Microsoft 365 Migration Services

Zero-downtime migration to Microsoft 365 from Exchange, Google Workspace or legacy hosting. Fixed scope, fixed timeline, and nothing left behind.

What our Microsoft 365 migration services cover

IDE Solutions migrates small and medium-sized businesses across Germany, Austria and Switzerland to Microsoft 365 from on-premises Exchange, Google Workspace, another Microsoft 365 tenant, or legacy IMAP and POP hosting. Mail, calendars, contacts, files and permissions move across on a fixed scope and a fixed timeline, and mailboxes stay reachable throughout the cutover: no mail is lost, and nobody spends a working day locked out. Every migration is quoted as a project with a defined end date rather than billed by the hour.

Migration Paths We Handle

On-Premises Exchange to Microsoft 365

For Exchange 2013 and later we run a hybrid migration: the on-premises server and Exchange Online coexist while mailboxes move in batches, so mail flows between migrated and unmigrated users the whole time. Older versions get a staged or cutover migration instead, sized to your mailbox count. Mailboxes, folder structures, calendars including recurring series and room bookings, contacts, shared mailboxes with their send-as rights, and distribution lists all carry over, along with the mail flow rules and application connectors that usually go unnoticed until they stop working.

Google Workspace to Microsoft 365

Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts migrate into Exchange Online with full history, and Google Drive, including Shared Drives, moves into OneDrive and SharePoint with folder structure and timestamps intact. Sharing permissions are mapped to their Microsoft 365 equivalents rather than flattened, so who could open a file on Friday can still open it on Monday. We run both platforms in parallel during the transition and switch mail delivery only once the pilot group has signed off. If you are still deciding between the two platforms, our side-by-side comparison of Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace covers the trade-offs before the migration question arises.

Tenant-to-Tenant Migration

Mergers, acquisitions, rebrands and licence consolidation all end with two tenants that need to become one. We map the identity model first, because duplicate accounts and colliding UPNs are what turn these projects into month-long clean-ups, then move mailboxes, OneDrive, SharePoint sites and Teams together so shared content does not arrive split across two tenants. Domains are released and re-verified in a planned window, and the old tenant stays live and readable until the new one is confirmed complete.

Legacy Hosting, IMAP and POP to Microsoft 365

Mailboxes on a hosting package, a local mail server or a POP account that only exists inside one laptop are the most common starting point for a first move to Microsoft 365, and the most fragile. We collect mail from each source, including PST archives and locally cached mail that never reached the server, and load it into Exchange Online with folder structure and dates preserved. DNS, SPF, DKIM and DMARC are rebuilt correctly at the same time, which is usually the first time the domain has been properly protected against spoofing.

How the Migration Runs

Four stages over roughly four weeks for a typical 10 to 60 user business. Larger environments add batches, not phases.

1. Assessment (Week 1). We inventory every mailbox, shared mailbox, distribution list, file share and connected application, measure data volumes, and check what your current DNS actually says. You get a written migration plan with the batch schedule, the cutover date and a rollback position before anything moves.
2. Pilot Batch (Week 2). A small group, usually five to ten users chosen to cover every role in the business, migrates first. They work in the new environment for a full week so that anything unexpected, a line-of-business integration or an unusual mailbox permission, surfaces while it affects ten people rather than everyone.
3. Staged Cutover (Weekend 3). The remaining mailboxes move over a Friday-evening-to-Sunday window, with MX records switched once delivery to Exchange Online is verified. Mail sent during the cutover queues and is delivered, not bounced. Monday morning, people open Outlook and their mail is there.
4. Hypercare (Week 4). A dedicated support week after go-live: priority response on anything migration-related, delta syncs for any mail that arrived at the old system late, and desk-side help for the handful of users who always have a device nobody knew about. We close with a handover document covering the new environment.

What's Included

Everything below is inside the fixed project price. If a quote you are comparing leaves one of these out, ask who does it and what it costs.

