Everyone knows that the first step in any activity is the most crucial one. An email migration project is no exception. However, the importance of the proper project initiation is often overlooked. Many times a project kickoff meeting focuses only on the statement of work when it should include a full planning workshop, which involves significantly more than a document review. There are several key considerations that should be addressed during this session and all responsible parties must be in attendance. Binary Tree specializes in email migrations and we often run migration planning workshops with customers that are preparing for their transition to Exchange 2010. In this blog post, I’m going to impart some of our best practices to drive a successful planning workshop for an upcoming mail migration. The main topics covered in this article are: 
- Understand why the migration is occurring
- Define critical goals for the success of the project
- Identify project team roles and responsibilities
- Plan for end-user change management
- Ensure team buy-in on realistic project timeline and milestones
- Address the top 3 overlooked critical success factors
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Many organizations are investigating the cloud as a possible solution offering for some of their on-premises IT services. Cloud environments like
Microsoft Office 365 are not just for small businesses. There are very real financial, technical, and logistical reasons why companies of all sizes, particularly the big ones, choose to migrate to a cloud infrastructure. And it turns out that e-mail is the first toe that most organizations decide to dip into the cloud as a business validation case.
What are these companies trying to validate during their first foray into Microsoft’s Office 365
cloud solution? Well, there’s no surprise in this one. They want to know if the cost savings are really there. In a cloud infrastructure model, one of the main points to validate is that it takes less head count to maintain the solution environment because you are essentially ‘outsourcing’ those tasks to Microsoft. The objective is to reduce cost and complexity. And the fact that fewer people are now required to maintain the same level of service, while other IT resources are repositioned to more strategic business needs, means that there should be obvious cost savings. But how long does it take to reposition those folks? During the migration to the cloud is there a way to more quickly realize those cost savings?
by
Mark DeAngelis, Remote Hosted Migration Manager
Are you planning a migration to
Office 365? Are you looking for valuable resources to help you design and execute your
migration plan? I recently came across some very useful information that I thought I’d share …
Microsoft's Office 365 Deployment Guide for Enterprises 
As stated on the
Microsoft Office 365 TechNet website, the
Microsoft Office 365 Deployment Guide for Enterprises is intended to help you understand the requirements and workflows necessary in introducing Microsoft Office 365 for enterprises to your organization. This guide presents the deployment process for Office 365 in a way that explains both important deployment concepts and detailed deployment procedures. It is intentionally organized into sections that provide specific types of information for specific types of deployment personnel in your organization. Here is a quick overview of what is in this guide:
- Deployment Overview Section: This section is a high-level look at the deployment and organizational requirements to deploy Office 365. It has valuable information for your IT decision makers, program managers, and technical implementation leads.
- Plan and Prepare Sections: These sections describe the particular tasks and activities required to get ready and fully implement your Office 365 deployment. The tasks are generally presented in the order in which you address them during your deployment. Topics discussed in the Plan section that need more detail may recur in the Prepare section with instructions for carrying out a task. The Plan and Prepare sections contain information that will interest specific types of technology experts in your organization.
- Migrate Section: This section describes the tasks for moving your users’ mailboxes to the Office 365 environment so you can begin using Office 365 as part of your production environment.
Access the entire document here.
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Posted by Richard Dean, Principal Consultant, Professional Services
Combined with our already excellent services, customers can also expect some new features, functionality, and improvements with RHM. The following sections briefly outline some of those new subjects and highlight the benefits of each. 
Expanded Coexistence Options
Simple Coexistence: With simple coexistence, all email addressed to your company’s domain will continue to be delivered to your on-premises Exchange server. However, email that is addressed to users that have been moved to Office 365 will be forwarded to their Office 365 mailboxes, allowing them to send and receive email from their Office 365 mailboxes using the same on-premises email address.
Rich Coexistence: Rich coexistence provides a robust management experience with better integration options for your on-premises server. You can also configure rich coexistence to provide a virtually seamless connection between your on-premises and online environments. With rich coexistence, end users can share calendars and free/busy information with their existing corporate Lotus Domino co-workers, regardless of whether their mail account is online or still on-premises.
Rich coexistence requires that at least one published Internet-facing 64-bit Windows server 2008 R2 is running Internet Information Services (IIS), the Web Server Role, and .NET 3.5.1. Typically, port 80 and 443 are required to be open between firewalls for appropriate communication between systems.
For security purposes, an SSL certification is recommended for IIS that’s issued from a valid third-party Trusted Root Certificate Authority to ensure encrypted free/busy traffic between the customer environment and the cloud.
For more information on prerequisites, please download the CMT for Coexistence 3.0.5 Comprehensive Users Guide.
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