Technologists across Africa have reason to celebrate this New Year. 

As Microsoft’s target date for the availability of Azure data centers in Cape Town and Johannesburg approaches, big changes are in store for the region. This development not only brings new job and growth possibilities to South Africa but also improved technical capabilities that will allow the region to better compete across enterprises at a global scale. 

IT positions – especially in cloud services – are expanding at a rate three-fold compared to national job opportunities, according to a recent Microsoft report in collaboration with IDC, “The Economic Impact of IT and Microsoft in South Africa.” The addition of Azure regions in this area will aid tech and cloud growth, with an estimated 112,000 additional jobs projected over the next four years in Johannesburg and Cape Town alone. 

Lionel Moyal, speaking to entrepreneurs and startups at the South African Global Entrepreneurship Week 2018, detailed the future of the region and displayed encouragement toward workers to “skill up” in cloud technologies, AI, development tools, machine learning, mobile technologies, noting that it will be needed with South Africa’s rapid tech expansion.  

That tech expansion is just that – new technology – and data centers in Africa mean more than just job growth. With the implementation of these data centers, South Africa will be able to nurture their security, growth and speed in the enterprise cloud space and small businesses alike. Their ability to store and manage data locally empowers South African businesses to adopt cloud services with peace of mind, especially in sensitive industries such as insurance that handle confidential personal information. 

And finally, with localized servers soon in place, latency between companies and their Azure infrastructure will undergo a world of change in speed and experience, allowing for a more mature cloud strategy. When it comes to migration projects, this is the biggest change. Immediately after these regions go live, MigrationWiz customers will be able to execute migrations using Azure data centers in Africa by selecting this region in Advanced Options prior to launching their project. That data will pass quickly and securely through local servers to its Destination. Let us know if we can help with your next project, or reach out to our friends at First Distribution to learn more about our work in South Africa to date. 

In order to succeed, new and established businesses across all industries need to unlock three essential doors: the technology door, the business development door, and the compliance and regulation door. Microsoft has brought the keys to South Africa with local data centers. We’re excited to see what the future holds for tech and tech startups in this region.

The post Azure in Africa: New Regions Impact Growth, Migrations appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Migration experts know the work doesn’t stop after the final delta pass. While it’s great to have a seamless cutover and find all the data in place on the Destination, there can be a significant amount of work after the migration to help end users get settled. Part of that puzzle is configuring Outlook.

Your first option is to do it manually. But regardless of whether it’s a big migration with thousands of seats or just a small business upgrading to Office 365, manually flipping profiles can be tedious and margin-killing work.

At BitTitan, we talk a lot about automated deployments of Outlook and how easy this process is with DeploymentPro. Working as a module within our Device Managment Agent (DMA), DeploymentPro can be installed via email or Group Policy silently in the end user’s environment. If you’d like to learn more about this solution, check out this on-demand webinar now and say goodbye to that manual work.

However, we haven’t really touched on manual configurations of Outlook; this is especially handy when you run into situations where DeploymentPro is not a fit.

Situations to consider manual configuration are:

1)            Installing Outlook for MAC

2)            Installing Outlook for Mobile

3)            Multifactor Authentication in Office 365

4)            Customer prevents the installation of non-managed software on corporate assets

For the times where you need to manually configure Outlook, please view Microsoft Outlook Quick Start.

Quick guide for new installations of Outlook on a PC:

1. Double click Outlook and the Welcome to Outlook screen will open
2. Enter your email address
   1. Autodiscover will look up your email server based on your email address.
3. Click Connect
4. Enter your password
5. Click OK
6. Finish

If manually configuring all these profiles doesn’t seem like a good option, read more into the User Migration Bundle license from BitTitan, which includes DeploymentPro for help with end-of-project cleanup.

Feel free to reach out to a BitTitan expert to have any questions answered.

The post How to Configure Outlook for Office 365 appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Product Release Notes contain information about updates, upgrades and new features for BitTitan solutions and services. For the most current information, visit the Product Announcements section in the BitTitan Help Center. For additional questions, visit the Community Forums.

Prior to the New Year, BitTitan introduced several product enhancements as well as one new Advanced Option feature for MigrationWiz. Learn more about those updates below or head over to the BitTitan Help Center to read more about recent feature releases, product news, and knowledge base articles.

MigrationWiz New Feature: Advanced Options – Files Extension Filter for Document Migrations

Users will now be able to specify which type of documents/files to migrate or exclude from Document migrations via this Advanced Option.

MigrationWiz Improvement: Advanced Options – Enable Sync Migration Pass for SharePoint

This advanced option allows users to replicate changes/updates made to previously replicated items.

Refer to updated KB: https://help.bittitan.com/hc/en-us/articles/115008261208-What-do-I-need-to-know-about-the-Sync-Migration-Pass

MigrationWiz Improvement: Handling of UploaderWiz Log File Size

Previously, log files grew to a large number, causing the upload to stop. Additional checks have been implemented to determine if the file has been modified before rescheduling for upload.

