With an increasing online presence, having a reliable email system is imperative for today’s businesses for uninterrupted and efficient communication with their clients, employees and suppliers and for sending invoices among other priorities. The technology advancement has enhanced the reliability of email solutions through high-availability and data security of the Cloud platform. According to Statista, the number of email users across the globe has grown to more than 3.8 billion and is estimated to reach 4.3 billion by 2022. In the United States alone, the number of email users was 244.5 million in the year 2019.
What is Email Migration?
Email migration involves the process of moving or migrating multiple email messages from one email client to another. Businesses opt for migrating their email systems for one or many of the following reasons.
- Enhanced speed – With the increase in the size of traditional mail-boxes, earlier email systems start crippling. Web-based email systems not only offer a significant increase in the speed of service but also save users from deleting valuable data to prevent the slowdowns and provide reliable and faster email access experience from various locations and devices.
- Ease of maintenance – Businesses look towards migrating their emails for up-to-date user experience with minimum maintenance. They expect to save their time and efforts in regular maintenance for add-ons, upgrades, updates, fixes and patches that were required by the earlier systems.
- Increased security – Cyber-security is of utmost importance in the current internet-dominated world and companies look for a superior email system that can lower business risk by offering robust security.
- Cost-effectivity – Organizations also search for cost-effective options while migrating their traditional email systems.
Why Office 365 Email Can be an Obvious Choice to Businesses
- Enhanced Flexibility and Accessibility
Since Office 365 is Cloud-based, you can access your emails, files and apps from anywhere and any device including smartphones, laptops, tablets and more. It saves you from specifically signing in to your laptop or work desktop to view your emails securely and gives you the freedom to view them even while on-the-go. - More Focus on Core Business Area
Office 365 relieves you from the hassle of purchasing additional servers and networking equipment. It results in significant cost-savings with no huge up-front costs. Additionally, with the reduced capital expenditure, it lets you focus and invest in your core business areas and infrastructure. - Offers Significant Cost-savings with Scalability
It proves to be a cost-effective email solution with its pay-as-you-go pricing. Thus, it helps you bring your new employees on board with the needed number of licenses with the capability to scale up or scale down quickly and easily to accommodate new employees. - Facilitates Automatic File Back-up
With its automatic file back-up feature, Office 365 covers you from wasting time in re-creating the already created file that has been lost because it wasn’t saved early enough. It provides a back-up by saving the latest version of your file automatically and ensures that it’s never lost, saving your precious time and efforts. - Data Security and Safety
With the advanced security features of Office 365, Microsoft takes the responsibility of the organizations’ data security. Thus, losing data to hackers is the least concern for any business. Further, in case of any issue, Microsoft is always there to help businesses by providing the needed technical support to resolve it. - Enhanced Communication and Collaboration with Easy Integration
Office 365 comprise multiple platforms and tools including SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, OneDrive for Business, Microsoft Teams and many more. Thus, migrating to Office 365 email gives you access to all these tools needed for your business. Further, with real-time document access and co-authoring, Office 365 takes the enterprise-wide communication and collaboration to the whole new level. With everyone accessing the same document at the same time, there is no room for misunderstandings and miscommunications. - Online Conferencing
With Microsoft Teams platform, Office 365 offers you the capability to connect to your colleagues through video chat, share screens and documents and take notes through a single interface. It adds to your organizational productivity and efficiency significantly.
How to Migrate to Office 365 Email?
You can migrate mailboxes from Exchange Server or another IMAP-enabled email system such as Gmail and others in many ways.
Manual Migration
In manual migration, your administrator can migrate all email, contacts and calendar from an existing Exchange or IMAP server to Office 365 email. Alternatively, individual users can also import their email and other relevant content such as calendar and contacts. This method mandates an in-depth technical knowledge to an individual who is undertaking the migration activity as if not done with adequate knowledge and care, it can result in information loss which can be crucial for any organization. Further, it can also be a time-consuming process. You can choose to migrate all mailboxes at once or migrate them in small batches over time based on the size and number of mailboxes and your existing email system. You can as well use Office 365 Import services in case you have many large PST files.
Migration using Microsoft Office 365 Admin Center
You can opt for an automated migration using Microsoft’s migration tools that can help you migrate from your existing Exchange or IMAP server to Office 365. It will demand comparatively fewer efforts and expertise and take lesser time to migrate as compared to manual migration. However, it will not be a completely effortless solution.
Work with a partner to migrate email
Alternatively, you can consider working with a partner to migrate your email to Office 365. The partner will be having the needed expertise and can take care of the complete email migration. It will save your time and efforts significantly.
With our experience, expertise and team of certified Microsoft professionals, we at WaferWire Cloud Technologies can help you migrate your email to Office 365 quickly and efficiently. We are a trusted Microsoft Partner and can take care of all your email migration needs. For more information, contact us today.
