Fast Track To Remote Work : Cloud Migration Via MSPS

what happens when organizations in the middle of transformation initiatives — or who haven’t even begun yet — are suddenly faced with mandates to migrate to the cloud?

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic turned out to be a test case for the ability to accomplish cloud migrations on tightly compressed schedules. While some scheduled migrations were pushed back, others were suddenly placed on the front burner. Notably, state and local governments which had been among the slowest to adopt the cloud were now faced with work-from-home mandates while still expected to deliver key public services. IT departments, already dealing with disrupted operations, were pressured to implement work-from-home arrangements and needed to be in the cloud immediately. Files in on-premises network drives and other assets located behind the firewall needed to be made accessible. Telephone systems needed to be reconfigured to forward calls.

A call to arms — and managed service providers

Organizations needing to cloudify in short order turned to trusted managed service providers with the specialized knowledge to handle migrating key applications and workloads to the cloud. What many discovered is that thanks to online tools, the essential infrastructure to enable a secure remote work plan could be in place, migrated to the cloud on a compressed timeline, and without compromising continuity of services. Part of this success was due to the prevalence of office suites, with their multiple tools for productivity, shared file storage and collaboration.

Lessons learned from experience

The experience gained applies to any IT organization or MSP needing to pull off a critical migration in short order. One challenge to take into account is the demand placed on the cloud infrastructure. During the pandemic, with so many organizations doing remote work, the immense scalability of the cloud came to the test, and for the most part it shined. However, especially as use of online file stores such as SharePoint Online and OneDrive skyrocketed, Microsoft and Google throttled traffic, especially during peak business hours and some migrations ran into capacity issues and took longer than expected.

Since the tools are themselves in the cloud, in many instances the entire migration task could be performed without an onsite visit — a key advantage given stay-at-home mandates. If the IP addresses (or URLs) and administrative credentials are known, the entire process can complete remotely. Migrating an entire workforce to the cloud for basic collaboration, using email and applications such as Teams or Skype, can be accomplished in anywhere from 24 hours to a long weekend. With careful pre-planning and consideration to details, organizations are able to shift to remote work without missing a beat. The details include:

  • Migrating emails first to keep the lines of communication open
  • Using date ranges to migrate the most-essential emails selectively
  • Paying careful attention to data volume during the migration to avoid overusing bandwith, which could trigger throttling by Microsoft or Google

Provided the number of users, size of the mailboxes and total volume of data are not overly large, an organization can be ready for remote working with a new cloud instance in a long weekend. The rest of the migration can follow in the days after, backfilling the email boxes with the balance of the emails. Migration of less-essential files in online stores can take advantage of off-peak hours and weekends when throttling is less of an issue.

Mission accomplished — with more to come

The good news is, once the migration is complete, organizations are in a much better position to effect digital transformation for other key processes, and position themselves for the long term future of remote work

TrendMicro | 7 Reasons to be a TrendMicro MSP

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#1: Trend Micro is a Market Leader

Trend Micro is the market share leader in the worldwide SMB content security market*, and has been growing its lead over the nearest competitors. With 25+ years of continuous product innovation, 5,000 employees, including 1200 security experts and support engineers, and offices in 38 countries, Trend Micro is a global security software company that delivers proven security solutions to meet the ever-changing demands of your customers.

*For the past five years, more small businesses worldwide have trusted Trend Micro for our complete content security than any other provider. (Canalys – 2015 )

#2: Trend Micro helps you increase profits

We know key pain points for MSPs are fixed fees and slim margins. With Trend Micro cloud-based security services, you can increase recurring revenues, annuity streams, and cash flows. Also, you can increase your average deal size with the opportunity to cross-sell or up-sell to existing clients other Trend Micro solutions such as Hosted Email Security. And with no up-front investment in unnecessary product licenses coupled with flexible usage-based pricing that automatically aligns with your business model, Trend Micro can help improve the profitability of your business.

#3: Trend Micro helps you increase productivity

Trend Micro knows that another issue for MSPs is productivity. With our cloud-based security solutions, you will be able to centrally manage accounts and automate monthly usage, streamline usage data and billing with RMM/PSA integrations, and eliminate time consuming-renewal tracking and administration. And with automated transaction processes for billing and provisioning licenses, this can free up your staff to focus on other business activities.

#4: Trend Micro helps you grow your business

Trend Micro has a monthly pay-as-you-go billing option. This gives you the flexibility you need when you’re trying to build your business. We are also the only vendor that provides MSP partners with specific tools like the License Management Platform and Worry-Free™ Remote Manager. Our success depends on your success.

#5: Trend Micro is 100% channel friendly

Trend Micro has been a trustworthy partner for over 25 years, known for being “100% channel friendly.” We are committed to MSPs and developing long-term, stable, mutually beneficially, partnerships. We don’t sell direct so we never compete with you. Our channel vision is to empower you with the personal attention, tools, and resources you need to initiate, grow, and sustain a profitable Trend Micro practice. With partners, we will continue to grow Trend Micro sales, increase market penetration, and deliver superior customer service and support to our mutual customers.

#6: Trend Micro is focused on Internet security

Unlike other companies that diversify or narrowly specialize, Trend Micro is the world’s largest independent security vendors and maintains a strict focus on Internet content security and threat management.

#7: Trend Micro lets you focus on your business

Our MSP solutions assist you by automating processes so you can focus on running your business and increasing your value to your customers. With a Trend Micro hosted security solution, you get centralized management that will help you lower costs, increase your productivity and profit, and, ultimately, grow your business.