You need a migration plan you can make decisions with. For a large organisation or an acquisition programme, that means understanding the work well enough to discuss cost, timing and responsibility.
eMXport starts with discovery before delivery. The benefit is a migration approach shaped around the archive you actually have. These five questions will help you arrive at that conversation with the right things on the table.
1. What are we moving, and where is it going?
Start with the source platform, intended destination and approximate volume. If you know the users or archives involved, bring that information too.
Be clear that the brief concerns historical archive data. If your wider programme includes other email work, describe that separately so everyone can agree what this engagement covers.
You don’t need a detective’s wall of string before getting in touch. A clear starting point is enough to begin working through the detail.
2. What can each platform provide and accept?
A supported route needs a defined mapping between the two systems. For eMXport’s Mimecast-to-Microsoft 365 route, discovery establishes the supported data and metadata, exclusions and treatment of exceptions.
That’s why it’s worth describing the details you care about. Ask how particular folders, labels or fields will be treated, rather than assuming the destination will reproduce everything exactly.
Our recommendation is to identify those expectations before approving the scope. It gives your technical team a useful basis for reviewing the proposed move.
3. Who can provide access and answer questions?
For a large organisation, or a newly acquired business, identify the people who understand the archive and can make decisions about it.
Name the contact who can arrange access. Identify who’ll resolve questions about the data and who can approve changes to the brief. If those are different people, make the handovers clear.
This is work your organisation can do before the migration starts. A named decision-maker is considerably more useful than “someone in IT”.
4. What will affect the timetable?
eMXport’s published route guidance explains that timing depends on more than volume. Source performance, destination limits, access, data shape, exceptions and available migration windows all matter.
The implication is straightforward: give the delivery team the business deadline and enough information to assess the route. Ask which dependencies could affect the estimate and which need a decision from you.
A deadline is an essential input. Discovery helps establish what delivering against it would involve.
5. What will we need at handover?
Identify who will accept the migration and what they’ll need to review. Include relevant retention constraints and any separately scoped configuration work in that discussion.
For a Global Relay-to-Microsoft 365 migration, for example, eMXport agrees the scope and required evidence before delivery, then provides the defined outcome reporting.
Our advice is to make acceptance specific enough that both teams understand it. You want a shared destination for the project as well as the data.
Give the quote something solid to stand on
These questions help turn an archive move into a brief you can discuss, assess and approve. They also give your internal team a practical role before technical delivery begins.
Send us your source platform, destination and approximate archive size. We’ll help work through the details needed to scope the migration.