Office 365 email migration is a procedure which is performed to migrate enterprise level application in Office 365’s cloud environment. Many business organizations are now adapting it so that universal accessibility of business data like emails can be ensured. Office 365 delivers office collaboration and productivity tools to business users through the cloud platform. Consequently, it makes business applications more productive and easy to use from anywhere on any device (PCs, Notebook, Tablets, and Smartphones). By subscribing Office 365, business owners can migrate some or all of their existing in-house e-mail systems.
Office 365 supports mailbox migration from the following environments:
  • On-premises Exchange Server environments
  • Hosted Exchange environments
  • IMAP4 servers
  • Some third-party platforms
Instructions that should be followed before beginning mailbox migration to Office 365:
  • Find helpful tool that can help you while performing migration. Be comprehended about all the features of the tool and ensure that the tool is functioning properly before the migration.
  • Reduce mailbox sizes to speed up Office 365 migration.
  • Decide how to support legacy mail systems in better way, if you plan to set up email simultaneity for a long period of time.
  • Understand message-size limit of emails and how they are affected during migration.
  • Analyze Office 365 migration performance and the factors that affect it.

Need of Office 365 Migration
Nowadays, most of the business organizations are looking to expand their services to global level. In this era of globalization, global accessibility of various data (like emails, contacts, documents) of an organization is necessary. By migrating email or other data, administrators and staffs can easily access email, contacts, documents and other data through any device (PC, Notebooks, Tablets, and Smartphones). 

 
Advantages of Office 365 migration:
  • Anytime, Anywhere Accessibility: Microsoft Office 365 offers web-enabled access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendar on almost any device through internet. It lets you to work anytime anywhere as per your convenience. While using this cloud utility, you don’t need to hurry to the office or look for a WIFI hot spot. If you’re traveling and not able to access Microsoft Office, Office 365 helps you view and edit documents from popular web browsers.
  • Professional Look for Your Business: Office 365 is a key part of professional services as it enhances potential of staffs of all categories. As a practical scenario, you can impress your prospects by inviting them to a collaborative online meeting in a hassle free environment. With the help of this easy-to-use collaboration, mail, and messaging services, you can set your upgraded level apart from organizations running traditional services.
  • Easy Communication and Collaboration for your Organization: While using Office 365, you can create a password-protected portal to share large, hard-to-email files both inside and outside of your organization. Further, you can set a single location to find the latest versions of files or documents. It facilitates you to send instant messages to colleagues and customers and invite them to participate in online meetings.
  • Simple to Learn and Easy to Use: If you are using Office 365 then you don’t need to learn new software, install complicated systems, or learn new jargon. Just within few minutes, you can create a trial account and analyze how easily your business can be “in the cloud”.
  • Better solution for Email, Collaboration, and Online Meeting: Office 365 enables you to enhance your Office experience with advanced features like a 25-gigabyte (GB) mailbox, calendaring, contacts, online meetings, instant messaging, document collaboration, and much more.
  • Enterprise-grade security and widespread availability: Microsoft Office 365 provides security and availability to meet or exceed the requirements of your organization. It lets you to create a messaging and calendaring solution that meets your current security and availability needs and makes your organization to meet future needs.
  • User productivity: Microsoft Office products are much popular and users are already familiar with them. So, Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Outlook Web App help them to be productive.

Market-Share of Microsoft Office 365:
Now, the market share of Office 365 in various fields (as per survey of June-2013) - Retail: 15.7%, Technology: 11.8%, Education: 22.6%, Healthcare: 19.7%, Government: 27.7%.
Risks and Challenges faced while migrating Novell GroupWise mailbox to Office 365:
Migrating Novell GroupWise mailbox data to Office 365 is not an easy task. While performing this task you may encounter different frustrating and challenging issues such as:
  • Long time consumption to complete migration: This migration typically takes long time. Users on both systems need to send email, schedule appointments, and view free/busy calendar information with users on the other system.
  • GroupWise to Office 365 Migration involves more than just migration of email data: Office 365 migration typically involve more than just translating email messages, calendars, and contacts.
  • GroupWise to Office 365 Migration must keep important archived email: Email archives contain majority of information migrated in terms of both number of items and the size of the data.
  • GroupWise to Office 365 Migration must ensure the reliability of migrated data: The migrated email items like messages, calendars, and contacts must not be altered in any way.
  • GroupWise to Office 365 Migration need accurate reporting: Regular reporting of the GroupWise to Office 365 migration to upper management, stakeholders is very essential.
 
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