What is Microsoft 365 migration?

Types of Microsoft 365 migration (previously called Office 365 migration) include the following:

• User and group migration — Migrating users and groups between Active Directory (AD), Entra ID and hybrid directory environments is a complex task. To maintain security, compliance and business continuity, it’s essential to retain all user settings and properties; sync passwords; maintain group memberships and permissions; and minimize disruption to business operations.
• Device migration — Joining devices to Entra ID offers a wealth of security, productivity and cost benefits. Device migration scenarios include converting domain-joined or hybrid devices to Entra-joined, or moving Entra-joined devices from one tenant to another and switching Intune device enrollment to the new tenant. Key migration concerns include enabling users to keep working during the migration and preserving their profiles and desktop settings.
• Exchange Online migration — Some Microsoft 365 migration projects focus on moving email data like mailboxes, calendars, tasks and contacts into Exchange Online. Sources of email data can include on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server, public folders, Outlook PST files and third-party email archives, as well as IMAP-enabled email systems such as Google Gmail.
• OneDrive for Business migration — Another type of migrating to Microsoft 365 involves either moving on-prem file shares to OneDrive for Business, or migrating OneDrive data from one tenant to another. It’s vital to preserve valuable metadata, including user and sharing permissions, in order to ensure continued access after migration.
• SharePoint Online migration — To enable more effective collaboration and file sharing, organizations often migrate content to SharePoint Online. Common scenarios include modernizing from an on-prem SharePoint Server environment, consolidating content from other Microsoft 365 tenants, and transitioning Notes applications to Microsoft SharePoint Online.
• Teams migration — An increasingly common type of Office 365 migration involves consolidating Teams environments from two or more tenants. To preserve valuable communication history and ensure continuity of collaboration, a Teams migration needs to include not just all teams and files, but all Microsoft 365 groups, channel conversations, Planner plans and one-to-one chats.
• Power BI migration — Power BI is a powerful tool that turns unrelated sources of data into coherent, visually immersive and interactive insights. Unfortunately, migrating Power BI content from one tenant to another is a complex task, and there are no native or third-party tools to facilitate the process. A useful framework for Power BI migration comprises the same four phases as most migrations: analysis, planning, migration and remediation.
• Tenant-to-tenant migration — Projects to migrate or consolidate Microsoft 365 tenants are also becoming more frequent. A top driver is merger and acquisition (M&A) deals involving two or more companies with cloud environments. These M365 migration projects need to cover workloads like Entra ID (users, groups and devices), Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, Power BI and on-premises Active Directory.

A Microsoft 365 migration empowers organizations to transform how they operate and collaborate. Key benefits include:

• Accessibility — With Microsoft 365, users can access data and applications from any device with an internet connection. This accessibility supports remote and hybrid work, improves productivity, and provides flexibility for both users and the business.
• Enhanced collaboration — Microsoft 365 platforms like Teams, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Exchange Online facilitate real-time communication, easy collaboration and document sharing, and smooth project management.
• Automatic updates — Microsoft automatically updates Microsoft 365 workloads with the latest features and security patches. This approach eliminates the need for manual intervention by your IT teams and ensures that your business users quickly have access to the most current capabilities.
• Security and compliance — Microsoft 365 includes robust security features, such as data encryption and threat protection, to safeguard sensitive data and enable strong information governance. Compliance tools help organizations meet a wide range of regulatory requirements and industry standards. However, organizations need to remember that security and compliance are a shared responsibility. For example, it’s up to you to strictly enforce least privilege when provisioning user accounts and implement proper controls to safeguard regulated data.
• Scalability — Microsoft 365 is a scalable SaaS platform with solutions that adjust easily to meet your needs. It’s easy to add or remove users, expand or trim back storage, and so on.
• Cost savings — Migrating to a SaaS platform with a subscription-based licensing model reduces or even eliminates the need for extensive on-premises hardware and software maintenance. As a result, organizations can reduce capital expenditure and shift to a more predictable operating expense model.

A successful Office 365 migration plan includes the following steps:

1. Define your objectives. Clearly outline the goals of the migration project. Be sure to specify exactly what you intend to achieve — as well as how success will be measured. Clearly defining your objects will help you set priorities and align the migration with broader organizational goals.


2. Choose the right tools and migration partner. You’ve probably heard that 80–90 percent of the work of painting is preparation. Migrations are similar: If you prepare carefully, the migration jobs themselves can proceed like clockwork. Many migration tools include invaluable pre-migration planning features, so make tool selection an early priority. Also consider how much of the migration work it makes sense for your internal teams to shoulder, and whether outsourcing some or all of the project to a trusted partner is a better option.


