Microsoft Exchange in the Cloud: Four Migration Tips

Microsoft Exchange in the Cloud: Four Migration Tips

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Though reluctant to discuss specific costs, Day says the value in moving to BPOS is to gain more capabilities without a huge increase in the cost.

"We did a very detailed cost comparison between re-architecting what we have on-premise versus a Microsoft BPOS solution and the cloud option won," says Day.

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Dow is doing a big uplift from Exchange 2003, with its limited mailbox sizes and quotas that just don't cut it in today's corporate e-mail environment. The BPOS advantage is that Dow will get Live Meeting and OCS for its worldwide workforce and Exchange mailboxes that can compete with Gmail on capacity, says Day.

Another advantage in moving to the cloud, says Day, is the savings culled from letting Microsoft handle security measures such as intrusion protection and spam filtering.

"Nobody can run Exchange like Microsoft," he says. "From a security perspective, I can't afford to spend as much on securing an Exchange environment as Microsoft can."

On the other hand, says Day, IT departments need to work with their cloud vendor to ensure compliance regulations are being met. "We're not going to just toss all our data over the wall to Microsoft. We're going to engage with them regularly."

Push the Vendor to Do More on Compliance

Day understands that although Microsoft has been providing services via the Internet for years with its MSN mailboxes, it's quite a different thing to provide e-mail services to a Fortune 50 company.

"Microsoft is going through a paradigm shift," says Day. "We're going to have to coordinate with them a lot and learn together."

But one thing Microsoft must do is deliver on its cloud customers' compliance needs.

Day has been adamant that Microsoft not just provide a console for Dow to monitor its own data, but to provide near real-time information flow through an automation interface.

"So we're pushing Microsoft to feed us all available data through an automation framework so we can take immediate action for compliance reasons."

No matter what vendor you choose, Days adds, never enter into a cloud partnership lightly.

"You have to push them. That's critical."

Shane O'Neill is a senior writer at CIO.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/smoneill. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter at twitter.com/CIOonline.