14 DAY TRIAL // As Microsoft is preparing to kick-start the migration process of existing BPOS customers to Office 365, the company made available guidance and a list of answers to questions about the transition. Both resources are available for download free of charge from the Redmond company, which also created the Microsoft Office 365 transition center in order to support users moving from the Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS) to its new Cloud-based productivity offerings.
According to the software giant, existing BPOS customers will begin being transitioned to Office 365 as early as next month.
Microsoft expects migrations to last at least a year, namely between September 2011 and September 2012. IT professionals that have questions about the move need to first download the Transition FAQ.
“Transition will begin September 2011. Please be aware that not all customers will be transitioned immediately; transitions will happen in phases between September 2011 and September 2012,” the software giant said.
“Customers who subscribe to the hosted Blackberry Enterprise Server service will not begin to transition until late 2011 or early 2012 depending on the availability of the hosted Blackberry Service from RIM.”
Those customers that want to get insight into the BPOS to Office 365 migration, can download the Transition Guide that the Redmond company is offering. This is a much more complex resource than the Transition FAQ.
““The transition from BPOS to Office 365 does not represent a new version or product for Microsoft Online Services customers. Office 365 is an evolution of BPOS. The transition does, however, represent a major architectural shift for Microsoft’s Online Services architecture from on-premises servers adapted to the cloud, to a fully-rearchitected service-oriented design,” the company said.
“This is the reason that there are some impacts in terms of system requirements and configuration of optional features such as federated identity and rich co-existence.”