Tuesday 14 September 2021

Benefits of Remote IT Support Company

 With nearly all businesses using some form of computer network to run their business, it is not wonder that most will employ some measures to keep their system up and running. Computers and computer networks from the core of companies that require them for a number of tasks. Gone are the days when computers were just used for basic word processing; now, they are used for pretty much everything and keeping them up and running is of vital importance. However, not all employers will be aware of the dangers that threaten their systems. There are a number of different IT support services available, but not all of them will be suitable for your business. Here I will take your through the benefits of Remote IT support; a unique form of specialist assistance that could be just what you are looking for.

What is Remote IT Support?

Remote IT support incorporates any type of IT assistance that is off site. This could be telephone assistance, e-mail, monitoring from another network (in some cases referred to as outsourcing depending on the location). This offers many benefits over the traditional systems that larger companies employ. Other than the financial benefits, it offers you a peace of mind, knowing that you will be covered wherever you are should a problem arise. There are some downfalls to this however. Not having someone on site can prove risky with complex computer networks that require constant maintenance. It completely depends on the nature and size of your business.


Outsourcing IT Solutions – A Cost Effective IT Solutions

There have always been agreements and disagreements over the idea of outsourcing one’s IT Support to the IT Firms. While some consider IT outsourcing a deft expedient, the others think that it is expensive and delivers sub-standard output. To those who believe in the latter, some of the appropriate reasons as to why one should outsource IT Solutions are listed below. On perusing these, one could easily understand the benefits of IT Solutions outsourcing over doing it in-house.


Starting with the primary reason, ‘Cost effectiveness’, which simply asserts that by outsourcing IT Solutions one can lay hands on affordable IT support that is otherwise hard to embrace. Hiring a full-fledged in-house IT team is certainly not economical, as it involves the recruitment cost, maintenance cost and compensation cost thereafter. By outsourcing IT solutions, one can let go off these mounting costs and can acquire specialized IT solutions at imperceptible cost. Outsourcing saves companies from spending money on various unnecessary heads like hiring IT professionals, imparting them training, providing them resources and infrastructure etc. Thus, it is certainly a wise alternative to go for.

Monday 6 September 2021

Know How to Migrate On-Premise Email to Office 365

 Cloud services and other Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions are huge right now. Office 365 has now reached over 200 million monthly active users, up from just 60 million active users in November 20151. This shift is largely due to the functionality it provides in terms of working from anywhere, collaborating with ease, always having up to date software, the manageable monthly cost, improved security features, and the ability to mix and match the features that best suit your needs. If your company is ready to jump onto the cloud, then you’ll first need to understand how to manage your email migration. Despite being relatively old tech, email is still a prominent and essential part of the business landscape so the migration needs to be as smooth as possible.


Migration Methods


There are several ways to handle your email migration. Let’s take a look at the most common migration methods.


Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) migration


You can use Exchange Online PowerShell or the Exchange Admin Center to migrate the data within your users’ mailboxes to Office 365.


Staged Migration


If you plan to migrate all mailboxes eventually, but want to do it over several weeks or even months, then a staged migration is the best option for your business. It’s important to note that you can’t opt for a staged migration if you plan to upgrade from Exchange Server 2003, 2007, 2010, or 2013 to Office 365.


Cutover Migration


This approach is favoured for companies who want to migrate over a period of days and plan to move the mailboxes for their whole organization. However, the recommended number of mailboxes you should migrate in a cutover migration is 150, despite the maximum being 2000 mailboxes. This is because performance starts to suffer over 150 mailboxes.


Hybrid Migration


A hybrid migration is somewhere in between on-premise and full Office 365. You can choose the level of administrative control you retain from your on-premise solution, as well as the part of Office 365 you want access to. This is a common approach for companies who are unsure whether the cloud is the right fit for their business.


Third-Party Migration


This approach utilizes tools from third parties to conduct the migration. Several third-parties provide these migration services including Binary Tree, BitTitan, Matalogix, SkyKick, and more.

What Factors Affect Migration Performance?


Migration can take anywhere from several hours to several days depending on the size of the mailbox. However, other factors can also affect the performance of your migration.


Gmail has limits on how much data can be extracted within a certain time frame which can slow the process down.

The number of mail items can also affect the speed of the migration, even when the mailboxes are the same size.

Your data migration engine may have its own set of limitations that slow down the migration.

Your overall network performance and firewall configurations can also slow down the migration. Even if you have a fast network, if it suffers from stability issues then this can also slow the migration.

Get Migrating!


This article isn’t an exhaustive step-by-step guide to migration but rather an overview to help you get on your way with migrating your on-premise email over to Office 365.


How to Migrate On-Premise Email to Office 365 (serverconsultancy.co.uk)