Migrate from Exchange to Office 365 VS Migrate from Exchange to G Suite
This being the cloud age, you will find options everywhere right from on-prems servers to cloud. Likewise, when you wish to move from Microsoft exchange to a cloud option you will be stumped with these two major options,
Office 365
G Suite
An obvious option will be to go Office 365 or commonly known as O365 as it boasts of a hybrid environment which seamlessly gets the migration done. But the true question is that really that hard to migrate to G Suite? Even if it is, is it worth it? Does it take a longer time to migrate from exchange to G Suite compared to Office 365? This blog tries to break the myth right here.
So there are some basic questions that need to be cleared for both the migration, it doesn't matter if its O365 or if its G Suite.
You can call this the planning section on how this migration will be executed,
Criteria
Number of users(mailboxes) to be migrated
What is the data size
Average mailbox size per user
Average email items (attachments)
Network bandwidth
GB quota allocated for each user
Enterprise Vault migration, YES/NO (Archived Data like Calendar, Documents etc.)
How much of data they need in the first phase (1month, 2month etc)
Now let's check what happens if someone wants to migrate from exchange to office 365,
Microsoft gives 3 different ways to get this migration done,
Express Migration (commonly known as cutover migration.)
If you are running Exchange 2003, 2007, 2010 or 2013 and have fewer than 2000 mailboxes then you can use this type. As easy as it looks, even small organisations at times can't use this as it must be completed all at once. If the users have excessively large mailboxes, then a cutover migration might take an unacceptable amount of time to complete.
Staged Migration
This type of migration is done when you are running Exchange 2003, 2007 and there are more than 2000 mailboxes.
Migrate using an integrated Exchange Server and Office 365 environment (hybrid environment)
This is the most preferred and commonly used option off all the options mentioned here. This type of migration is done when you want to maintain both on-prem and online mailboxes and then gradually migrate users and email to office 365. Requisites for this type of migration is that you should be on Exchange 2010 and have more than 150-2000 mailboxes and you want to migrate mailboxes in small batches and if you have Exchange 2013.
Now if the same Exchange needs to migrate to G Suite then here are the steps that will be executed,
These are the 3 phases of deploying G - Suite
Core IT
This is also known as the testing phase and takes about 2weeks time to complete. In this phase, the deployment is done within the IT team. Here are steps within that,
Deployment of IT team
Setting up of dual delivery without changing the MX records
Admin training
Early Adopters
In this phase migration of 3months old data (depends on the agreed timeline) using Google's migration tool & requires 2-3 weeks time. Here are the steps within that,
Switching MX records
Split delivery for email flow - final configuration
Workshop training for employees
Global Go - Live
This is the last phase where the rollout of G Suite is done for all users and training did for better understanding. Here are the steps within that,
Complete delivery of the project
Classroom sessions for Go Live users
That was the process overview on how both the giants do the Exchange migration. As you can see the process will be somewhat similar and here are some short points which someone needs to check up and above the usual prerequisites which determine how soon the migration will be done,
Network bandwidth speed
DPI enabled firewall (Deep Packet Inspection)
EWS restriction (Exchange web services)
Where to situate migration instance
DMZ
Internal
Port restriction
Between DMZ to the Internet (DMZ - Demilitarized zone)
Between the Internet to DMZ (DMZ - Demilitarized zone)
Bottom line is that the time criteria is fulfilled by other parameters irrespective of G Suite or O365. Of course, there certainly are a lot more questions and parameters that come into the picture but at the next level.
Why should you opt for Searce when migrating from Exchange to G Suite
Searce has a highly experienced and Google Certified team to lead your transition to G Suite for work. Most importantly, it will not affect you day-to-day business. Our team does your G Suite migration with almost zero interruption, as we value your time.
G Suite Certified Deployment Specialist
G Suite Migration Project Managers
Certified Technical Specialists & consultant
G Suite Migration Support Specialist
G Suite Migration Certified Trainer
If you need any further guidance, you can reach us at:
https://www.searce.com/gSuite
