If your looking at Migrating your emails to the cloud or wanted to know how to build a business case to do so you are in the right place.

1. Kick-start your business case
for email migration to
Microsoft Exchange Online

2. 2
Executive summary 3
Problem statements 7
Analysis of the situation 13
Solution overview 22
Project description 30
Costs 68
Recommendation 70
Contents

3. 3
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

4. 4
Moving to a cloud-based email solution
can seem daunting. If you’re part of a
larger business you’ll have to break down
the pros and cons so that all stakeholders
clearly understand the business case for
cloud migration.
If you are an IT consultant or a small
business owner, you or your clients may
be wary of making the leap to cloud. Our
experience has been that customers and
IT partners want to move to cloud
services but are reluctant to risk the
smooth operation of their critical IT.
According to technology analysts Bloor
Research, those doubts are justified.
They say more than a third (38%) of data
migration projects fail.

5. 5
For 11 years now we’ve been migrating
customers to a wide range of clouds
solutions so we know that with good
planning and a reliable IT partner, you
shouldn’t experience any unplanned
disruption to your business.

6. 6
More than a third (38%) of data
migration projects fail“
- Bloor Research

7. 7
PROBLEM STATEMENT
The problem with relying on your on-premises server

8. 8
The move from in-house servers to the
cloud is today more of a ‘when’ than an
‘if’.
Cloud migration is becoming
increasingly urgent in organisations
where on-premises equipment is
holding back business growth. It’s even
putting businesses at risk, as Microsoft
gradually withdraws all support and
security updates to small business
servers.
By doing nothing, many businesses no
longer meet industry compliance
standards and could find themselves in
breach of the Data Protection Act.

9. 9
With a £500,000 fine
from the ICO in the
balance, businesses
are flocking towards
migration to Microsoft
Exchange Online, part
of the Office 365 suite.

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Appropriate technical and organisational measures
shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful
processing of personal data and against accidental loss
or destruction of, or damage to, personal data.
- The Data Protection Act
“

11. 11
In 2013, more than 70% of
companies surveyed by IDC were
using, planning, or researching
cloud strategies – and that figure
continues to increase.
Buying and managing physical
servers can be expensive and a pain.
They’re costly, and they take up
space, time and resources that few
businesses can afford if they want to
remain competitive.

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Compared to the
flexibility, scalability and
security of cloud
technology, moving to a
cloud-based solution is
often the obvious choice
for today’s businesses.

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ANALYSIS OF THE SITUATION
Why move from onsite email exchange?

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You know it’s time to consider moving to a cloud based email solution
is if you’re running a legacy Microsoft Exchange versions such as 2003
or 2007. Especially if you’re using the Small Business Server (SBS)
variants of Exchange Server.
Microsoft has already pulled the plug on security and technical
support for SBS 2003, and the plan is to do the same over time with
all other small business servers. That means you’ll no longer receive
new security updates, hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options,
or online technical content updates.
With what is effectively now an insecure server, all your data,
applications and processes are highly vulnerable to attack. Your email,
document storage and business applications are all at risk. This means
your Sage Accounts, CAD Drawings or legal case management
software, for example, are exposed. Yes, your server may still
function, but basically it’s a ticking time bomb.
Your server is - or soon will be - unsupported1

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QWhy is Microsoft no longer supporting legacy servers?

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The reason for pulling support is simple:
Microsoft wants small-medium
organisations to move to Office 365,
their all-singing, all-dancing cloud suite

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As well as Exchange Online, Office 365 provides business users
with a broad range of cloud based Microsoft products such as
Sharepoint Online for collaboration and sharing, Skype for
Business and Office Pro 2016 – the latest version of the Office
suite.
As extended support for older versions of Microsoft Exchange
expires, your business email systems will become increasingly
fragile.
The ability to maintain the Exchange in a healthy working order
is compromised and backup and restore operations are
undermined.
This is particularly serious if you or any of your customers are in
regulated sectors such as finance, law or healthcare. You could
find yourself in breach of industry regulations if, say, you no
longer comply with the FCA’s business continuity requirements
or the Data Protection Act.