3. Assess your environment. Identify what needs to be migrated, including data, applications, user accounts, permissions and dependencies. Be sure to also clearly define what is outside the scope of the Microsoft 365 migration. To perform this assessment, be sure to work with your business counterparts from across the organization.


4. Create a migration strategy. Develop a comprehensive migration plan that includes details such as timelines, resource allocation and risk management strategies. Also be sure to include plans for:
• Coexistence — If you choose a phased migration rather than a cutover, create a coexistence plan to ensure that users can communicate and collaborate effectively throughout the project.
• Governance — Lay out your governance strategy for the target environment. For example, defining the number of major and minor document versions to be kept in SharePoint will help you scope your migration.
• User communication, training and support — Working with business users to understand their requirements will help inform migration scope and scheduling. Be sure to provide timely communication about how various migration events will affect different groups of users. In addition, plan training and support to help users adapt to Microsoft 365 workloads and gain maximum value from their capabilities.


5. Prepare. Ensure that your infrastructure meets migration requirements and that you have the proper licensing. Configure your security settings to protect your data during and after migration. In addition, take the opportunity to clean up your source environment by deleting duplicate and unneeded content and archiving data that you need to retain but don’t need to move. This effort will improve user productivity and satisfaction in the target environment, while reducing migration time and risk.


6. Implement the migration plan. This step involves setting up Microsoft 365 services, configuring user accounts and permissions, and transferring data and workloads. A key best practice is to start with pilot migration jobs that move small groups of carefully selected users and applications, so you can uncover and resolve issues in your procedures before proceeding with rest of the Microsoft 365 migration plan.


7. Review. After migration, test thoroughly to ensure that all data has been transferred correctly and that services are functioning as expected. Review the success measures defined in your objectives, and check that business users are satisfied and productive.

Many organizations do not migrate all their data and workloads to Microsoft 365. Instead, they adopt a hybrid IT ecosystem that includes both on-premises and cloud environments. Common drivers for choosing a hybrid infrastructure include business-critical legacy applications that have no easy migration path and strict compliance mandates that require close control over regulated data.

The steps in the migration process are largely the same as for any Microsoft 365 migration. However, you also need to integrate your on-premises Active Directory with Entra ID to provide a unified user experience across both environments. A common strategy is to use Microsoft Entra Connect (formerly Azure AD Connect) to synchronize user accounts and credentials between those directories.

The cost of Microsoft 365 migration projects can vary dramatically depending on project scope and complexity. Key costs include the following:

• Licensing fees — The cost of Microsoft 365 depends on the subscription plan your organization selects, as well as whether you choose to pay monthly or annually. In any case, licensing fees are a recurring cost that must be budgeted for.
• Migration tools and expertise — Fees for third-party migration tools or consulting services can be another expense. However, they can deliver a strong ROI compared to having internal teams spend time learning migration strategies and best practices, struggling with manual tools and procedures, and potentially making costly errors that lead to downtime or other business disruptions.
• Infrastructure updates — Network upgrades, hardware changes and other infrastructure updates could be needed to support Microsoft 365 or a hybrid environment.
• Training and support — Organizations should also budget for user training and increased support needs during and after migration to Microsoft 365.

Choosing the best tool for your migration involves evaluating multiple factors. Cost, as discussed above, is clearly one criterion. Others include:

• Supported migration scenarios — Look for tools that support your Microsoft 365 migration goals, including all your source and target environments.
• Ease of use — Migrations are inherently complex, so make sure that the solutions you choose simplify tasks like asset discovery, migration management and reporting. For example, look for intuitive dashboards that provide complete visibility into your migration project and enable stakeholders to track progress in real time.
• Reliability — Be sure to talk with your peers, check out expert reviews and read case studies to assess the real-world performance of candidate tools.
• Security — To ensure that your data is safe, check for SOC2 Type 2 attestation and certifications such as ISO/IEC27001:2013, ISO/IEC 27017:2015 and ISO/IEC 27018:2019.
• Availability and scalability — Look for SaaS solutions with redundant and highly available infrastructure across independent regional data centers in different locations.
• Partner expertise — Choosing a Microsoft partner with extensive migration experience can streamline the project and reduce risk by avoiding common pitfalls.
• Customer support — When you’re migrating business-critical data like user accounts, email and shared content, you need to know expert help is available when issues arise.

Quest offers a Migration Matcher that makes it easy to find the right migration tool to meet your needs and goals.