• Licensing advice before you buy. Business Basic, Standard or Premium, and how many of each. We size the mix against what your team actually needs, and say so when a cheaper tier covers it.
• DNS and identity setup. Microsoft Entra ID configured with your domains, users and groups, plus MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC and autodiscover records published correctly rather than left at the registrar defaults.
• Data migration. Mail, calendars, contacts, shared mailboxes, files and SharePoint permissions, moved in scheduled batches with a delta sync before cutover so nothing that arrived mid-migration is missed.
• Outlook and Teams client rollout. Desktop and mobile clients configured on every device, including the phones and tablets that only appear once someone cannot get their mail on them.
• Security baseline from day one. MFA enforced for every account including admins, Conditional Access policies, and Microsoft Defender for Office 365 anti-phishing and Safe Links configured before go-live rather than as a later project. A full Microsoft 365 security assessment goes further, and is the usual next step once the migration has settled.
• User guides in plain language. Short written guides for the things that change on the first morning: signing in, finding shared mailboxes, working with files in Teams and SharePoint.
• 30 days of post-migration support. Included, not an upsell. Migration-related issues are handled at priority for a full month after go-live, whether or not you take an ongoing support agreement afterwards.

What Carries Over

A migration is judged on what arrives on the other side. This is the full list we account for.

• Mailboxes. Mail, folder structure, rules, and full history
• Calendars. Recurring series, room bookings, and delegate access
• Contacts. Personal and shared address books
• Shared Mailboxes. Access permissions and send-as rights preserved
• Distribution Lists. Rebuilt as Microsoft 365 groups where it makes sense
• Files & Folders. File shares and Drive into OneDrive and SharePoint
• SharePoint Permissions. Site and library access mapped, not flattened
• Teams & Channels. Channel structure with the files that belong to it
• Mail Flow & Connectors. Scanners, CRM senders, and application relays
• DNS & Domains. MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and autodiscover

Migration Scenarios We See Most

Where these projects usually start, and what the finished state looks like. Our longer write-up on what makes a Microsoft 365 migration work goes through the planning failures behind most of them.

Exchange Server Out of Support

A 40-person engineering firm was running Exchange 2016 on hardware in a cupboard, past end of support and without a tested restore. We built a hybrid configuration, moved the mailboxes in four batches over three weeks, migrated the file server into SharePoint with permissions mapped, and decommissioned the on-premises server once a full month had passed without a reason to go back.

Result: 40 mailboxes and 1.2 TB of files moved, no downtime during business hours

Google Workspace to Microsoft 365

A marketing agency of 25 people had standardised on Google Workspace but kept buying Office licences separately because clients sent Word and Excel files that did not survive the round trip. We migrated Gmail, Calendar and Drive including Shared Drives, mapped sharing permissions to SharePoint, and consolidated onto Business Premium.

Result: One platform instead of two, licence spend down 22%

Post-Acquisition Tenant Merger

Two companies under one owner were operating separate Microsoft 365 tenants with overlapping domains and duplicate accounts for the six people who worked across both. We consolidated into a single tenant: identities de-duplicated, mailboxes and OneDrive moved, SharePoint sites and Teams migrated together, and the secondary domain released and re-verified in a planned window.

Result: Two tenants merged into one, single sign-on for all staff

IMAP Hosting to Exchange Online

A 12-person practice had mailboxes with a web hosting provider, no shared calendars, and years of mail living in local PST files because the server quota was 2 GB. We collected mail from the server and every workstation, loaded it into Exchange Online with folder structure intact, and set up shared mailboxes and calendars for the first time.

Result: Eight years of archived mail recovered and searchable

File Server to SharePoint

A logistics company wanted staff off the VPN, but their file server had a permission structure built up over a decade of ad-hoc changes. We mapped the existing access, cleaned up the inherited permissions before rather than after the move, and migrated to SharePoint and OneDrive with the corrected structure applied at the destination.

Result: VPN retired, remote access without a tunnel

Rebrand and Domain Change

A consultancy changing name needed every mailbox to send from a new domain without losing mail addressed to the old one. We added and verified the new domain, switched primary addresses across all accounts, kept the previous domain as an accepted alias, and updated SPF, DKIM and DMARC for both so neither would be treated as spoofed.

Result: New domain live, zero bounced mail on the old one

Trusted by Growing Businesses

• 99.9% Uptime SLA
• <1h Response Time
• 100+ Endpoints Managed
• 20+ Years Experience

Typical Migration Outcomes

Illustrative scenarios based on typical engagements, not quotations from named clients.

Our Exchange server was two years out of support and every quote we got was open-ended consultancy days. IDE Solutions gave us a fixed price, a batch schedule and a cutover weekend before we signed anything. The pilot group caught an integration with our order system that nobody had documented. On the Monday after cutover we had two support calls, both about phone setup.