• If the file has been modified and the file size changed, it will be rescheduled to upload.
• If the file has been modified, the file size is the same size, and the modification time is within a user-specified time interval or the default one if not specified, we will consider the file unchanged and directly proceed to upload.
• If the file has been modified and the file size is the same, but the modification time exceeds the user-specified time interval or the default one if not specified, we will check the CheckSum of the file to determine the next action. If the file content MD5 CheckSum is the same, we will consider the file unchanged. Otherwise, the file is considered as changed.

MigrationWiz Bug Fix: Toolbar Scrolling Bug

Previously, when the MigrationWiz toolbar was condensed into a single drop-down menu on lower resolutions, the toolbar wasn’t scrollable.  As a result, users are not able to click on any of the designated icons/functions. This design bug has been resolved.

The post December Product Release Notes appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

In November of 2018, Microsoft announced the beginning of the 24-month countdown until extended support for SharePoint 2010 will be discontinued. This means the end of security updates — a big exposure, especially for companies that store sensitive data in SharePoint.

The effective date, October 13, 2020, might seem like a long time off … that is, if you’re only thinking about the migration project itself. But as we have encouraged our partners in the past, external events like these present great opportunities. Look ahead, and consider how you can take advantage to deepen your relationship with your clients, add more value (for which you can realize higher margins) and play a more-pivotal role in their overall business.

Let’s consider the options to SharePoint 2010 and the additional opportunities they present.

Stay on-premises.

Clients in highly regulated industries such as healthcare or financial services might not be ready to migrate off their on-premises servers for security and compliance reasons. Your options are to migrate them to SharePoint Server 2016 or SharePoint Server 2019.  The underlying Windows servers that support SharePoint Server 2010 will be reaching their end-of-life dates around that time, too. Look beyond the migration project to opportunities to upgrade the server OS and supporting hardware, or use the migration as a catalyst for a larger virtualization project.

Move to the cloud.

As good as SharePoint 2010 has proven to be, newer cloud-based options have a lot more going for them in terms of what they can offer users and the business. SharePoint Online is included in both Office 365 and Microsoft 365. If the client’s SharePoint is not public-facing, not highly customized, or doesn’t have specific compliance requirements, it’s time to move them to the cloud to give them the advantages of all the collaboration tools and other goodies built into the online offerings. You’ll add a source of recurring revenue. Even better, if you move them to Microsoft 365, you open an avenue for managing more of their environment.

Offer a hybrid solution.

If SharePoint 2010 houses sensitive data for some departments, but also functions as an extranet or internet-facing role for others, consider a hybrid approach. This can give you another recurring-revenue source if you offer hosted services. Or you might turn to a third-party provider if hosted services don’t fit your business model.

Be a collaboration hero to your clients.

Microsoft Teams is gaining in popularity. The extended capabilities and community features, combined with a friendly user interface, allow for teams to collaborate on projects and communicate with one another more effectively. All of this is built on top of SharePoint. Should your clients make the jump to Teams, be sure you’re ready to serve them with a compatible version of SharePoint that works with Teams. As online, omnichannel collaboration becomes more prevalent within companies of all sizes, you want to be in a position to advise, implement, and manage this critical function that’s part of the very fabric of the way they do business – or changes that fabric for the better.

The post SharePoint 2010 Discontinuation in Two Years? The Opportunity is Now appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

BitTitan is conducting a limited preview for coexistence in Office 365 tenant migration scenarios where there is a change in domain name. Learn more about this new feature below or head over to the BitTitan Help Center for more information.

**Update: due to significant interest in this preview, we are unable to accommodate all requests at this time. Stay tuned for more updates regarding T2T coexistence in the near future. As always, happy migrating!

The need to move data between cloud environments and, more specifically Office 365 tenants, is an increasingly growing market and one that BitTitan wants to help automate. We frequently see this scenario arise during an acquisition or divestiture where businesses or individual units are being combined or separated. In fact, 2018 was the first year BitTitan saw cloud-to-cloud migration projects reach parity with on-prem-to-cloud moves – a trend we expect to continue in 2019.

BitTitan recently introduced an automated Office 365 tenant to tenant (T2T) migration solution, where the power of MigrationWiz helps reduce the time and effort needed to complete these complex migrations. But when IT is tasked with a T2T migration and a cutover is not feasible, migrations are done in batches or stages. This limits the impact to the end user during the migration while IT benefits from more flexibility in their project timeline.

These types of migrations generally require a feature called coexistence so that the users split between the Source and Destination can seamlessly communicate. This feature enables end users to be able to see users on the other side, including their free/busy calendar status and their contact details.

Our new migration path will allow for automatic user discovery in the Source tenant so that we can create and license those users in the Destination tenant. During the migration, we will allow for seamless mail coexistence as the stages of the migration progress. In addition to mail coexistence, we also enable seamless Free/Busy coexistence, so that the users don’t need to know who is migrated or not.

