With the company’s migration goals laid out, its Microsoft representative suggested contacting Insight for guidance. Starting with a free assessment, we stepped in to evaluate its needs.
We analyzed the client’s infrastructure, financial objectives and enterprise readiness to see if Office 365 would be a good match. Our goal: to find out if the company could jump into the Office 365 collaboration environment in its current state. The answer: yes.
Trusting our initial assessments, the client invited Insight to act on its behalf and re-negotiate its Microsoft Enterprise Agreement. After thorough evaluation and research, we provided software advice and council on what should be included.
We devised a custom migration plan and worked in collaboration with Microsoft to deliver proofs of concept for the platform and user experience. Proofs of concept included specific use cases, testing and proposed pilot programs. The client decided to move forward with the proposal and signed its Enterprise Agreement renewal with Microsoft.
Executing successful software deployment
In order to help the client orchestrate a successful migration and see the true value of its purchase, we provided a dedicated project manager to ensure business priorities were being met.
Through our managed migration services, we helped the client initiate a comprehensive migration of all Exchange, SharePoint and Skype for Business accounts. In the first wave, we successfully migrated more than 8,543 mail and fileshare accounts and 8,545 Skype user accounts.
While we’re still in the middle of the project, we’re currently ahead of schedule, well within budget and on track to migrate over 15,000 mail and Skype accounts. Microsoft reports that the first wave of this transformational migration has resulted in the lowest mailbox failure rate its seen in the last seven years.
Ensuring a better user experience
With user experience being the client’s biggest priority, we knew additional end-user support would be needed.
Since the client already managed its service desk internally, we suggested temporarily supplementing support with our managed services. We provided support for Office 365 specifically, handling user questions and migration-related issues from two weeks before the first migration until one month after the final migration.