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The essential Office 365 migration guide
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Compare Office 365 pros and cons to hybrid, Exchange 2013 setups
If you want to move enterprise email to a cloud environment, look into how that setup is different from other options. You may be able to reduce administration headaches and revenue costs if you move to Office 365, but you'll lose control of your data and how it's handled. Read Now
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Learn Office 365 pricing and features vs. Exchange 2013
Determining the cost of a migration per user often influences the way organizations will go about their migrations. There are four major costs to assess, all of which must be included in your assessment for a successful migration. Read Now
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Compare Office 365 pricing and packages to Office 2013
Before moving to Office 365, organizations should also look at how it compares to Office 2013. Most Office 365 editions don't include the productivity applications found in Office 2013, but some offerings include the option to locally install and use Office applications. Read Now
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Why your organization should be excited for Office 365
There are a number of features in Office 365 that should excite organizations. Our expert offers a look into how the platform's ability to combine Lync, SharePoint and Exchange can change an admin's job. Read Now
Editor's note
As Microsoft continues to encourage organizations to embrace the cloud, Office 365 is receiving more attention than ever before. Learning about Office 365 before a migration can also be an overwhelming task to take on, but our Office 365 migration guide breaks up the migration process into three parts you can easily tackle: time for research, time to make decisions and time for planning how to manage the deployment.
When researching what an Office 365 migration entails, learn about Office 365's pros and cons compared to other options for collaboration. Take the time to learn about what the actual migration involves and the different ways to make the migration happen.
Once you've done the research, it's time to make some decisions about the actual migration. It's crucial to get these decisions right the first time because many can't be reversed. You'll also have to decide how you'll take on certain tasks, such as how you'll manage identities and how many tenants you'll use.
Finally, you'll need to craft a management plan to make sure Office 365 continues to run smoothly after you make the migration. Every organization has its own needs, but it's possible for each organization to create a custom plan that will keep its deployment running.
1Important decisions to make for an Office 365 migration
You've done your research and now you're ready for a migration to Office 365. What's next? There are some important decisions about the migration process. Decisions made before installing Office 365 are critical because many cannot be reversed. Your enterprise will also have to decide on the number of tenants to use and how to manage identities within Office 365. This section of our Office 365 migration guide examines these topics in detail and offers guidance to help your enterprise make the decisions that will help its Office 365 deployment be the best it can be.
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Pre-deployment decisions in a migration
Organizations have to make several tough decisions during the pre-deployment of an Office 365 migration project. One of the most important steps to take involves which subscription you should purchase. Read Now
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Should you use a single Office 365 tenant or multiple tenants?
Another important decision involves whether to use a single Office 365 tenant or multiple tenants. While our Exchange expert thinks it's best to use a single tenant, you can use multiple tenants -- with some caveats. Read Now
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AD FS vs. Password Sync for managing Office 365 identities
When it comes to managing identities in Office 365, organizations have two options. Which is better for your enterprise: Password Sync in Windows Azure Active Directory or Active Directory Federation Services? We'll help you decide. Read Now
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Seven key lessons of an Office 365 migration
Your organization can learn from these seven pointers about Office 365 migrations to help you make specific decisions about your migration. You'll have to decide, for example, when to migrate Exchange to keep the same timeline as you move to Office 365. Read Now
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Office 365 may ease storage, but Exchange admins will still be busy
Office 365 can be a good option to help organizations manage storage, and the hosted service will change how businesses receive IT functions. And while these functions change, Exchange admins will need to decide how to take care of certain responsibilities. Read Now
2Simplify Office 365 management decisions after a migration
After moving to Office 365, you'll need to create a management plan to keep everything running smoothly. Every enterprise is different, but most plans should focus on keeping the deployment up and running. This section of our Office 365 migration guide includes advice on PowerShell's role in Office 365 and how to ease the management tasks within the deployment.
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Control spam in Office 365
After migrating to Office 365, some organizations may notice an increase in spam. There are two ways to configure how you control spam, and which you choose depends on the size of your organization and number of end users. Read Now
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What's slowing my mailbox migration?
If you're experiencing slow mailbox moves to Office 365, there are a few ways to troubleshoot the problem. Microsoft offers troubleshooting tools based on your region, but it helps to first know some common issues with firewalls and load balancers. Read Now
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How to connect to Office 365's PowerShell
PowerShell is a big deal in Office 365. Connecting to PowerShell gives organizations control for automating the way they manage Office 365 resources, but many admins don't know how to connect Office 365 and PowerShell. Read Now
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Use PowerShell to change Office 365 password policies
One helpful thing to do before you set up password policies involves modifying PowerShell to run certain scripts. Admins need to use PowerShell to change a password policy in Office 365. Read Now
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Change Office 365 end user passwords with PowerShell
In PowerShell, admins can manage end users via the graphical user interface. The key is to know the right commands. Read Now
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Manage Office 365 identities with an AD FS server
Active Directory Federation Services is a good identity management option, but you have to do lots of preplanning. There are three steps involved in the installation process and several points to keep in mind if you install AD FS. Read Now
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Set up archive mailboxes, retention policies in Office 365
Office 365 has mailbox quotas for two main reasons -- performance and recovery. Learn how to manage old messages in an archive mailbox and assign retention policies to it. Read Now