We take this one step further through the option to migrate Distribution Lists and Groups. After they are successfully migrated, they can be synchronized at any point in the migration to pick up the changes at the Source and update the Destination. 

Configuring Coexistence in MigrationWiz

Using the same wizard as building a regular project, when you select endpoints that are Office 365 for Source and Destination, you will be presented a new option to enable tenant to tenant coexistence. Simple inputs of Source and Destination domains along with checkboxes for Distribution Lists and Groups help to feed the automation engine.

Once the automation takes over, Organizational Sharing and Individual Sharing are setup on the Source and Destination tenants. All the users in the source tenant are then automatically discovered and mail contacts with an external email address of the primary domain are created in the Destination tenant. This will allow for reverse free/busy look up from the Destination to the Source and enables mail-routing from the Destination back to the Source.

As soon as the automation is completed, the users are imported into the MigrationWiz project, where the User Migration Bundle can be applied. Mailboxes can be pre-staged and migrated; with the Outlook on the desktop being updated with DeploymentPro.

Currently, tenant to tenant coexistence is available only for projects in which there is a change in domain name and with the purchase of a User Migration Bundle license. To learn more about coexistence, read our migration guide covering this scenario in the BitTitan Knowledge Base or contact us today.

Stay tuned for more news on T2T coexistence next month!

The post Feature Preview: Coexistence for Office 365 Tenant Migrations appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

In today’s competitive business environment, companies need to ensure that their new hires have a smooth onboarding experience. Part of that is to have all their accounts, access roles, and other services ready to go on day one. Delays can cause poor satisfaction and impact their ability to bring on more employees. The increase in SaaS applications utilized today adds extra complexity and time to the onboarding process by adding more consoles to manage and thus increasing the time it takes to set up the new employee.

In a new white paper from BitTitan, we discuss why the new employee experience is vital to the success of companies in today’s marketplace and the areas that Managed Service Providers (MSPs) will need to be prepared for as they support their customers with these services. MSPs will learn how BitTitan MSPComplete can help automate onboarding tasks, reducing time and errors around this important service and allowing MSPs to expand their service offerings to more customers.

Click here to download your free copy: Add & Automate Services for New Employee Onboarding

The post White Paper: Add & Automate Services for New Employee Onboarding appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Recently, a group of companies that support MSPs — including BitTitan — teamed up with Osterman Research. The objective was to learn about the needs of organizations that had already migrated or had near-term plans to migrate to Office 365. Here’s an overview of the topline takeaways most-relevant to MSPs. Many of them are good news if you’re looking for new opportunities to deliver high-perceived-value services to clients and build recurring revenues.

Click here to download your free copy of the complete report: “Migrating Email and Archives to Microsoft Platforms”

Add value by bundling add-ons

The survey found that when it comes to functions such as archiving, discoverability and governance, only 13 percent of Office 365-enabled organizations believe it’s a complete solution. The other 87 percent believe that third-party add-ons are needed to satisfy these requirements. For SharePoint, while 18 percent of organizations believe it to be complete, 82 percent perceive the need for add-ons.

The generalist nature of Office 365 presents openings for lowering your clients’ cost-of-ownership while creating new opportunities for you. In Osterman’s analysis, many medium-sized and larger clients are better-served by skipping the higher-tiered Office 365 offerings, choosing a lower-priced package, and supplementing with best-of-breed solutions. This approach may better-satisfy their requirements for records management, archiving, security and encryption. It also potentially delivers higher margin for you. The migration might be more complex, but you’ll deliver significantly higher value to clients and differentiate your offering in the marketplace.

Don’t overlook education and user support

Pre-migration planning and execution is the core of any migration, but you might be surprised at the emphasis your clients place on managing the end-user experience. When asked about the most difficult aspects of the migration process, 55 percent said educating users, and 50 percent said supporting users. Compare this to the 46 percent who mentioned difficulty in planning the migration, and 32 percent who said organizing the groups to migrate first.

These findings point to a real opportunity to bundle user education and support into your migration offering. Especially if you’re migrating from on-premises Exchange Server and Office to Office 365, there are a host of new collaboration tools at users’ fingertips that will be brand-new to them. Bundle end-user training services into a more complete migration offering.

Build them once, and you’ll have a repeatable revenue source that you can leverage in other projects.

Don’t sell yourself short — your skills are essential to client success

While 68 percent of organizations use their own internal resources to conduct a migration, most also turn to outside resources. These include 46 percent who retain outside consultants, 30 percent who turn to a third-party’s professional services organization, and 17 percent who use a third-party vendor. As the survey authors conclude, “A migration project is not for the faint of heart.” It requires skills, tools and experience that are not always present in IT organizations.

There are critical decisions to make, calling for careful planning. Knowledge of the potential pitfalls is essential. There are many things that can go wrong, potentially impacting business continuity and employee productivity, as well as leading to potential regulatory exposure.

The report cautions against do-it-yourself migrations. The authors recommend the use of migration tools that bake-in successful processes developed over the course of many migrations. Equally important is outside firms like yours who know how to use them well.

