Case Studies Simultaneous Migration of Lync 2010 and Exchange 2010 to Cloud Services

Simultaneous Migration of Lync 2010 and Exchange 2010 to Cloud Services

Overview

With a desire to greatly reduce on-premises datacenter needs and address end-of-support issues for aging software, this client sought our assistance with a project to migrate more than 15,000 users from Lync 2010 and Exchange 2010 to Skype for Business and Exchange Online.

Solution

Following an in-depth planning phase, Concurrency’s project team proceeded to build out the online services and prepare for user migrations—in the context of highly specific timeframes. Moving both Skype and Exchange at the same time has clear benefits but also requires intricate planning to ensure each step leads smoothly to the next. In this case, the project team also navigated another complicating factor relating to the widespread use of Citrix to access desktop environments.

Another important characteristic of this particular implementation is that the migration to Exchange Online enables our client to use Exchange’s built-in features to archive email data—allowing it to stop using (and paying for) Enterprise Vault.

From a user perspective, migrating both Exchange and Skype together in the same day typically minimizes user impact. To ensure a smooth transition throughout the company, Concurrency is serving as a third-party help desk through the transition, providing support to our client’s internal IT team to ensure effective user responses as the internal team gets up to speed on managing user accounts using cloud tools.