with training for your end users, so they know how to mount additional inboxes, set up signatures, and more.

Do You Want Encryption?

Encryption can be purchased as an add on. However, it’s already included in the Enterprise plans.

Do You Want To Mix and Match Plans?

Yes…you can do this. You may want some of your users on one plan, and others on a different plan.

There’s a lot more to consider, but this is where we start. Once all groundwork has been done, the Migration Specialists at Infiniwiz will handle the Microsoft Office 365 migration for you and ensure that everything is running smoothly afterwards.

In the meantime, be sure to stay up-to-date on the latest IT news and information. Visit our Blog where you’ll find these and other articles of interest:

Google G Suite vs Microsoft Office 365

Tech Education: What Is Microsoft Office 365?

Top New Additions To Microsoft Office 365