Welcome to the latest series on Tenant-to-Tenant Migration brought to you by Late Night Brew!
In this enlightening series, we’re diving deep into tenant migrations, their benefits and rationales, as well as the nuances and intricacies involved in such processes. Our host, Robert Buktenica, and his guest, Joe Cirillo kick things off by providing the reasons behind a tenant migration.
So, grab your favourite drink and join us as we unravel the fascinating realm of tenant migrations.
TIMESTAMP
00:07 – Introduction
00:30 – The Brew
01:39 – What are the reasons why organisations may need to do a tenant-to-tenant migration?
TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Robert Buktenica: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Late Night Brew, where we talk about the brews first and we get around to what we’re supposed to after. Joining me once again on a brand-new series is my good colleague, good friend, Joe Cirillo. Joe, welcome back, buddy.
Joe Cirillo: Thank you, Buck. It’s been a little while, so I appreciate the time here today, for sure.
The Brew
Robert: Yes, it has. You know the deal, what brew are you having with me today?
Joe: Well, it’s a little early here, it’s before noon, so I’m sticking with just a good old cup of java. I am a cream guy, but I’m not a sugar guy. Not that much cream, just a dab, really, just to colour it up a little bit.
Robert: Keep it interesting.
Joe: Absolutely.
Robert: Well, it is early. I have the appropriate type of beer. It’s a coffee stout. I, too, have been enjoying a little bit of coffee prior to noon.
Joe: Perfect.
Robert: It’s actually pretty good. It’s just a little heavy at the moment, but that’s my own fault for not stocking my fridge properly.
Joe: I imagine that coffee stouts do get a little robust, for sure.
Robert: They can, they can. On that though, and before it really kicks in and gets interesting, we’re talking, of course, about tenant-to-tenant migrations. And this whole series is going to cover a lot of it, however first, on a high level, what are some of the reasons that an organisation might need to do a tenant-to-tenant migration?
What are the reasons why organisations may need to do a tenant-to-tenant migration?
Joe: There’s many different reasons why an organisation might be involved in a tenant migration. Of course, everybody’s heard of mergers and acquisitions and divestitures. Those are the most common reasons why a tenant-to-tenant migration might be required. In this day and age, most organisations have a Microsoft presence, usually in the form of a Microsoft tenant in some form or fashion, whether it’s just email or they’re highly invested in using all of the Microsoft services, right?
Usually, when a merger occurs, where one organisation either purchases another or acquires another organisation, typically, they both have a Microsoft presence. I know there’s still a little bit of Google out there as well that we do encounter as part of this, but for the most part it is Microsoft to Microsoft. Usually, as part of that merger, they want to basically consolidate the tenants.
In a similar vein: divestiture. An organisation might want to carve out a particular portion of their business. Again, usually the buying organisation has a Microsoft 365 presence and they want to absorb those services and users into their tenant, and so of course then we have to go through a tenant migration in that way as well.
Another kind of niche reason could be just a simple reorg. Some organisations, just for one reason or another, have built out, based on their business units, operating maybe in a separate tenant, and now they just want to bring them all together.
I don’t see as many of those as we do sort of the M&A and divestiture, but we have seen at least a couple of those in the past where it’s really just more of a reorg, just bringing everything together.
Robert: One I’ve seen in my own past was the original tenant was setup, I’ll call it from the hip. It’s sprawled, and people are doing this and that. They said, “You know what, we want to take this. Only move what we care about.”
It was literally a cleanup operation, where they move to a new tenant just to clean up and take care of all—because there was so much sprawl and there was so much uncertainty, we’re only going to move what we care about. That, I think, only in eleven years of working in 365. I’ve only got that one once and that was an interesting case too.
Joe: Well on that, you made me think of just another use case too: a rebranding. An organisation may have first established their tenant under a certain brand name, and now for one reason or another, maybe they’re rebranding and they just don’t like seeing the original name. Or maybe they thought it was going to be temporary because they were just trying out Microsoft 365, so they just came up with a random name for the tenant.
And then as, of course, they grew into it, they keep realizing, yes, we’re going to use this service. I’ve seen it in that scenario too, where they just want to basically just change the name of the tenant. Microsoft doesn’t have a facility to rebrand a tenant, and so they have to go through a tenant migration as well.
Robert: My favorite one on that was they didn’t understand when they were starting it up. So, the on Microsoft name was first dot last of the admin who set it up on Microsoft for everyone in the organisation. John Smith dot on Microsoft dot com. “Oh what do you mean that it’s applied everywhere?”
Joe: Absolutely, yes. Soon as you start using SharePoint or OneDrive, you see that URL and next thing you know, everybody is like, “That’s not going to work, you should change that.”
Robert: Yes, and we did cover off what kind of tenants. I do want to take a moment, we’ve both been in this game for a while. Some of the other, even third party, and I say third party—I’m treating Google as like a second party. It’s definitely its own thing.
Like the third-party email providers, you know, that might need, “Hey, we want to get off this IMAP system or this hosted exchange, and come into our own existence where we’re taking care of our own stuff at this point.
Joe: Yes, absolutely. Even just moving providers sometimes, where you may have gone with like a GoDaddy as a provider using their Microsoft 365, I’ll just say instance, and now you want to maybe branch out and move away from that contract.
There’s a lot of different tenant-type migrations. Or, and we see this, oddly enough, it’s getting to be pretty common where either an organisation, if they’re doing government work, they want to move from commercial to GCC or GCC High, or vice versa. We actually had a customer who was in a GCC tenant, a government tenant, and they actually wanted to reverse and just go back to commercial.
It might not be just a—when you think about a 365 tenant migration, you think, “Oh, it’s all in the commercial space,” but it could certainly be in the government space as well.
There’s some uniqueness to those types of migrations, especially going from commercial to government because the licensing aspects of that where certain feature and functionality isn’t just there. What you might have been using in a commercial tenant might not be readily available in a government tenant. You have to make accommodations for that as well.
Robert: Yes, and then there’s all that interesting guards that are now in place that you have to account for. I think you and I could sit here and come up with more and more. Unfortunately, though, we’re out of time. I really appreciate it, and stay tuned for our next episode in this series.
Joe, thank you very much, as always, and until next time, Sir. Cheers.
Joe: Yes, Sir, cheers.
Are you eager to learn more about tenant migrations? Dive into our full Late Night Brew series on Tenant-to-Tenant Migration or download our eBook “A Comprehensive Guide to Microsoft 365 Tenant Migrations” to gain a comprehensive understanding of this vital topic.
If you need assistance in migrating from one tenant to another, feel free to explore our MapTo Advisory Service or reach out to us to start planning your migration journey.