Click here to download your free copy of the complete report: “Migrating Email and Archives to Microsoft Platforms”

The post Survey sheds light on migration opportunities for MSPs appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

This article originally appeared in Channel Partners. 

It’s valuable to think about what 2019 is likely to bring as we take stock of the major events of 2018. While it’s impossible to know for certain what will happen, thinking about the possible trends can be very instructive to those offering IT solutions and applications. At BitTitan, we recently convened to come up with our list of predictions for the coming year. Here’s what we expect.

More Sophisticated Cloud Customers, Cloud Environment

Organizations are becoming more intelligent about their selection of cloud providers and the adoption of cloud services. They’re approaching the cloud with specific goals in mind and looking to optimize their investments if they’re already there.

As a result, IT environments are becoming more complex to manage. Hybrid and multi-cloud strategies dominate, while the influx of SaaS solutions and department-level technology decisions leaves IT teams with the tall task of ensuring everything works together. Look for this trend to continue this year — and for software management solutions to break out as IT looks for a way to manage it all.

Data Governance Implementation, Another Top Priority

As a result of that complexity, there’s likely to be a razor-sharp focus from IT on improving data governance in 2019. Many enterprises will adopt new policies to manage the availability, usability and integrity of their data. Some of those developments may change where data is stored, as well as change an organization’s retention policies.

After all, data is growing exponentially and it’s increasingly an organization’s most important asset. Data provides organizations with a better understanding of their customers or gives them a competitive advantage in the market. As such, it’s vital that data is effectively managed across the enterprise, and that any data governance programs put in place are scalable and sustainable.

M&A Activity Means Migrations

Many experts believe merger-and-acquisition (M&A) activity happens in cycles and will continue to be strong in 2019. If that proves to be true, more organizations will be integrated or divested, driving an increased need for IT migrations of all types and sizes.

Just look back at all the deals in the health-care industry in 2018, for example: Private equity firm KKR completed its agreement to purchase Envision Healthcare, while Veritas Capital and Elliott Management agreed to buy athenahealth for $5.7 billion. GlaxoSmithKline purchased a large stake in 23andMe and Apollo Global Management acquired LifePoint Health. In that industry alone, this M&A activity may translate to an abundance of IT sales opportunities and migration projects. Look for this across other industries, too, including the service-provider landscape.

Battle for Workplace Intensifies

Google’s G Suite will continue to provide an increasingly popular alternative to Office 365, most notably in the small- and medium-sized business (SMB) sector. Last summer, Google made investments in artificial intelligence and new cloud capabilities as it worked to attract more business users — and those investments are likely to pay off in 2019. Expect announcements from Google concerning new offerings for business users and additional “must-have” features that attempt to lure more seats away from Microsoft’s Office suite. Those new users will join a list of high-profile customers like Airbus, which in March of 2018 said it was moving 130,000 workers from on-premises Office to Google’s cloud productivity suite.

Growth of Azure

We further predict that 2019 will see the continued growth of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service, which will continue to outpace Google and close the lead held by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Azure is significantly better positioned to service enterprise businesses, who weren’t among cloud’s early adopters. Microsoft touts how AWS is five times more expensive than Azure for Windows Server and SQL Server. In addition, Azure offers some significant pricing advantages with savings through existing licenses, and Microsoft is offering some free extended security updates as additional incentive. Today, Microsoft declares more than 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies use Azure, and we feel more will transition using Azure in the coming year.

In many ways, 2018 was a watershed year for the cloud. According to global analyst IDC, almost half of IT spending was cloud-based in 2018, and by 2020 they predict that “60-70 percent of all software, services and technology spending” will be cloud-based. The trends we see for 2019 reflect the maturity of this sector. That maturity is, in part, why cloud-to-cloud migrations will outpace on-prem-to-cloud migrations in 2019.

Today, many companies are not starting their journey to the cloud — they’re already there. The next year will see these companies refining IT strategies and seeking new investments to help grow their businesses in the new year.

Here’s to your prosperous 2019!

This article originally appeared in Channel Partners. 

The post 5 Trends Channel Players Should Anticipate in 2019 appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Product Release Notes contain information about updates, upgrades and new features for BitTitan solutions and services. For the most current information, visit the Product Announcements section in the BitTitan Help Center. For additional questions, visit the Community Forums.

MigrationWiz

Product Improvement: Top Navigation Menu

• Waffle dropdown menu is now located on the top left and listed in alphabetical order.
• The item within the menu currently selected by User will be excluded from the waffle dropdown menu to enhance user experience.

Product Improvement: Optional Admin Email Address

• The [AdminEmailAddress] field can now be set as optional instead of mandatory in the custom email success notification template. This allows users the flexibility to still customize and send out success notification emails without the need to input/disclose the admin’s email address.
• Before this update, a “success” email was sent to both the Source and Destination email addresses. For large-scale migrations, it may not be practical or desired to have that email send to the Admin account because of the sheer number of emails. In addition, not all Admin accounts may be monitored. For these reasons, the [AdminEmailAddress] field can now be made optional.

