Note: If you have contacts, tasks, and calendars in your mailbox and you need to migrate this data in addition to your email messages and email folders, then you need a different Service -- G Suite to Microsoft 365.

We can migrate the content of user mailboxes from your source email system to Microsoft 365. We will use the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) to migrate email. Please note that only email and email folders will be migrated.

Our objective is to provide planning, design, and migration from G Suite mailboxes to Microsoft 365 tenant via IMAP protocol without downtime or data loss and with minimal user disruption.

The migration project will be considered successful if all mailboxes are moved to Microsoft 365.

IT Partner responsibilities #

1. Gather information and verify the original G Suite
2. Configure the destination Microsoft 365 tenant
3. Create and configure users
4. License assignment
5. Create and configure a migration plan
6. Provide informational messages for users
7. Start and control the data migration process

Client responsibilities #

1. Provide a dedicated point of contact responsible for working with IT Partner and coordinate any outside vendor resources and schedules
2. Coordinate Client resources and staff schedules
3. Review and approve engagement deliverables in a timely manner
4. Provide admin-level access to the source email system OR a list of users with individual passwords
5. Perform changes to internal and external DNS, as required
6. Assist with identification of high-risk users (top executives and VIP users, users with 50 GB mailboxes or larger and/or 30 GB deleted folders or larger)
7. Ensure IMAP Access is enabled for all users

Additional cost items not provided by the project #

1. Informing users about the migration
2. Customer team training (could be added as an additional service)
3. Migration of Corporate documents to SharePoint Online (could be added as an additional service)
4. Desktop software settings
5. Migration of anything except email and email folders

Upon completion of the project, we will provide a project closeout report. This document will indicate the final project status, including acceptance criteria matching, outstanding issues (if any), and the final budget. If you require more extensive documentation, it can be provided for an additional fee.  

Our migration solution has been proven through numerous implementations to provide high user satisfaction with Microsoft 365 after switching from G Suite.

Prerequisites #

1. You must have a Microsoft 365 tenant with Exchange Online licenses
2. You must have access to your email domain DNS zone
3. You must have admin access to G Suite
4. The Source must be a paid version of Google Drive. Free Google Drive accounts are not supported

Here are some limitations to be aware of:

1. We can only migrate items in a user inbox or other mail folders. This type of migration does not include contact, calendar item, or task migration.
2. We can migrate a maximum of 500,000 items from a user mailbox (emails are migrated from newest to oldest)
3. The biggest email we can migrate is 35 MB
4. Regular, non-paid Google apps or Gmail accounts do not have administrative credentials. We will need to migrate these accounts using the individual user names and passwords for each account. Without admin credentials, your account may be temporarily locked by Google.
5. Google does not have a folder hierarchy for email, but a virtual view called Google Labels. Google Labels cannot be transferred properly to other messaging systems. Messages are stored as a single instance within the Google mail store, although they may appear under several labels within the web interface. When an IMAP client, such as Outlook or your mobile device, is connected to Google, the labels appear as folders, and the email with several labels will be downloaded several times, taking up additional storage space

Plan #

The plan may vary depending on your needs.

1. Kickoff meeting
2. Pre-migration source system health check
3. User creation or AD connect tool configuration
4. Email and data migration start
5. Migration process verification
6. MX record to a new Microsoft 365 tenant
7. Final email and data migration
8. Verification and fixing issues

Results #

1. Users can access Exchange Online on their desktop PCs, mobile phones, and tablets from any place, any time 
2. All emails are successfully migrated to Microsoft 365 tenant and are accessible by all user profiles
3. All necessary Transport rules are created and working 
4. Mail can be sent and received using Exchange Online 
5. Exchange Online Protection configured and working