Amplifying the Value of Enterprise Content in Office 365 with a Complete Migration Solution

Most enterprises have large collections of files scattered across a variety of systems and services ranging from on-premises file servers to Internet services such as Box and Google Drive. Files – along with other types of content including conversations (a.k.a. discussions), shared calendars, team announcements, and lists of page links and other types of items — are also routinely stored in collaborative workspace systems including SharePoint, Notes/Domino, Exchange public folders, and Google Sites, as well as in enterprise content management systems such as Documentum and FileNet.

These vast collections of content are typically under-leveraged, since they are difficult or impossible to discover, and can also represent business liabilities, often containing information that is out of IT control and may be noncompliant and potentially damaging in e-discovery actions.

Microsoft Office 365 offers powerful and intuitive content/collaboration capabilities that go far beyond those found in traditional systems and services used for file management. Significant enterprise content migration challenges remain, however, such as inventorying and analyzing legacy file collections in order to determine which files should be migrated, efficiently and securely executing migration tasks without disrupting business workflows, and providing continuous monitoring to ensure content in Office 365 stays optimized for business value.

This post reviews traditional content management challenges, provides an overview of related Office 365 capabilities, and summarizes enterprise content migration requirements. Overall, the post explains how what may at first seem like a file migration problem is actually an opportunity to significantly amplify the value of a wide range of enterprise content by optimizing it for Office 365.

Basic Capabilities and Big Content Challenges with Traditional File Management

File systems have been around since the dawn of enterprise computing, offering the ability to capture and share content such as word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and PDF files. The systems offer basic access control capabilities, such as the ability to share a file or folder with a group of people based on enterprise directory or email identities.

Most enterprises have massive collections of files stored in a mix of on-premises file systems and cloud-based file services, with common challenges including:

• Poor content control, with a high degree of file duplication and many files containing content that is out of compliance with enterprise content governance rules

• Limited content discovery, lacking an enterprise-wide and access control-based indexing and search capability, and resulting in large collections of files that can’t be found and that may be e-discovery time bombs

• Significant ongoing expenses for file storage and file systems/services that don’t meet enterprise needs and are in many cases obsolete

• Frustrated employees reverting, when confronted with cumbersome file sharing systems, to least-common-denominator alternatives such as sharing files via email message file attachments or text messaging services, creating yet more file duplication and out-of-control content

To an end user, traditional enterprise file management tools can appear to be several generations behind popular consumer Internet services such as Facebook and Pinterest, in terms of being able to easily and securely share and collaborate on modern content types. The advent of cloud-based file sync and sharing services such as Box and Google Drive had the potential to address some of the related challenges, and these services were at least improvements relative to the historical worst practice of sharing files via email or text message attachments. In practice, however, they have often further complicated traditional content management challenges by creating additional isolated collections of files that may be out of IT awareness and control.

Liberating and Revitalizing Files in Office 365

Office 365 represents a multifaceted advance from basic file systems and services. It starts, from a file-centric perspective, with the simplicity of OneDrive for Business, but also seamlessly incorporates:

• Consistent and comprehensive identity and authorization services, based on Azure Active Directory

• Permission-filtered search and discovery services in Delve, powered by Office Graph, that transcend folder hierarchies and file types and leverage machine learning techniques to offer enterprise social capabilities such as being able to identify popular content based on who’s using, “liking,” or otherwise commenting on it

• Opportunities to reduce content duplication and expand content reuse with OneDrive for Business, modern attachments, and Office Online tools, making it easy to embed file content (e.g., full-fidelity Word documents, Excel workbooks, and PowerPoint presentations) and make it securely accessible via modern browser clients on both PCs and mobile devices

• Enterprise-scale content control and compliance services including digital loss protection and other security and audit services, facilitating improved enterprise IT control and content compliance

From an end user perspective, as suggested in the Delve screenshot below, Office 365 makes a superset of the power and simplicity of consumer Internet services such as Facebook and Pinterest available for work domains. From an enterprise IT point of view, Office 365 also provides comprehensive content control without requiring disruptive or cumbersome workflow changes, and often at a dramatically reduced total cost of ownership relative to traditional on-premises content/collaboration systems and piecemeal file sync and sharing services.

