DocAve enabled us to ensure version histories, metadata, and other important information related to our data was retained in our new Office 365 environment.
As an organization that helps businesses throughout Switzerland with SharePoint and Office 365 implementations, IOZ uses SharePoint heavily internally. With 50 users accessing the platform, the company collaborates on all documents and information related to projects and customers in SharePoint. “SharePoint is one of our main systems at IOZ,” said Daniel Schnyder, Director of Software Development and Product Management at IOZ. “With 90 percent of our data in the environment, it is crucial that SharePoint is always up and running.”
An early adopter of Microsoft technologies, IOZ decided to move its SharePoint content from SharePoint Server 2010 to Office 365 – SharePoint Online. The company wanted to access enhanced platform features offered through Microsoft’s cloud including the Office Delve search tool, video portals, and groups. For external users, IOZ felt extranet scenarios and project spaces were easier to implement in SharePoint Online. “At IOZ, we like to implement the latest technology internally so we can better support our customers,” Schnyder said. “Office 365 offered great new features as well as deeper integration between SharePoint and other products such as Lync and Dynamics CRM than SharePoint on premises offered.”
Experts in Office 365 and SharePoint technologies, IOZ knew that Microsoft does not provide native functionality to easily migrate content from on-premises SharePoint to SharePoint Online. “We could copy and paste data from one environment to the other, but then we would lose important information such as version history and metadata,” Schnyder said. “We also wanted to clean up and restructure our data upon migration, which was not possible with Microsoft’s out-of-the-box tools.”
To perform a successful migration, IOZ began to investigate third-party solutions.
After researching migration solutions, IOZ chose to utilize DocAve Migrator – part of AvePoint’s fully integrated SharePoint infrastructure management platform DocAve 6. “DocAve Migrator offered solutions for the complex scenarios we knew we would run into as we migrated to the cloud,” Schnyder said. “We also wanted to remap and clean up data we no longer needed in the process, which we could do using DocAve.”
DocAve Migrator provides an efficient solution for migrating business-critical content from on-premises SharePoint environments directly to SharePoint Online. DocAve’s innovative and reliable data transfer is unique in its ability to granularly migrate content down to individual items and retain all associated metadata. “SharePoint is a critical system to our business, so it was vital that we not lose any information throughout our migration to ensure the transition was as smooth as possible for our users,” Schnyder said. “DocAve enabled us to ensure version histories, metadata, and other important information related to our data was retained in our new Office 365 environment.”
In order to ensure its new cloud environment was optimized and unnecessary data was not moved, IOZ was able to selectively migrate content according to business needs through DocAve’s granular content selection and customizable mapping capabilities. “Our SharePoint 2010 environment had approximately 120 gigabytes of data, but much of this was legacy information that did not need to move over to SharePoint Online,” Schnyder said. “Ultimately, we trimmed our data by 75 percent using DocAve and migrated approximately 30 gigabytes to SharePoint Online.”
IOZ was able to complete the majority of its migration to the cloud from start to finish within two months, allowing its users to begin taking advantage of all of SharePoint Online’s features while migrating additional data on an as-needed basis. “DocAve enables us to flexibly migrate existing customer sites on demand as new projects begin,” Schnyder said.
Thanks to DocAve, IOZ was not only able to migrate its content directly from SharePoint Server 2010 to Office 365 – SharePoint Online, but it was also able to retain all essential information and clean up business data no longer needed throughout the process. The company was soon able to begin reaping the benefits of Microsoft’s cloud platform. “With SharePoint Online, we can now easily invite external users to access our project workspace thanks to simplified identity management in Office 365,” Schnyder said. “Our users have also been able to take advantage of the powerful company-wide search capabilities offered by Office Delve, which is a highlight of the platform for us.”
IOZ AG is a Microsoft Gold Partner and provider of services and solutions for SharePoint and Office 365.
DocAve enabled us to ensure version histories, metadata, and other important information related to our data was retained in our new Office 365 environment.