18. 18
Office 365’s Exchange Online is a lot cheaper to
run than an onsite Exchange Server.
The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) plummets with
Exchange Online since you no longer face costs for
hardware, maintenance and upgrades.
And, as with all things cloud, it’s based on a
flexible monthly subscription, so you know exactly
what you’re paying each month and can scale,
depending on your business requirements from
one month to the next.
You want to cut costs and manage resources2

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Most workforces are becoming increasingly
mobile, and with the uptake of employees
using their own devices for work (called BYOD
– or Bring Your Own Device), people should
expect to be able to work from anywhere, at
any time on any device.
With Exchange Online – and the entire Office
365 suite of products – you can access and
work on documents from anywhere. You don’t
have to rely on accessing your servers or
applications in your office.
Your business is becoming increasingly mobile3

20. 20
47% of all employees now use their
smartphone, tablet, PC or other portable
device for work purposes.
- YouGov
“

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Historically, you or your IT partner would
typically be responsible for expensive onsite
anti-spam and anti-virus hardware to
protect the business’ Exchange Server, plus
any backup or disaster recovery solutions
for continuity of email.
All the more reason to move to a platform
like Exchange Online where resilience and
redundancy are inherent to the solution.
Microsoft guarantees 99.9% uptime on their
Office 365 suite – and Exchange Online also
includes anti-spam and anti-virus.
Security is a priority4

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SOLUTION OVERVIEW
Microsoft Exchange Online

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Microsoft Exchange Online is the most
popular email and collaboration
platform used by businesses around the
world to manage emails, meetings,
calendars, contacts and tasks.
Until now, it has been difficult for small-
medium businesses to adopt it, due to
the high set-up costs and the need for
in-house technical expertise.
Exchange Online, available as part of
Office 365, provides an enterprise-level
solution without the significant
investment and management overheads.

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Nearly three-quarters of organisations deploying
user-focused BYOD report improvements in
employee productivity, customer response times
and work processes.
- Dell
“

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QHow does Exchange Online differ to Exchange Server?

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Using Exchange traditionally involved buying a
server, finding somewhere safe and secure to
put it on your premises and employing a
specialist to install and manage it.
You’d then finance powering your server,
protecting your server room from fire and other
risks, and provision for future upgrade costs.
Exchange Online provides all the capabilities of
Exchange Server without the need to purchase,
upgrade or manage your own hardware - the
Exchange server is instead hosted in the cloud
by Microsoft.
And routine management is significantly easier
with the new Exchange admin centre.

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QHow does Exchange Online help modern businesses?

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Exchange Online gives employees the
flexibility to work where they want, how
they want. Integration with Outlook means
that they can use the rich, familiar email
application to access their business email,
calendar and contacts.
They can also access them from anywhere,
on any device, so it is even easier to stay in
touch and share information.
Outlook Web App allows seamless access to
email on any computer with an internet
connection - or from multiple devices like
tablets and smartphones including Windows
Phone, iPhone, Android and Blackberry
devices.

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With 50 GB mailboxes and the ability to
send messages up to 150MB in size,
employees can always be productive and
part of the team, wherever they are.
They can access all the same resources as
they would in the office: global address
lists, tasks, shared calendars to schedule
meetings, book meeting rooms or other
resources.
Management overheads are lower, and a
monthly subscription makes budgeting
easier.

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PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Essential actions for a successful email migration project

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1. Plan thoroughly
2. Know your cloud migration partner
3.Understand your existing mail environment

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Plan thoroughly
1

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Failing to plan is planning to fail.“
- Alan Lakein

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They say that ‘Failing to
plan is planning to fail’.
Those words couldn’t be
truer when it comes to
migrating your email to
the cloud.
Make sure your planning
process contains the
following key elements…

35. 35
If you don’t plan your entire migration, you’re
just looking for trouble.
Work out who needs to do what and by
when. Specify tasks and allocate the people
responsible. Assign timings to your plan.
There should be no surprises. Otherwise you
could be in the middle of the weekend you’ve
allocated for the big push to cloud, only to
find that a mere fraction of your important
mailboxes have migrated overnight.
Work out your project delivery lifecycle

36. 36
Whilst this could be a Microsoft performance
problem, more often than not the root cause
of such slow migration will be an odd
configuration of firewalls and proxies,
security settings or server problems – all
things that should have been pinpointed and
fixed during the planning phase.

37. 37
One of the great things about Office 365 is that you get
virtually unlimited archive storage, so migrating your
archive files is probably a given.
Watch out though. Some archive vendors actually have
no way of getting your emails out of their archive so –
unless you're happy to keep on paying extra for
archiving – you’ll have to factor into your plan the
process of extracting content from the archive vendors
storage systems and rebuilding archives.
Make sure you can access your email archives

38. 38
You’ve got to do this. A plan isn’t a plan if it isn’t tested.
And when you do test your migration plan, be wary of your
testing environment. Is it truly representative of the actual
migration environment? You don’t want to be the one stuck in
the middle, saying ‘But it worked fine in the test.’
Stumbling blocks can be that a test environment might not
have as much internet traffic to slow things down. And test
mailboxes have no mail corruption, whereas real mailboxes
may have embedded corruption within the old Exchange
database.
Similarly, your test environment is unlikely to have multiple
security policies and proxies applied. The solution is to create,
populate and migrate a new mailbox into the current
Exchange server.
Test your plan