Product Improvement: Diagnostics for SharePoint/OneDrive for Business v2

• Once SharePoint/OneDrive for Business v2 has finished importing in SharePoint, any error (.err) file in the Azure Blob will be identified and logged into Kibana.
• This helps BitTitan Support improve troubleshooting.

Product Improvement: Stability when performing “Reset Migration”

• A clean-up flag is set in the database each time the user performs a reset. When the SharePoint/OneDrive v2 connector starts and sees this flag is set, it cleans up the Azure storage and resets the flag. This ensures that any files left over in the blob which are no longer available in the Source or are already deleted by user will not be migrated again.

Product Fix: Public Folder Advanced Options

• [Public Folder Migrations] Advanced Option “UseDisplayNamePermissionMatching” added to trigger display name permission matching for Office 365. Default behavior will now only match the SMTP alias.
• Scenario/Problem: previously, permissions were applied based on matching either the display name or SMPT alias. As a result, there are scenarios whereby mailbox folder sharing permissions are not being migrated correctly.
• [Public Folder Migrations] Removed Autodiscover option from Public Folder projects
• Scenario/Problem: prevent delay on customer’s end to perform migration and reduce overhead on Support.

MSPComplete

New Public Runbook Templates

Office 365 to Office 365 Assesment, Migration, and Cleanup: analyze environments and automate the transition between Office 365 tenants when there is a change in domain name.

Generate Office 365 GDPR Report: assess license compliance and settings to align with requirements from the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

New Task Library Components

Hybrid Employee Onboarding and Management:

• On-Prem Active Directory Management Tasks (BETA – contact customer success to gain access)
  • Add On-Prem AD User to Groups
  • Set On-Prem AD User Attributes
  • Create Distribution Group
  • Create Security Group
  • Delete Group
  • Delete User
  • Remove User from Group
  • Wait for Group to Replicate to Azure AD
• Supporting Office 365 Tasks
  • Update User Domain
  • Update User
  • Wait for On-Prem AD User to Replicate to Azure AD

Microsoft SharePoint Online Task Library Components:

• Create Site Collection
• Create Group
• Add Users to Group
• Assign/Unassign Member as Site Collection Administrator
• Delete Site Collection
• Delete Group
• Remove Users from Groups
• Retrieve Users in Site Collections
• Retrieve Site Collections for Users
• Retrieve Delete Site Collections
• Update Site Collections’ Sharing Settings
• Retrieve Site Collections’ Statistics
• Retrieve Groups
• Restore Delete Site Collections

Microsoft Excel Task Library Components:

• Populate Excel Template with CSV Data
• Convert to PDF
• Convert to Image
• Convert to HTML
• Set Cell Values

Active Directory Task Library Components:

• Update User Attributes

Office 365 Management Tasks:

• Remove Licenses from Users: allows for batching of license removal for multiple users
• Retrieve Mailbox Statistics: determine total Office 365 mailbox sizes for mailbox migration assessment
• Send Email v2: new version allows for up to three email attachments
• Enable/Disable Multi-Factor Authentication for Users

Office 365 – Managing Contacts: (Note: this is to supplement the existing contact management tasks from November)

• Update Contact
• Show/Hide Contacts

Windows Tasks for Remote Machines:

• Run Executables on Remote Machines
• Copy Files to Remote Machines

Product Improvement: Standardized UI Terminology

We changed the nomenclature when creating a new automation for “New Runbook” to “New Template.” Templates now become a Runbook once assigned to a customer service request.

The post January 2019 Product Release Notes appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

By all measures, 2018 was a banner year for BitTitan. A key reason for our success lies in our global sales force: a tight-knit, fast-moving group dedicated to driving positive results while keeping customer business objectives and concerns top of mind.

During our Global Sales Meeting (GSM) and 2019 kickoff in late January, a select few from this team were recognized for their dedication to 2018 sales targets, for helping build key relationships in our partner and distributor communities, and for living our core BitTitan values every day.

Please join me in congratulating our 2018 BitTitan Sales Award Winners!

Rookie of the Year: Parker Hanson

Based at HQ in Bellevue, Parker moved into a Lead Sales Specialist role in July and preceded to reach 180% of his 2H2018 quota. He was also active in helping onboard colleagues to ensure they understood BitTitan solutions – he’s always willing to help and does it with a positive attitude. Congrats, Parker!

Channel Salesperson of the Year: Sharon Lee

Sharon is a force to be reckoned with in APAC. With little regional marketing and technical sales support, she was able to grow her region by 37% in 2018. She embodies our company values when working with others in her region or at large events like Microsoft Inspire. She understands what our customers need to succeed and keeps customer voice top of mind. Great job, Sharon!

Technical Sales Specialist of the Year: James Corbishley

A member of our Technical Sales team, James helps field difficult pre-migration inquiries from customers and ensures they have their environments correctly configured before the project kicks off. In 2018, James increased his win rate by 12% from Q3 to Q4 and was instrumental in key big deal wins in UK and Europe. He’s also worked closely with product and development teams on initial designs for key new features coming in 2019. He’s a true team player – thanks, James!

