The demand for cloud services has greatly increased within the last years. The acceptance of the cloud is rather high in the business world, which you can see from the massive survey we conducted at the beginning of 2017.
In this survey, we asked more than 2,000 IT decision makers (ITDMs) from nearly 100 countries to assess the state of cloud adoption. The clear majority of 80.1% said that they like cloud computing and already use cloud services: email, web hosting, collaboration/Office applications being the most popular.
Paessler Goes Cloud
Of course, as an IT company we belong to the 80% of cloud supporters. That’s why we, the IT department at Paessler AG, decided quite a while ago to move from our Exchange servers to Microsoft Exchange Online and Office 365. How we did it, how long it took, and what we learnt from this migration you can read here.
iA server is a computer or system that provides resources, data, services, or programs to other computers, known as clients, over a network. In theory, whenever computers share resources with client machines they are considered servers. There are many types of servers, including web servers, mail servers, and virtual servers. Read more ...
In August, we started with the planning phase for migrating our company’s mail system to Microsoft Exchange Online. The reasons why we planned to move to the cloud?
To make your own consideration whether you prefer Exchange Online or Exchange on-premises, have a look at our comparison chart. There is no “better” or “worse” concerning cloud or on-premises Exchange version. The versions are just different. The following table should help you weighing up.
| Choose Exchange Online | Choose Exchange on-premises | |
| You want Microsoft to take over the main part of maintaining your Exchange system? | ||
| Can your IT department guarantee 24/7 maintenance of your Exchange system? | ||
| You always want to be up to date and get releases of new features, fixes, patches automatically to your systems? | ||
| You want to roll out patches/updates manually and according to your own schedule? | ||
| You want somebody who takes care of all the needed hardware? | ||
| You use Office with colleagues for easy modifying, collaborating, and sharing, and you need tools like MS Teams, SharePoint Online, Lync Online? |
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| You need your Exchange system only for mailing and calendaring? | ||
| Can you guarantee a 24/7 stable internet and network connection like Microsoft can? | ||
| You want independence from internet connection? | ||
| You want easy access to calendars, emails, and contacts on mobile phones at any time? | ||
| Is integration of third-party applications an important factor? | ||
| You want unlimited storage space on cloud servers all over the world? | ||
| You need to send large amounts of mails regularly? | ||
| You want to be flexible in terms of different license subscription plans matching your requirements? | ||
| You want a desktop-based mail and calendar server with several Exchange versions? | ||
| Do you only need the latest Exchange version? | ||
| You want to run any Exchange version as long as you wish? (Note: Older versions might cause higher costs) | ||
| Security is an important factor? You want security updates immediately? | ||
| You want to pay extra for better security? | ||
| You don’t mind when patches and updates are installed without prior notification? | ||
| You want to know exactly where your data has been saved? | ||
| You prefer to troubleshoot a single point of failure (all mails are stored at one location)? |
Microsoft offers various checklists for home/business/education users that help preparing for the migration to Office 365.
For our enterprise deployment, we determined general tasks first:
Microsoft also offers support for the crucial task of network planning when migrating to Office 365, such as:
For migrating our Exchange system to Exchange Online, we furthermore had our own migration concept with all the steps to be taken into consideration. We were also supported by an external IT provider specialized in cloud-based professional services who helped us determine the roadmap for our Exchange migration.
To grant a smooth cloud migration, we first created test mail boxes of different sizes, which were moved to the Microsoft cloud. After the successful tests at the end of October we began the official migration of all Outlook data of our IT department only. So, in case of unusual behavior, error tracking would be easier.
All the mails of the Tech Support Team would follow next to the cloud. We decided to execute the migrations always on weekends to minimize disruptions to company operations as much as possible. Due to the comprehensive preparatory work, the migration to Exchange Online was possible without larger failures and could be completed by mid-November. It was five minutes’ maximum that the users could not access their mails, so everything went smoothly.
We learned that there is no better or worse concerning Exchange Online or Exchange Server on-premises. It must fit the company’s individual needs, and so you should decide. Spend enough time in a detailed planning and perform a step-by-step migration beginning with the least important section.
If you follow all these steps, you can realize even sophisticated Exchange migrations without major downtime.
What about you? Have you already completed a Microsoft Exchange Migration? We'd love to read your experience in the comments!