39. 39
Employees need to be supported during these changes,
so think about business requirements in terms of
training and technical support. Consider how your email
migration will fit in with existing processes and
requirements.
For a certain period of time during your migration to the
Office 365 environment, you will have a mix of on-
premises mail users and Office 365 mail users. For small-
medium organisations, this is when an Exchange hybrid
deployment is ideal.
Miss out this part, and you’re likely to feel the pain of a lot
of confused people.
Plan how you’re going to support employees

40. 40
A hybrid environment will keep staff who have not yet
migrated and those who have, all on the same page.
So users who have mailboxes in your on-premises
Exchange Server environment and users who have
Exchange Online mailboxes can still find one another in
the global address list – no matter what stage they are
at in the migration process. So they can still send,
receive, and reply to email regardless of which system is
hosting their mailbox.
Miss out on this part and you’ll experience great
disruption to your business when employees cannot
communicate and collaborate effectively.
Plan how you’re going to support employees

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Plans are nothing; planning is
everything
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
“

42. 42
Be sure to prevent – and prepare for – things going wrong.
Be confident you have contingency plans in place to keep email running should
your best efforts come undone.
If you have engaged an IT partner to assist you, make sure your migration
partner has the right accreditations and assurances so you can be confident your
email migration is in responsible hands and won’t risk contravening your own
industry compliance requirements as a result of things like mailboxes being
corrupted or lost.
Security, compliance, business continuity and fall-back options

43. 43
People often create their own local email files if, for example, their business restricts
their mailbox allowance.
Without any IT supervision, these files often balloon quickly, which makes them prone
to corruption and at risk of data loss. They often contain business critical data and yet
files are difficult to back up because they’re difficult to locate and users typically have
them open.
They’re pretty much impossible to manage. Which is why it’s important to introduce
PST file management into your cloud migration business contingency plans.
You need to….
Take particular care with personal storage PSTs and other local files
These are a giant bugbear during migration

44. 44
Identify users’ PST files and analyse the data to determine
what should be moved, deleted or archived.
Devise a strategy beforehand to reintegrate the valuable
data back into the messaging before, during or after
migration.
Think about how you are going to handle these files going
forward so you avoid a repeat of this kind of scenario,
which threatens compliance rules, e-discovery and
business continuity. Yet you also need to address users’
needs for easy access to historical email, as well as the
business need for productivity. This might mean archiving
the PST file content with easy access for users, while also
complying with industry regulations by automating timely
deletion of data (usually after six years).

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Know your cloud migration partner
2

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At Cloud Direct, we’re often asked to pick up the
pieces of migrations that have been kicked off
with little planning or that have been poorly
advised. This is a very frustrating time for the
business. They are in the middle of a scheduled
migration and suddenly it all grinds to a halt so
that we can try to undo what’s been done
wrongly.
We sometimes even have to start the process
from scratch.

47. 47
Cloud migration is still a very niche area. It
is not something a business does every
day, so you are unlikely to have a migration
expert in your organisation.
This makes choosing a migration partner
an essential element for the success of
your data migration. But your choice of
migration partner should be well
considered. You are entrusting a critical
part of your business to them. They will be
responsible for the safe and clean
migration of the Exchange server, and
ultimately ensuring your new cloud email
platform performs as the business
requires. So you need to know they are
worthy of that responsibility.
How do you do that?

48. 48
Suspecting and knowing
are not the same
- Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
“

49. 49
Ask for client references
The best way of ensuring you can trust your
migration partner is to ask other businesses
that have gone through the migration process
with them. Ask them how well the migration
went and, crucially, how your potential partner
responded to problems that arose during the
migration?
We would love to tell you there are never any
issues with email migration. Unfortunately,
though, in most cases there is always
something that requires that stretch more
expertise and support to complete the
migration successfully.

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Security is absolutely critical. ISO 27001:2013
accreditation will give you peace of mind that
your partners’ people, processes and IT
systems are governed by a globally recognised
best practice methodology.
At Cloud Direct, we were one of the first
businesses to earn
ISO 27001: 2013 accreditation.
Make sure your provider is
ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certified

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- George Bernard Shaw
The single biggest problem in
communication is the illusion that it
has taken place“

52. 52
Understand your existing mail environment
3

53. 53
It is important to fully audit your
current email environment,
including Active Directory. Make
sure your migration partner
provides you with a comprehensive
report so you can see that they
completely understand your setup,
and exactly what they are planning
to migrate and how.
To make sure you’re really prepared,
ask yourself these questions:
Carry out a pre-migration
audit

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QDo you understand your email environment?

