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PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF ILTA | SUMMER 2016
You are about to encounter
a survival story — a story of
how one law firm successfully
migrated all of its email to
Office 365 and lived to tell the
tale. It is a tale of late nights, joy,
stress, relief and more Marriott
Rewards points than a person
should accumulate in such a
short amount of time.
A Bit of Backstory
Broad and Cassel is a firm based in Orlando, Florida,
with eight offices and 450 mailboxes, and we had just
completed our email migration from on-premises
Exchange 2010 to hosted email with Office 365. When we
renewed our Microso enterprise agreement (EA) two
years ago, we added the E3 (i.e., Office 365) licensing to
our agreement and were looking to take advantage of
all the things a secure hosted email platform provides
(DR/BC, ubiquitous access, ease of management, lack of
server/SAN requirements).
Our old Exchange environment had performance
issues, especially for large mailboxes. I've always been a
"rip the Band-Aid off " kind of guy, so I pushed my staff,
and we completed our migration in under five months.
During the migration, I kept notes of what we
learned, what worked and what didn't, and what I
thought others would want to know. This is that labor
of love.
Ripping Off the Band-Aid: Tips and Tricks for a Quick Office 365 Migration
LESSONS LEARNED
Ripping Off the Band-Aid: Tips and Tricks
for a Quick Office 365 Migration
by David Michel
Your Mileage Will Vary
We experienced issues and general
weirdness we couldn't predict or fully
eliminate, so expect the unexpected. The
information here is meant to help you be
better prepared for a successful migration
as forewarned is truly forearmed.