Americas Salesperson of the Year: Jenn Cheer

Jenn is a rockstar. The only salesperson in America to hit quota every quarter of 2018, she lives the BitTitan values and always puts her customers first. She is always engaging and becoming the trusted advisor for all of her managed accounts and works closely with product management, marketing, support, and customer success teams to ensure success. Well done, Jenn!

EMEA/APAC Salesperson of the Year: Esteban Miyashiro Nakaima

If Jenn is a rockstar, Esteban is a one-man wrecking crew. In 2018 he took support calls, handled pre-sales, post-sales, localized marketing and sales collateral – he truly went above and beyond his job description to ensure his customers felt supported. He crushed quota in Q4 and had the highest % of quota in 2H2018 or any EMEA or APAC account manager while delivering a big name account win that’s sure to lead to more business in 2019. Congrats, Esteban!

Manager of the Year: Frank Suglia

As Director of Technical Sales, Frank’s set of duties is slightly different from other award winners. As team manager, Frank’s responsible for driving business results in addition to the personal growth and expertise of his team. During a year of major change at BitTitan, Frank started and ended the year with the same team – a testament to his leadership and management style that’s created and empowered a high-performing arm of our sales organization. He’s always asking what else he can do to help – thanks, Frank! Well-deserved.

Overall Salesperson of the Year: Zlata Rogich

One word describes the 2018 BitTitan Salesperson of the Year: relentless. Over the course of the past year, Zlata consistently worked to build strong relationships with Microsoft through MCS, FastTrack, and through a series of highly visible deals that helped her exceed quota both quarters of 2H2018. Across multiple continents and languages, as well as through diverse channels, Zlata helped customers and partners deliver on business goals and made sure BitTitan was a key part of their toolkit. She consistently went beyond her own responsibilities to train and onboard several new team members and even developed her own training content and program to present at the GSM. Great job, Zlata!

Want to work alongside these rockstars? Check out our open roles in Bellevue, Singapore, and remote!

The post And the Award Goes To? Meet BitTitan’s 2018 Sales Winners appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

It’s all too easy to misinterpret what is meant by “End of Extended Support” for Microsoft products, sometimes with disastrous results. A failure to migrate away from any platform that will be unsupported may hurt your company more than you imagine.  

The countdown clock has started.

Mainstream support for Exchange 2010 ended in January 2015. Per the norm, Microsoft extended support ends five years after mainstream. Now, you have less than a year left before extended support ends for this version of Exchange on January 14, 2020.

While that may seem like a long time, when you begin to consider all you need to do to complete each customer’s migration from Exchange 2010 to either Office 365 or Exchange Server 2016, it’s really not that much time at all.

In that time, you need to help them make that first decision to either continue on-premises or move to the cloud. You need to begin a comprehensive inventory of all related customer message store assets, including existing mailboxes, users, folders, and more. You then need to examine their retention policies to help you determine what older segment of their mail store will be archived and what segment will be migrated to the new platform. There are rights issues, governance issues, technical issues, and others which need to be discussed and planned for.

Depending upon the size of your customer’s organization, this may require more than a year’s time. And that’s a problem.

What are the Implications of the End of Extended Support?

The end of mainstream support back in 2015 simply meant that there would be no further development of that version, no more upgrades. Bug fixes would still be provided, as would security updates and vulnerability fixes.

When extended support ends, those things go away. There will be no further security or other patches, fixes, or updates, no available support. Nothing. It all ends with the anticipation that users have already migrated to a more current platform.

You may remember that this happened to Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP on April 8, 2014 an enormous number of users continued using Windows XP. In fact, 2% of Windows users today are still using Windows XP five years later. This is a more dangerous practice than you may think.

When extended support ends and you’re no longer receiving any kind of updates, you aren’t the only one who knows that. Every hacker and other bad-actor on the internet also knows your platform is completely vulnerable. After January 14, 2020, they will all go looking for those who are still using Exchange Server 2010. If your customer is a user, they have a big target painted on their back.

Fight the Deadline with MigrationWiz

January 14, 2020 is another serious deadline – just like April 8, 2014. Failure to act is failure to protect your customer’s networks and their critical messaging data. It’s just that simple.

Fortunately, help is waiting for you at BitTitan. Begin your planning to help your installed base of Exchange 2010 users avoid these hazards by identifying exactly who they are. Then watch the BitTitan on-demand webinar, 6 Best Practices for Exchange to Office 365 Migrations.

MigrationWiz and BitTitan best practices help you become the de facto expert best suited to migrate each of your Exchange Server 2010 users to Office 365 or Exchange Server 2016 well before the January 14, 2020 deadline. Contact your BitTitan rep today to learn more.

The post Exchange Server 2010: With Extended Support Ending Soon, Choose to Migrate Now appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Next stop, London!