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Make sure you do.
Document EVERYTHING. Every mailbox, every distribution group,
every public folder and every calendar permission. If you don’t
understand what you have, you can’t know what you’ll need to
re-configure once you migrate.
You’ll also want to flag any individual messages larger than
150 MB. Office 365 has increased the maximum file size it will
support from 25 MB two years ago, to a much more reasonable
150 MB today.
However, if you fail to realise that someone has a message of
more than 150 MB in their mailbox, you'll find your migration on
hold. It’s unusual, but it does happen.

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QIs your email environment healthy?

57. 57
Find out if your existing Exchange environment
has any corrupt or unstable mailboxes. These
could seriously hamper a migration. So, even if
you decide against removing them, at least you
can factor them into your migration process
and avoid unpleasant surprises and avoidable
delays.
Approaching a migration is an ideal time to
consider a clean-up of the Exchange – are
there large public folders that can be reduced
in size? Are old employee mailboxes sitting idle
that can also be removed or archived?

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Does Active Directory and Exchange contain the
same information on mailboxes and user
accounts? After all, moving to Office 365 requires
a healthy understanding of Active Directory -
especially if you are going to deploy Active
Directory Federation Services (ADFS) to allow for
single sign-on or run a hybrid environment
post-migration. If that’s the case, you’ll find the
preparatory work goes beyond Exchange.
Depending on your set-up, you may also need to
look at, for example, domain controllers, hub
transport, and client access servers. They would
need to be prepared, updated and patched before
you start migration.

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QHave you communicated about the email migration with your business?

60. 60
Email migration affects everyone so make sure you communicate
thoroughly with your entire organisation.
Tell them:
• What’s going to happen and when
• What might change and when
• What actions they may have to take and when – for instance updating
Outlook settings or changing their mobile email clients
• The process for reporting any issues
• The likelihood and timings of any potential disruption
You should also find out if there are any parts of the organisation where
email downtime is a no-go. There are plenty of best practices and
companion products we can share with you to avoid downtime during
email migration and cutover.

61. 61
QDoes your organisation have the expertise, time and resources to complete a mail migration successfully?

62. 62
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one
thing and that is that I know nothing
- Plato, The Republic
“

63. 63
Too many businesses take it on without due
consideration for whether their in-house
resources have the knowledge, experience
and time to plan and execute the migration.
It’s one thing to work with Exchange Server
but cleanly migrating a live Exchange
requires a depth of experience and
considerable understanding.
Utilising a third party to accomplish this not
only increases the chances of success, but
also puts the responsibility of doing so
firmly with a partner who should provide
contract guarantees and SLAs.

64. 64
QHave you looked into planning and deployment tools?

65. 65
If you ARE planning to take on
migration yourself, there are tools
to help you plan, test and deploy
your cloud migration.
We’ve used most of the popular
tools and can point you in the right
direction depending on your
particular circumstances.

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QDo you have enough bandwidth onsite to avoid slow migration?

67. 67
If you don’t think your bandwidth will
cope with the size of your Exchange
databases, don’t expect a one-off
upload. Instead, we’d advise you to
stage your migration over a number of
days or weeks.
Again, this might mean looking at
different tools which allow for a larger
number of ‘passes’ – that’s the snapshot
or copy of the Exchange database which
is synched to the target platform,
Exchange Online.
This is more forgiving where connectivity
is limited.

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COSTS

69. 69
Costs will typically revolve around
the scope and complexity of
services – and ultimately time –
required to complete the work.
This is why the discovery stage is
so important; costs should be
estimated as accurately as possible
at the very outset of a project.

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RECOMMENDATION
for cloud migration

71. 71
Frankly, any small or medium business that isn’t
considering cloud is off their head. People need to get
over any misplaced feelings of lack of security. They
need to come to terms with losing a degree of control,
when they can no longer see their disks whirring
- Peter Howlett, CFO, Pactum Asset Management
“

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To arrange a free cloud migration consultation
for your business, please contact Ashley Regan,
business development consultant on:
Telephone: 0800 0789 437
Email: ashley.regan@clouddirect.net

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Since 2003, Cloud Direct has helped 4,000
organisations move to the cloud – quickly, easily and
securely. It has built the best technologies into ready-
to-go, enterprise solutions that meet the compliance,
security and performance needs of regulated
organisations in the UK.
Cloud Direct’s packaged cloud services come with one
monthly bill and an award-winning, 24/7 customer
service team. Packaged cloud drives better business
continuity, productivity and agility, and guarantees the
resilience of IT infrastructure and applications.
Cloud Direct is ISO 27001:2013 and ISO 20000
accredited and holds Investors in People – Gold.
Website: www.clouddirect.net
Telephone: 0800 0789 437
Cloud Direct Cloud Direct@clouddirect