Office 365 migration for K-12 organization
A large K-12 organization used Exchange 2010 for employee emailing and scheduling. They needed help with planning and migrating towards a new solution that would be able to improve reliability and offer a better experience for end-users, while also working to slash downtime and maintenance needs.
The Challenge
Before working with CyberDuo, K-12 had disjointed IT systems, which caused problems for students and professors.
One of the core issues was that they were using Exchange 2010 for employee emailing and scheduling, while the students themselves had cloud mailboxes. This meant that the students and the faculty were not sharing the same address book space, which made it difficult for students to locate the correct email addresses for their professors.
On the K-12 IT team, Senior Systems Analyst Erik Smith and System Specialist Alex Berger also had the following goals for the college’s IT systems:
Tightened security and threat management
Data loss prevention
Improved up time and reliability
Management tools
Additional applications such as One Drive to tie in with Exchange
Lower physical hardware costs
Lower maintenance costs
Single sign-on to make life easier for staff
One central management environment for a hybrid deployment
Streamlined admin tasks
Reduced size of hybrid deployment
They were also intrigued by Office 365’s suite of capabilities and applications, and they wanted to know more about how the integrated experience of apps and services could serve to benefit end-users.
The 10-person IT department at K-12 did not have the sufficient expertise to maximize the benefits of an Office 365 implementation, however. They also lacked the skills to successfully plan (and execute) a complex hybrid migration without guidance.
Solution
CyberDuo conducted a complete review of K-12 IT systems and their stated goals, and proposed an Office 365 migration which would work to achieve those goals. The entire migration process was mapped out so that everyone knew:
The state of the current IT system
How the proposed Office 365 system would work
The exact path and timeline to migrate from one system to another
The proposed hybrid migration was fairly complex: some components would be in the cloud, while others would be kept on-premise. This kind of migration requires a specific skill set, which K-12 did not have on their 10-person IT team.
CyberDuo has vast experience in this type of complex hybrid migration in the education sector, and was trusted to successfully execute the migration.
CyberDuo’s migration process featured the following stages:
1. Pre-Migration
Before migration, the critical steps were completed to ensure a smooth and successful migration:
Data Discovery: Assessing all data and ensuring that everything migrated is cloud-ready, useful, and actively used
User Preparation: End-users were prepared for changes in the new system
Project Build: Set up subscriptions and licenses, verify domain names, configure new Office 365 configuration,
Confirm Implementation Plan
The pre-migration steps were accomplished through close collaboration between CyberDuo and K-12, who stated: “The CyberDuo team worked closely with ours to address all issues quickly and transparently.”
The pre-migration stage was also successful in uncovering potential problems early on, therefore saving time and cost later. For example: the process revealed a need to switch from SQL Server Express to SQL.
2. Pilot
The Pilot stage consisted of migrating a small portion of the total email users and data. This provides a unique opportunity to verify the migration plan and spot unexpected issues, before beginning the main migration itself.
To this end, the Pilot was successful in identifying some hidden problems, such as some parts of the on-premise infrastructure having been set up incorrectly. CyberDuo identified these issues early on, to avoid significant time and costs later in the project.
3. Migration
Once the migration plan was verified in the pilot stage, and last minute issues were addressed, everything was now ready for migration.
The K-12 IT team members were given frequent updates during the successful migration to Office 365 - and upon completion, a complete verification was carried out, in order to ensure that everything was migrated successfully.
4. Post-migration support
CyberDuo gave detailed training and ongoing support to all K-12 staff, to help ensure continued success with the new Office 365 set up.
The impact for end-users was practically seamless. The only noticeable difference for employees logging in off-campus was that they now had a new login page.
Results
The Office 365 migration achieved fantastic results for K-12 in the following categories:
End user satisfaction
The project resulted in a more efficient system, which has opened up new opportunities.
Now, all student and staff emailing and scheduling operate under one system. Students are able to easily find staff emails, and single sign-on makes things much simpler for faculty staff.
The new tools available with Office 365 have served to boost collaboration opportunities amongst everyone at K-12.
Reduction in management tasks
K-12 saw a drastic reduction and streamlining of routine IT management tasks. With Office 365, everything can be managed from a single console area, with management now taking only a few hours per week. This has helped to free up new time for the IT staff to focus on higher-value tasks, new projects, and on getting the most out of K-12’s IT resources.
Drastically Improved Performance
The K-12 organization now benefits from:
Zero downtime
Improved reliability
Data loss prevention
Lower physical hardware costs
Reduced size of IT deployment
Tightened Security
CyberDuo’s security expertise, combined with Office 365, was able to ensure the world-class protection of all data before, during, and after the migration process.
New Possibilities
By using the Office 365 platform, the IT team is now able to gain new insights into their IT environment which they could never have accessed before.
A Transparent and Successful Transition
Transitioning IT infrastructure is a very complex and stressful undertaking. CyberDuo shared its comprehensive experience in hybrid Office 365 migrations to ensure a clear and efficient migration for K-12.
“It was great working with CyberDuo,” Alex says. “They outlined the path and ultimately led a successful project. We’re very happy with the results”.