A Delve Desktop View (Source: Microsoft)

Office 365 Content Migration Requirements

Fully leveraging the new Office 365 content/collaboration capabilities is not as simple as copying files from old to new folders; indeed, doing so just perpetuates legacy file management challenges and liabilities.

Another migration challenge stems from the fact that many of the systems/services used to manage and share files also support additional collaborative workspace content such as conversations, shared calendars, team announcements, and lists of page links and other types of items. Broadly-deployed systems/services in this category include traditional SharePoint document libraries, Exchange public folders, Google Sites, IBM QuickPlace/Quickr, and Notes/Domino document library databases. It’s insufficient to migrate only the files from such workspace systems, as otherwise either the legacy workspaces need to be maintained indefinitely or large enterprise content resource collections get lost during migration.

To effectively and efficiently undertake file migrations to Office 365, addressing the full spectrum of real-world enterprise migration needs, requirements include:

• Pre-migration assessment, providing a comprehensive inventory of existing files and guidance on their likely enterprise value based on analysis of file metadata and usage patterns

• Support for multiple source system types, including on-premises file systems, Box, Google Drive, and enterprise content management systems that support the CMIS standard (such as Documentum and FileNet); in addition, collaborative workspace systems/services that are commonly used for file-based collaboration must be fully supported, with the migration scope including conversations, calendar entries, announcements, and other item lists, not just files

• Automated handling of common content migration complications including hyperlink mapping and resolution of duplicated file and folder names

• Support for shared files in file sync/sharing services, as well as files shared via specific folders (i.e., files that are listed as “shared with me” rather than placed in shared folders); for example, if one project team shares a collection of Google Drive files with a second project team, the files shared by the first team should be optionally included in the migration scope

• Flexible options for format translation (e.g., from Google Docs to Microsoft Word), along with support for system/service-specific extensions, for full content fidelity, such as transforming Google Drive Fusion Tables into tables that can be used in Office 365

• The ability to target multiple Office 365 tool/service types, including OneDrive for Business as well as file repositories associated with Office 365 Sites and Groups; these sources are then included in the Office Graph, and discoverable via Delve

• Support for file metadata and privilege migration, including identity mapping, to ensure the files are migrated with their full business context and access control settings; access control migration needs to be supported at site/service, folder, and file levels (subject to the capabilities of the source system/service), along with options for full folder hierarchy mapping and flattening (e.g., migrating all files from a hierarchy into a single Office 365 folder)

• Flexible support for migration filter constraints, such as excluding files larger than a specified size limit or files based on file name search criteria

• Enterprise-scale performance and reliability, with a high degree of automation and an architecture that robustly supports parallel processing

• An option to efficiently integrate legacy and Office 365 file collections through replication, making it possible to immediately leverage new Office 365 capabilities without disrupting legacy workflows while multi-phase migrations are completed

• Continuous monitoring, using the same automated techniques applied during pre-migration assessments, to ensure new Office 365-based file collections avoid problems that plagued earlier legacy file system/service deployments

All of the above requirements are addressed by CASAHL’s DART product suite, developed over the course of more than twenty years of successful enterprise migration experience. CASAHL also offers a Fixed-Fee Migration service option, for enterprises seeking to quickly bootstrap their Office 365 migration projects.

Although migrating large collections of content scattered across disparate systems to Office 365 may initially appear daunting, CASAHL DART makes it easy and cost-effective to quickly and fully leverage the new content/collaboration capabilities in Office 365. Unlike basic file migration utilities, CASAHL DART provides a single enterprise-scale solution that works with multiple content systems/services and can also address collaborative application migration from platforms including on-premises SharePoint and IBM Lotus Notes/Domino. For more information about CASAHL’s seamless support for collaborative applications, please see these related posts:

• A Revised and Reduced Role for Traditional SharePoint in Office 365

• Migrating Notes/Domino Deployments to Office 365