Microsoft Ignite – The Tour makes its way to the UK this week, February 26 and 27, at the ExCel London conference center in East London. Part of a roadshow series extending from the flagship Microsoft Ignite event in November, Ignite London offers developers and tech professionals the opportunity to learn more about Microsoft products and services from the experts who build them. Over 100+ deep-dive workshops from 350 experts across ten different learning paths ensure attendees of all backgrounds walk away with the answers and information they need to be successful in their businesses.

Where can I find BitTitan?

BitTitan is sponsoring the London Ignite roadshow and will be on Level 1 of the HUB, just outside Theather 1 at Booth #74.

The HUB will be open both days of the show, including a Networking Reception on February 26th from 4:30 to 6:00pm. Complimentary beverages will be provided.

During the course of the event, BitTitan business and technical experts will be available to answer your top Office 365 migration questions. Whether you’re a seasoned migration expert or just planning your first project, stop by to learn more about BitTitan migration solutions and assessment tools to ensure a fast, streamlined transition to the cloud.

Interested in a longer meeting with BitTitan at the event? Reach out now or on social media using the hashtag #MSIgniteTheTour – we’re always looking to meet new partners in the migration space!

The post Meet up with BitTitan at Ignite London appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

With email serving a central role in business communications, migrating users to a new platform can be a tricky proposition. Once an organization makes the decision to move to the cloud – or accepts a recommendation from their service provider – there are a variety of tools that can help with this transition. But not all those tools are created equal. And when the risks of this complex process include data loss and disruption to business operations, IT professionals need to have full command over their cutover and visibility into the transition. For that, you need MigrationWiz.

Don’t Limit Your Options

The three main migration strategies listed below differ in timing of the cutover and the amount of data moved before or after that action. Based on factors like number of users, amount of data, and Source to Destination scenario, not all three may be possible. If you do have this flexibility, don’t constrain yourself by picking a migration solution that only supports one.

No other third-party migration solution or free tool from a big cloud provider combines MigrationWiz’s ease of use with its breadth of customization. Let’s look at some of your options.

• Plan around individual users or departments. With MigrationWiz, you can segment and migrate by level or business unit. For instance, you might be able fully cutover human resources over a long weekend. Sales, however, may want a multi-stage strategy to ensure they don’t miss a critical email on an open order over the weekend.
• Get precise with date ranges. Extremely flexible date ranges let you specify which emails and documents to migrate and do them in multiple passes. Do you want to migrate just the last 30 days of email, or the last 90 days? Everything from 2017 and later? The last 10 minutes? MigrationWiz has you covered – bringing over data exactly how its needed.
• Maintain strategy at scale. No surprise – the bigger the mailbox or the higher the number of users, the more complicated the migration gets. Multi-pass strategies and additional features like coexistence help IT professionals execute on enterprise-level migration projects.
• More Advanced Options. MigrationWiz library of customization features include flexible notifications of successes or failures; filters that control which items in a folder to migrate; ability to re-migrate items which either previously succeeded or failed; cross-migration between mailboxes and archives; and controls for fine-tuning migration performance.

Enterprise controls for power users

For MSPs or internal IT departments serving large enterprise, MigrationWiz puts tools at your fingertips for deep project customization through scripting with the PowerShell SDK. Controlling MigrationWiz through PowerShell allows you to script and execute highly customized projects. The commands programmatically configure MigrationWiz projects and users, submit migrations, and monitor migration progress and statistics. Learn more about those capabilities here.

Large migration projects require a team. Through Project Sharing in MigrationWiz, multiple people can collaborate on migration projects in their same Workgroup. Project Sharing allows for better visibility into projects by the entire team, while helping with post-project reporting, change management, and overall project management.

The bottom line: better outcomes

MigrationWiz affords control over migrations that you won’t find in any other tool. By combining these fine-grained controls with a little knowledge about how organizations and users depend on their emails and data, you can deliver the best-possible migration experience. In the best of all worlds, they won’t even notice the change.

Want to learn more about MigrationWiz Advanced Options? Watch an on-demand webinar now to get up to speed.

The post Control Your Cutover: Customizing Projects in MigrationWiz appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Initially launched in 2006, Google’s package of cloud office applications known as G Suite has quickly risen as one of the few viable alternatives to Microsoft’s Office 365. Despite its underdog status, Google has made great strides to introduce new features and applications to its cloud office suite over the past 24 months, building on a strong foundation of collaboration features and a 100% cloud-based model. In a market where Gartner expects 70% of businesses to be significantly provisioned with cloud office capabilities by 2021, G Suite boasts strong adoption numbers among SMBs, verticals such as media and education, and in the Asia/Pacific region. Combined with renewed investments in its partner community and distribution relationships, 2019 is shaping up to be its biggest year yet.

For organizations exploring Gmail for Business or G Suite as alternatives to their current applications, part of that calculation is a migration project. This can also be one of the biggest barriers to adoption. MigrationWiz can help ease and expedite an organization’s transition to the cloud – regardless of current Source environments or number of users, we’re here to help you transition your customers onto G Suite.

