If you’re just starting your move to Office 365, you might expect it to take several months. But with the support of FastTrack it can take as little as a few weeks – even taking into account data migration.
What is FastTrack?
FastTrack is a service from Microsoft which is designed to help businesses investing Office 365 to move their existing systems and data to the cloud.
The service provides a smooth transition, with Microsoft engineers and partners working alongside your team. Microsoft provides a suite of best practices, tools, remote assistance and resources to help get the job done.
Who gets FastTrack support?
The good news is that most enterprises will find FastTrack support available free-of-charge. If you have 50 or more Office 365 licences, Microsoft will provide onboarding and adoption assistance. For companies with 150 500 or more licences, they will additionally provide technical support and software solutions to migrate your data into the cloud. (Microsoft originally set the line at 150 licences, which was changed to 500 in Septembr 2017.)
It’s important to recognise that FastTrack isn’t a one-off or short-term offer – it’s an ongoing service that is avaialble for the lifetime of your Office 365 subscription.
How does it shape up?
FastTrack is divided up into three stages, designed to make sure your cloud journey starts on the right foot, and that you move to Office 365 with confidence. The three stages are called Envision, Onboard and Drive Value.
- In the Envision stage, FastTrack will help you and your Microsoft partner set out a vision for your organistaion’s cloud move. Your partner will help you prioritise your needs, stakeholders and resources, and define what success will look like in a formal plan.
- The Onboard stage sees your dedicated Microsoft manager and engineer work with you to set up and configure your cloud services, migrate existing files, email and other data, and bring your users onto the new system. Then plan you created in the Envision stage acts as a blueoprint for this process.
- Finally, the Drive Value stage provides guides and best practices designed to help staff in specific roles – like HR, IT and Sales – get the most out of your investment.
What do you get?
For organisations with 50-149 50-499 users, FastTrack gives you the following services:
- Support from a FastTrack Manager, Engineer and Migration Engineer
- Guidance and tools for Active Directory
- Guidance for enabling tenant setup, network and DNS configuration
- Gudiance to set up accounts (online/federated)
- A remote adoption planning workshop
- Access to user adoption resources and training templates
- Guidance to configure Exchange mail flow, DNS/Firewall, Autodiscover & SPF, Hybrid Exchange
- Exchange mail migration guidance
- Guidance to enable Skype for Business, including configuration, client deployment and PSTN conferencing
- Guidance to enable OneDrive, including user provisioning, transferring My Sites and personal document libraries, and hybrid configuration for SharePoint scenarios
- Guidance on SharePoint Online, including DNS/network/firewall setup, user provisioning, and site collection creation
- Guidance on deploying Office 365 ProPlus and Office mobile apps
- Plus support with core onboarding for Microsoft Project Online, Power BI and Yammer.
Enterprises with 150+ 500+ users also have access to:
- Support from Migration and Programme Managers
- Exchange mail migration from Exchange, Notes, GroupWise, Google Apps or IMAP, plus planning guidance and oversight for mailbox migration
- OneDrive migration from file shares, Google GDrive, Box.com, Dropbox
- SharePoint Online migration from file shares, Box or SharePoint 2013
- Additional user adoption services, including enhanced workshop delivery
- Guidance to configure geo-redundant ADFS and ADFS Client Access Policy
- Guidance to configure Exchange Unified Messaging and Public Folder Coexistence
- Guidance to migrate Skype for Business users and contact lists
- Deployment guidance for hybrid/Cloud PBX/on-premise PSTN configurations
Get started
If you’re ready to get started, but are looking for a Microsoft partner to take you through the cloud journey, get in touch.
At CompanyNet, we have a depth of experience in the transition to Office 365 that is hard to match, and are always happy to discuss your needs to see if we’d be a good fit.
Download Microsoft’s FastTrack e-book to get the full picture on FastTrack.