ABOUT THE PROJECT:

Our client is one of Australia’s largest dairy companies, boasting an extensive range of household name dairy products and a national presence with more than 20 production facilities.

A project to migrate approximately 1,300 users from a complex internal email environment (on-premises Exchange servers, out-of-support legacy archive platform) to an Exchange Online / Microsoft 365 tenancy managed by the international parent company had recently become stale due to resourcing challenges. The project was highly complex but needed to be delivered within an aggressive timeframe to meet commercial requirements. To complete the migration, ISGQ were engaged.

Key challenges included:
Complex permissions and domain structure between the source and target environments

Aged archiving platform with limited restore functionality

Large user base spanning nearly 30 branches across Australia, with varying mail requirements

Deprecated transport protocols causing reduced functionality in the migration software

PROJECT SUMMARY:

PROJECT NAME: Email migration
DATE: June – December 2023

TECHNOLOGIES
SOFTWARE – Microsoft Exchange, OpenText email archive, Microsoft 365, Quest Software

EXECUTION
All users were migrated with minimal service disruption, and archives were selectively restored for VIP users to reduce mailbox sizes and maintain project momentum. Meanwhile, several major software bugs and compatibility challenges were encountered and resolved or worked around, while continuing daily migration targets.

RESULT:

Completing the migration from on-premise Exchange Server to Microsoft 365 not only embraces cloud efficiency but also allowed our client to address legacy archiving processes. Modernising tools and processes has allowed our client to access archived emails seamlessly, while accommodating growing volumes of data without significant infrastructure investments.