Migrating to Microsoft Online
As quoted by Mary Jo Foley,
“ In five years, 50 percent of our Exchange mailboxes will be Exchange Online ,” said (Microsoft Senior Vice President Chris) Capossela, who expects a portion of Exchange Online customers to come from customers switching from International Business Machines’ Lotus Domino system.”
This work is done through the Microsoft Online Services team, where they offer hosted versions of Office Live Meeting 2007, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Office Communication Server Online.
But what if you already have E-Mail infrastructure in place? How would you go about moving everything over?
There's a guide for that! From the introduction:
Microsoft® Online Services supports migration of the contents of local Microsoft Exchange Server mailboxes as well as the contents of POP3 and IMAP4 mailboxes from your current environment to Microsoft Exchange Online. Migration can be done as quickly or as slowly as you want. Small organizations may be able to migrate to Microsoft Online Services overnight or over a weekend. Larger or more complex organizations typically prefer to establish e-mail and directory coexistence for a longer period of time and perform a controlled migration in logical stages.
To successfully migrate from your current environment to Microsoft Online Services, you must consider the following steps:
- Understand migration
- Plan your migration
- Prepare for migration
- Establish e-mail coexistence
- Migrate your mailboxes
- Complete your migration
The size and complexity of your current environment, your organization’s existing Internet connectivity, the type of e-mail system you are using, whether or not you are using the Active Directory® directory service—all of these factors will help determine your migration goals. In some cases, you may be able to skip or minimize some of these steps. Follow the links above to the sections of this document that describe each of these steps.
