Minimum Requirements for Office 365 Migrations

Jun 20, 2019 by Mike Weaver

Cartoon of email envelopes flying in a bird-like migration pattern, representing and Office 365 migration.

Choosing the best option for your Office 365 migration can be challenging, but in this short guide, we’ll outline some best practice advice when moving from different versions of Exchange Server.

Thankfully, it’s possible to migrate all mailbox data (email, contacts, tasks and calendar items) with a variety of pathways, dependent upon business needs.

Migrating Exchange 2003/2007 to Office 365

If you’re migrating from Exchange 2003 or 2007 and don’t want to add an Exchange 2010 or higher server to your infrastructure as a Hybrid server, study the following methods:

No. of mailboxes	Timeframe	Method to choose
< 150	Weekend, or over a few days	Cutover migration
< 150	No urgency, moving a few users at a time	Staged migration For 150+ mailboxes, the preferred option is a staged migration, batching a limited number of mailboxes into waves.
150+	Weekend, or over a few days	Staged migration To learn more. see Office 365 migration batches: How to Group and Wave Users
150+	No urgency, moving a few users at a time	Staged migration

Migrating Exchange 2010/2013/2016 to Office 365

When migrating from Exchange 2010, 2013 or 2016, the following approaches will be most suitable:

No. of mailboxes	Timeframe	Method to choose
< 150	Weekend, or over a few days	Cutover migration or Express migration
< 150	No urgency, moving a few users at a time	Exchange Hybrid To learn how to perform this process, download our detailed guide: How to Migrate Exchange to Office 365: Step by Step
150+	Weekend, or over a few days	Exchange Hybrid
150+	No urgency, moving a few users at a time	Exchange Hybrid

Managed Email Migration Services

If you work for a large organization that has thousands of users and mailboxes, and a large volume of archive data, you may be interested in our ‘fixed-cost, fixed-outcome’ managed migration services that can quickly and efficiently upgrade your entire email ecosystem to Office 365.

To learn more about our areas of speciality, please click below:

If you’re planning an Office 365 migration and would like to discuss how we can help, please contact us today and one of our expert team will be in touch.