Globally there are a whopping 25 billion emails sent and received per month, mtc team members account for approximately 200,000 of these. Email technology has been around since the mid-‘70s and has developed into the lifeblood of formal business communication, with particular importance placed on the need for them to always be available, accessible and timely.

Thus, it is when a suggestion to migrate from one email system to another, business leaders often fear the worst, a loss of comms similar to the finale of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, whereby society is reduced to living in deep underground mines, with no access to the outside world.

Warren Bennis is quoted as saying “In life, change is inevitable. In business, change is vital” and it is with this in mind, the proposition to move mtc's internal mail solution from an archaic POP/IMAP infrastructure to a Microsoft solution was put forward.

For the uninitiated, M365 (formally O365/Office 365, and also known as Microsoft 365) is a combination of business productivity software developed by Microsoft, available for Windows, macOS, mobile platforms and accessible through web browsers. It includes, but is not limited to: Exchange (email solution); productivity software (Word, Excel, PowerPoint); cloud storage (OneDrive, SharePoint); and communication software (Teams). The software package is entirely inter-connected, aiding a workforce that is no longer solely office-based and requires the ability to access and share files anywhere around the globe in a secure manner.

Evidently, these features far outweigh the basic POP/IMAP solution of ‘email comes in – email goes out', not to mention the security benefits of multi-factor authentication (similar to those pin code texts your bank may send you from time to time). The importance of MFA is paramount - of the 1.2 million hacked accounts in January 2020, 99.9% of them did not have MFA enabled1.

“This all sounds fantastic, why not migrate right away” – this is where the managerial nuclear bunker, doomsday fear sets in. Common concerns include:

1. How long it will take;
2. Historic emails being lost;
3. and biggest of all…What if new emails can’t be sent/received.

Without proper planning, these are most certainly legitimate concerns, emails are a business-critical feature after all. We began offering M365 as a solution to clients who we felt would benefit from the solution in 2020, completed our own migration ourselves earlier this year, and we are proud to say we have quashed every one of these fears, averting any potential nuclear disaster on the way.

"Regular communication from the Helpdesk once the process was initiated, on occasion by telephone, made the process straightforward "

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