After the general availability of the new online suite from Microsoft, Office 365, customers using BPOS will have to start planning transition… eventually.
Customers will have 1 whole year to transition, and to help them, the Microsoft Online Services Team is posting lots and lots of information on their blog:
- The Transition Window: September 2011 to September 2012
- Manual Migration from BPOS to Office 365
- Frequent Questions about the Transition to Office 365
One of the best technical resources is the Planning Guide, from which I took the following planning checklist:
|
Planning Item |
Description |
|
Start learning about new features in Office 365 |
All of the services within the Office 365 suite have significant new features and functionality. For a more detailed discussion of the features and benefits of Office 365, please refer to office365.microsoft.com. |
|
Understand new Office 365 products |
Visit office365.microsoft.com/office365-plans.aspx to learn about the subscription plans available to the enterprise and education markets. |
|
Understand Office 365 System Requirements and the Transition Process |
For the most up-to-date information on transition, please visit microsoft.com/online/transition-center.aspx. This document discusses the system requirements for Office 365 and the transition process in detail. |
|
Learn about Lync and Lync Server 2010 |
Visit lync.microsoft.com to start learning about Lync Online and how the conferencing experience will change with the transition from Live Meeting to Lync Online |
|
Optional: Start learning about federated identity and ADFS |
Office 365 will support single sign on via federated identity. You will need to deploy Active Directory Federation Services on premise to establish a federation relationship with Microsoft Online Services and provide true single sign-on capability. Visit onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/ff637606.aspx for more information. |
|
Optional: Start learning about rich coexistence in Exchange Online with Office 365 |
Visit technet.microsoft.com/library/gg577584.aspx to learn more about rich coexistence for organizations with both on-premise and cloud Exchange Servers. Enabling rich coexistence will require that you deploy an Exchange Server 2010 CAS server role on premises which will allow Exchange Online and your Exchange Server infrastructure on-premises share free/busy information between users with an online mailbox and users with an on-premises mailbox. |