Calgary Firm Selects 403Tech To Help Rollout Microsoft Office 365 And Microsoft Teams For 2021

Migrating to Microsoft 365 isn’t necessarily a simple process. Do you know how to manage the migration effectively? It’s OK if not — you can do the same as this Calgary firm did and have 403Tech handle it for you.

Calgary Firm Selects 403Tech To Help Rollout Microsoft Office 365 And Microsoft Teams For 2021

Migrating to Microsoft 365 isn’t necessarily a simple process. Do you know how to manage the migration effectively? It’s OK if not — you can do the same as this Calgary firm did and have 403Tech handle it for you.

Microsoft 365 is a powerful tool. Most businesses can harness the basics — but if you want to get everything you can out of Microsoft 365, then you need expert management. That’s exactly why a local attorney got in touch with the 403Tech team last week:

“We’re upgrading to Microsoft 365 over Christmas and have a preference of using Microsoft Teams. We have an IT firm we have been with for years, however, they do not specialize in the infrastructure and set up. Is this something 403 Tech could support?”

Our representative replied immediately, explaining that 403Tech provides expert Microsoft 365 migration and management services. We then arranged a time to call and chat directly with the interested party. By learning more about their organization’s size, needs and goals, we were then able to lay out a plan for their migration to Microsoft 365.

Why Did This Firm Need Assistance Migrating To Microsoft 365?

Migration can be one of the most complicated IT tasks in a business environment. Mismanaging a migration can result in a number of serious consequences:

  • During the transition, you could lose some key files for good with no backup or redundancies to replace it.
  • The migration, already expensive, could take longer than you expected and adds what you thought was avoidable downtime to your staff’s work life.

Because of all these potential issues, it’s wise to partner with a company that has experience with migrations and can ensure it goes according to plan. That’s why this Calgary firm decided to work with 403Tech.

Our 5-Step Migration Process

Once we had learned more about the firm in question, we walked them through our carefully developed migration process:

Plan Ahead

When preparing for your migration to Microsoft 365, it’s important to plan efficiently and thoroughly.

The best way to achieve this is with an actual meeting with those who are involved in the process. You should talk through a number of key factors both in the migration, such as:

  1. Why are we choosing to migrate?
  2. What benefits do we expect to gain from migrating?
  3. How will our infrastructure change during migration?
  4. How will the user experience change after migration?
  5. How will we train staff members on using Microsoft 365?

This is an especially vital step because, if you don’t have answers to these questions, then you probably aren’t ready to migrate.  Knowing how to answer these questions means that you can avoid common pitfalls and hit the ground running with your new IT environment.

Furthermore, we make sure your entire staff understands what migration means for their work. What kind of downtime will they encounter, what are the benefits they will have access to once it’s complete, etc.

Hardware

Migration is a great opportunity to take stock of your hardware. This is the type of consideration you need to make (and do something about) before you migrate, and not after.

Software

As Microsoft 365 provides virtually all the software you could possibly use, there isn’t too much to take stock of in your old environment.

However, if you and your staff currently use mail-enabled applications that you’re fond of, or that are so specific to your business and industry that you’ll need them post-migration anyway, then you need to make sure they are compatible with Exchange Web Services.

Equip A Deployment Tool

Microsoft offers a Deployment Readiness Tool to help users plan out the many aspects of a successful migration – primarily, environment discovery.

This tool can analyze and gather info on your IT system’s Active Directory and domain settings, helping to take stock of your Exchange, SharePoint, End User environment and Skye for Business settings. In addition to the app-based features, the Deployment Readiness Tool will also log your network configurations and settings so that they are carried over in migration as well.

Furthermore, Microsoft also has an Assessment and Planning Toolkit. While it is not designed specifically for Microsoft 365, it is useful for discovery and inventory of cloud services and applications. If you’re migrating from a cloud-based or hybrid environment, the Assessment and Planning Toolkit will likely be a useful aid in determining what you need to keep track of.

Migrate

Now that all the groundwork has been done, it’s time to migrate.

Remember, there’s no rushing this process. We want it to be effective, and we want this firm’s new Microsoft 365 environment to work as planned — that means taking the time to do it right.

Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Guidance

It’s possible to handle a migration of this scale on your own — but it won’t be easy. As you can see, there’s a lot to consider, and this doesn’t even take into account the time and money you would spend on handling the process independently.

It’s much wiser to simply enlist the assistance of an IT company like 403Tech, just as our new client recently did. We will be able to offer the experience and skills necessary to manage the migration end to end and avoid the common pitfalls.

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