Managing Director, Engineering Firm (40 users)

We had been paying for both Google Workspace and Office licences for years because our clients work in Word and Excel. The migration moved Gmail and Drive across in a weekend, and the part that mattered most to us, Shared Drive permissions, actually came over correctly instead of everything becoming read-only.

Operations Lead, Marketing Agency (25 users)

After the acquisition we had two tenants, two domains and six people with two accounts each. IDE Solutions mapped the identities before touching any data, which in hindsight is why it worked. Mailboxes, files and Teams all arrived together rather than in pieces we had to reassemble.

IT Lead, Logistics Company (85 users)

Our mail was with a hosting provider on a 2 GB quota, so everyone kept years of mail in PST files on their own laptop. They collected it from every machine, not just the server, and loaded it into Exchange Online. Staff can search eight years of correspondence from a phone now, which nobody had expected going in.

Practice Manager, Professional Services Firm (12 users)

Why Businesses Bring Us In for the Migration

Most Microsoft 365 migrations do not fail at moving the data. They fail because a shared mailbox was mapped wrong, SharePoint permissions were flattened, or nobody knew the warehouse scanner sent PDFs through the old mail server. The technical work is well understood. What decides whether a migration is invisible or memorable is the preparation before it and the week after it, which is where the fixed scope and the hypercare period exist.

• Zero-Downtime Cutover, Verified Before the MX Switch
• Fixed-Price Project with a Defined End Date
• Pilot Batch First, So Surprises Cost Ten Users Not Everyone
• SharePoint Permissions Mapped, Not Reset
• Security Baseline Configured Before Go-Live
• Certified Microsoft 365 & Azure Engineers
• 30 Days of Post-Migration Support Included
• Source System Kept Readable Until You Sign Off

Microsoft 365 Migration: Frequently Asked Questions

The questions businesses ask before committing to a migration date.

How long does a migration to Microsoft 365 take?

For a typical business of 10 to 60 users, four weeks from assessment to the end of hypercare: one week of assessment and planning, one week running a pilot group, a cutover weekend, and a support week after go-live. The variable is data volume and how many connected applications talk to the old system, not headcount. A 200-user migration adds more batches, not more phases.

Will email keep working during the migration?

Yes. In a hybrid or staged migration, migrated and unmigrated users continue to send and receive mail from each other throughout, because both systems are live at once. During the cutover window itself, incoming mail queues at the sending server and is delivered once the new records propagate. Mail is delayed by minutes in the worst case, not lost.

Do we lose any data when migrating to Microsoft 365?

No. Mail, folder structure, calendars including recurring meetings, contacts, shared mailboxes and files all migrate with their history. A delta sync immediately before cutover catches anything that arrived mid-migration. The source system stays intact and readable until you confirm the new environment is complete, so there is always a position to fall back to. Once you are live, an independent Microsoft 365 backup is what protects the data going forward, because tenant retention is not a backup.

Can you migrate us from Google Workspace?

Yes, and it is one of the most common projects we run. Gmail, Google Calendar and Contacts migrate into Exchange Online, and Google Drive including Shared Drives moves into OneDrive and SharePoint. Sharing permissions are mapped to their Microsoft 365 equivalents rather than reset, which is the part that most often goes wrong when a migration is run with a tool and no planning.

What does a Microsoft 365 migration cost?

It is quoted as a fixed-price project after the assessment, based on user count, data volume and the number of connected systems, not billed by the hour. Microsoft licences are separate and billed at cost through our Cloud Solution Provider authorisation. You get the full figure in writing before the project starts, and the 30 days of post-migration support are inside it.

Do you handle DNS and domain changes?

Yes. We take the domain records as part of the project: MX, autodiscover, SPF, DKIM and DMARC are all configured and verified before the cutover, and the MX switch itself happens only once delivery to Exchange Online has been tested. For most businesses this is the first time their domain has been correctly protected against spoofing.

What happens after go-live?

Thirty days of priority support for anything migration-related, included in the project price. That covers delta syncs for mail that reached the old system late, device and client issues, and the questions that only appear once people are working in the new environment. After that you can take an ongoing managed service or run it yourself with the handover documentation.

Free Migration Assessment

Tell us what you are migrating from and how many mailboxes are involved. You get a written plan, a batch schedule and a fixed price before anything moves. Book a free migration assessment, or read how we run Azure infrastructure for the workloads that do not belong in Microsoft 365.