Microsoft 365 migration without downtime

A migration to Microsoft 365 rarely stops at mailboxes and files. Often the workstations are due in the same period: because the hardware is old, because a Windows version is leaving support, or because management is meant to come from the cloud anyway. Planning both together saves a second pass through the same departments.

The question we are asked most often here is: what exactly does a service provider take on, and what is left to us? This is the answer for the way we work, step by step.

• Inventory. Which devices exist, which line-of-business applications run on them, and which of those depend on something that cannot simply be moved. That list decides the order of work, not the age of the hardware.
• Setting up management. The Microsoft 365 tenant gets its policies. We define them as code and roll them out that way, so what applies is traceable and changes follow in a controlled manner rather than being clicked by hand. In substance the policies follow the requirements set out in NIS2.
• Packaging. Applications are packaged so they reach a device without anyone intervening. This is the part that determines the effort: what is packaged properly once arrives on every further device without further intervention. There are exceptions: applications tied to a device key, or without a silent installer. They are the reason the inventory comes first.
• Zero-touch provisioning. A new device is unboxed, connected, and sets itself up through Microsoft Intune and Windows Autopilot. For that to work the device has to be registered in the tenant beforehand: either the supplier does that at purchase, or we add it afterwards. Existing devices that are staying get reset and re-enrolled the same way.
• Data transfer per workstation. Whatever sat on the old device has to be findable on the new one. This is where users notice a migration, or do not.
• Training. For the administrators, so the new way of managing things stays in the house, and for the users, so the change does not land as a loss.

We work on site and remotely, depending on what the step requires. Provisioning runs remotely; for the handover to users, someone on site is usually the faster route.

The standard case is management through Microsoft Intune. Where Apple devices need management of their own, we will use other tools on request. That is the exception, agreed beforehand rather than decided in passing.

For companies still operating their own mail and file servers; for organisations following acquisitions that need to merge multiple environments; and for everyone whose Microsoft 365 start back then "just happened" and who now want to add structure, security and reliable operation afterwards.