CloudM Migrate gives you extensive flexibility when migrating to either Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. It is therefore extremely important that you test the migration and available options. As part of the testing process it is recommended that you size your migration to get a rough estimate of the duration of the migration.
Please ensure that you have also read all pre-requiste articles prior to starting any migration so that you are aware of any potential issues or watchpoints.
The below steps are a general guideline for the migration process. This may not apply to every scenario.
Company Announcement – 1 – 3 months before Go-Live
- Inform the whole company via email and on the Intranet of the new and exciting developments.
- Inform users of what data will be migrated.
Pre-migration Testing – 1 – 3 months before Go-Live
- Test the migration process and decide on the options required for your scenario.
Request for Pilot Users – 1 – 2 months before Go-Live
- These users will be the company’s internal advocate of the new service.
- They will act as a local point of contact and help with the internal change control.
Phase 1 – Historical Migration – 1 – 2 months before Go-Live
- The initial migration is when the bulk of the historical data is migrated over to the destination. We recommend that this only include email and file data (where applicable), calendar and contacts data should be migrated at the delta stage. This is because that data changes frequently and may be deleted, moved, or updated etc. We also recommend that you leave a “Working Window” of around 30 days from today's date for email migration for the same reason.
- Users do not need to know that their data is being migrated. CloudM Migrate is non-intrusive and non-destructive, it will not remove any data from the source system, it will only copy data to the destination.
1 week before Go-Live
- Reduce the TTL expiration of MX records.
- Communicate the upcoming data migration and Go Live date to all impacted users.
Go-Live Day
- Switch MX records to new system.
- Perform Delta Migration.
Phase 2 – Delta Migration
- Migrate the remaining email, files, contacts and calendar data. Email previously migrated will not be re-migrated, but the statistics for the whole migration will be recorded.
- File data will be updated if it has been changed in the source since the bulk migration.