Migrating Email Archiving from Legacy Platforms to Microsoft 365: Weighing the Pros and Cons
Migrating email archives from legacy on-premises platforms to cloud-based solutions decreases expenses, lowers maintenance and upkeep efforts, improves accessibility, and has the added benefit of scalable storage levels. When organizations transition to cloud-based platforms, they maintain retention requirements and compliance standards for their location and industry. Plus, remote and hybrid employees can access secure email archives to assist with eDiscovery efforts from anywhere and IT teams can focus on other projects instead of maintaining email archive servers.
Microsoft 365 (M365) is the most popular option for cloud-based email archiving. Organizations are migrating their data from legacy platforms including Enterprise Vault, Mimecast, ProofPoint, Smarsh, Barracuda, Mimosa, and others. However, Microsoft is not the only solution. Alternative platforms, such as Cloudlocker, may be a better fit for an organization’s specific needs and budget, especially with Microsoft’s impending changes to their fee structure for legacy data.
End-User Mailbox Archives: A Delicate Balance
Migrating data from legacy platforms can be a complex process for end-user mailbox archives. Existing shortcuts and links may not automatically translate to Microsoft 365 and need to be converted to archive data. Any email archive migration requires advanced knowledge, planning, and testing to ensure all shortcuts are properly configured and the migration runs smoothly.
Scalable storage is a key feature of cloud-based solutions. Microsoft 365 includes auto-expanding archiving storage, starting at an initial allowance of 100GB and scaling up with usage over time until the maximum of 1.5TB of storage is reached. This method can be cost-effective, depending on the size and growth speed of an organization’s archives.
Another consideration for migrating data to Microsoft 365 is departed employees. Administrators may need to create accounts with licenses for past employees or store their data in shared mailboxes.
Journal Archives: A New Set of Challenges
Journaling is the method of email archiving where emails, including all metadata, are copied to a dedicated mailbox or storage location as soon as they arrive on the email server. Journaling is a useful tool in maintaining retention policies and compliance.
Migrating journal data from legacy systems to the cloud presents a unique set of challenges. With no support for native journaling, Shared Mailboxes are used for legacy data. Without waiting for expansion, each shared mailbox can hold 210GB maximum, meaning organizations need to be strategic about distributing journal data across mailboxes. These storage limits can mean significant time and money spent on planning, storage, and licensing costs.
Journaling archives are critical in the eDiscovery process, however, the lack of ownership and the sheer amount of data collected can make locating relevant messages a daunting task. The Microsoft Purview eDiscovery features include the basics: legal hold notifications, custodian management, tagging, analytics, case management, etc. That might be enough, but some organizations require more nuanced search and retrieval. Limitations include the inability to index large files and certain file types, slow search speeds, and slow exporting.
Migration Challenges
Migrating email archive data from legacy systems to Microsoft 365 produces its own set of challenges and limitations.
Indexing Capabilities
While M365 offers robust search functionality, its indexing capabilities are generally inferior to dedicated archive types. This can result in slower search times and reduced accuracy.
Licensing Requirements
An E5 license is required to access Microsoft’s premium eDiscovery features. This is the highest, and most costly, M365 Enterprise level.
Future Costs
Microsoft has announced changes to the fee structure, with plans to add additional charges for legacy SharePoint and OneDrive data in January 2025. Email archives might likely be their next target for additional fees. This will significantly increase costs for organizations storing large amounts of legacy data in M365.
What to Look for in an Email Archiving Solution
There are many considerations when choosing a cloud-based email archiving solution, whether an organization is moving to the cloud for the first time or looking to upgrade their current system.
Compliance and Legal Requirements
With increasing regulations surrounding data it’s important for an email archive system to meet retention requirements and other regulations. Additionally, the system should include an unbroken chain of custody.
Search Capabilities and Indexing
Email archive features that improve the eDiscovery process, such as nuanced searches and advanced indexing are often key in choosing an email archive solution.
Storage Capacity and Scalability
As organizations grow, email archiving systems need to grow. The amount of storage needed depends on the specific organization and their needs. For some, Microsoft 365’s initial allowance of 100GB and maximum of 1.5 TB is plenty of storage space. Other businesses may need more storage capacity.
Ease of Use and Integration
Choosing an archiving system with an intuitive and user-friendly interface limits the amount of technical support needed and the stress involved in the initial migration. The ideal email archive platform also has native integration with the email clients and software an organization uses.
Data Security
Companies choose to transition to cloud based platforms because of the need for legacy data retention and accessibility from various locations. The security features of any data storage platform should include data encryption, access controls such as multi-factor authentication, backup and recovery options, and personnel security.
Cost
Before migrating any legacy data to a cloud-based email archive platform, organizations need to understand all associated costs including licensing, storage, service fees, and planned future changes to pay structures or fee schedules. Different email archive platforms offer different types of plans and subscriptions, including flexible storage capacity or pay per GB plans.
Vendor Support and Service
Choosing the right data migration and email archive solution is not just about the product features. The levels and access of technical support customer service, the response time, and the overall project timeline from a vendor or partner can have major impacts on the migration project.
An Expert in Email Archive Migrations
Bluesource combines knowledge of email archiving with transparent client communication, clear pricing systems, with around the clock support and a US-based migrations team. We understand all the considerations that go into choosing to migrate email archives to the cloud and choosing a system.
Bluesource has 20 years of experience in email archiving. Our roots go back to the early days of Microsoft Exchange, and experience with MS Mail and ELM. What started with specialized services around Exchange has expanded to include cloud migrations, consulting, archiving, and managed services. When your organization is ready to move your email archiving to the cloud, we’re ready to help determine the best solution for your business – whether that’s Microsoft or something else. Our dedicated migrations team is ready to expertly manage any cloud email archive migration.