Anglia Ruskin University Selects bluesource for an Enterprise Vault to Microsoft 365 migration project
Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) is an innovative global university with students from 185 countries. ARU has been named as one of the top 350 institutions in the world in The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021 – and one of the top 40 universities in the UK.
The Background
As part of its broader Digital Strategy ARU made the decision to migrate to Office 365. The migration was complicated as its data was residing in Enterprise Vault (EV).
Whilst EV is a good archiving system, it does not support mailboxes that are hosted in Office 365, and so its core archiving functionality would no longer be available after the migration. ARU looked at the option of migrating EV archived data using EV native tools.
Due to the way EV works, it was also thought that the migration would need to consist of two core activities:
- Extraction of EV archives into relevant PST files
- Ingestion of the PST files into the Office 365 mailboxes
ARU had some challenges with the native tools approach:
- The migration would not be end-to-end
- The reporting is very limited with native EV tools
- The extraction does not provide ability to bypass failed items
- The extraction used the same processes used by the end users when accessing EV archived data and as a result there can be a drop in the application performance
The final complication was concerning EV shortcuts, as migrating mailboxes with EV shortcuts would not work.
The Solution
ARU contacted bluesource for their assistance with the challenge that was facing the University. After careful and considered planning, bluesource were able to provide a managed archive migration service using TransVault Migrator Software that addressed all ARU’s concerns including but not limited to:
- Migrating the EV archived data first
- Scanning for EV shortcuts and removing them from the mailboxes post migration
- Maintaining message fidelity based on the MAPI properties on the shortcuts
- Ensuring the users were not adversely impacted
The managed migration service included a series of workshops to understand the requirements and ARUs environment. The 3rd party tool, TransVault Migrator, was then deployed to help discover the EV data, and help migrate the EV archived data into Office 365.
Why bluesource?
During the initial consultation meeting, bluesource provided a comprehensive overview of the migration process, gave detailed explanations of the options available to ARU and were able to answer any questions ARU had. This was followed up by the production of a detailed planning and design document. Simon Harvey – Senior Cloud Systems Engineer, ARU said “We felt confident that bluesource had the relevant knowledge and expertise of the TransVault tooling and felt comfortable with their ability to migrate the data for us.”
“Within a very short space of time we realised that we could leave the team to manage the data migration on our behalf and felt we could trust them to alert us of any issues they encountered that they felt we should be aware of.” Simon Harvey added.
Simon Harvey continued, “We found the communication with the team was excellent. All queries and requests were responded to and dealt with in a timely manner. bluesource were very flexible and were always happy to alter migration schedules, even though sometimes they were at short notice.”
“We had a few of setbacks (primarily due to issues with Exchange online) and bluesource worked hard to keep us on schedule and gave us realistic (and what turned out to be accurate) timescales for when they anticipated getting back on track for the next batch of migrations.” Said Simon Harvey