Why go with MigrationWiz?

100% Cloud.  Just like G Suite, MigrationWiz requires no local installations or on-prem setup to get going. And for mail migration scenarios where Office 365, Exchange 2007+, or Gmail is the Source, we autodiscover users on the Source so they can be easily added into your project.

Easy to Use.  When you’re ready for the actual cutover, configure and launch mail, document, and archive projects in a matter of minutes using the same UI. No special training, certifications, or professional services necessary.

Fast, Scalable, and Dynamic.  Migrate user mailboxes and files simultaneously for the most efficient transition away from the Source. MigrationWiz supports the migration of several hundred mailboxes concurrently and Advanced Options allow for deep project customization and control over your cutover.

Support & Documentation. Don’t go at it alone. BitTitan migration experts are on hand to offer technical support for planning, executing, and troubleshooting even the most complex projects. BitTitan’s Knowledge Base offers an unmatched library of guides, tips, and community forums to help you make an effective move to G Suite.

But don’t just take our word for it. Learn how BitTitan partner Coolhead Tech is leveraging MigrationWiz to move their customers from Office 365 to G Suite.

Explore G Suite as a Destination with MigrationWiz

There are several options available to Google partners when migrating their customers. As a Google Technical Partner and domain experts in all kinds of migration scenarios, MigrationWiz offers a highway to G Suite, enabling you to sell and onboard customers to their new environment as quickly and smoothly as possible.

Want to learn more about our support for G Suite as a Destination? Contact us today or visit our Help Center for more information about our pre- and post-migration solutions.

The post Migrate to G Suite with MigrationWiz appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Product Release Notes contain information about updates, upgrades and new features for BitTitan solutions and services. For the most current information, visit the Product Announcements section in the BitTitan Help Center. For additional questions, visit the Community Forums.

MigrationWiz

New Feature: Coexistence for Office 365 Tenant Migrations (Changing Domains)

MigrationWiz now supports mail-flow and free/busy coexistence for Office 365 tenant migrations involving a change in domain name. This capability enables users on the Source to be able to communicate seamlessly with users already on the Destination and vice-versa, including free/busy calendar status and contact details.

Partners can also have the option to migrate customer tenant Distribution Lists and Groups. Lists and Groups can be synchronized at any point in the migration to detect changes at the Source and Update the Destination.

Learn more through these Knowledge Base articles in the BitTitan Help Center:

• (Blog) Feature Spotlight: Coexistence for Office 365 Tenant Migrations
• Office 365 tenant to tenant coexistence setup guide
• Office 365 to Office 365 migration guide – while changing domain name – with coexistence
• What happens during a tenant to tenant migration with coexistence project setup
• How do I sync changes in Distribution Lists or Groups for a tenant to tenant migration?

New Feature: Option to select Microsoft-provided Azure storage during endpoint creation

If a user selects the Microsoft-provided Azure storage key, they do not have to input the Azure storage account name and access key. Should they select the custom Azure storage option, they will have to provide that information. Both options are mutually exclusive and applicable for SharePoint / OneDrive v2 migrations.

New Advanced Option: “EncryptDataForMigrationApi”

This option is applicable for SharePoint / OneDrive v2 migrations when the custom Azure storage option above is selected. All data on Azure storage will be encrypted by AES-256-CBC standard when this option is selected.

MigrationWiz Improvements

As part of our ongoing efforts to simplify and improve error messages, the following payment-related errors have been updated.

MigrationWiz Bug Fixes

• Consistency between .csv and UI: fixed a discrepancy between project statistics shown in the UI and the project statistics exported / sent via email (.csv).
• BitTitan Store: fixed a UI bug that partially hid the “More Support” button under the “Help” menu.
• Scheduled Migration: fixed a UI bug whereby the scheduled migration time was not visible to MigrationWiz users. The scheduled time displayed next to “Submitted” status has been truncated prior to the change. After the fix, users can hover over the “Submitted” status to see the scheduled time.

The post February 2019 Product Release Notes appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Setting the Stage – Meet Blue Chip Consulting

Microsoft Managed Gold Partner Blue Chip Consulting Group of Seven Hills, OH, is an IT consulting firm that leverages Microsoft products and services to help companies realize an agile infrastructure, predictable cost model and secure enterprise.

In 2018, Blue Chip was approached by a Fortune 1000 enterprise specializing in imaging solutions and technologies to transition their entire global workforce to Microsoft 365. The enterprise’s internal IT team had been developing concerns around the security of their Google-based productivity platform for some time and ultimately decided to migrate their 10,000 employees from G Suite to Microsoft 365.

After careful exploration, the enterprise IT team determined Microsoft provided a more secure, modern, and collaborative IT environment. With many users in remote locations, the robust communication capabilities of Microsoft’s platform offered a far superior ability to increase workforce engagement, collaboration, and the resulting productivity.

Combined with their track record for strong security and identity management, Microsoft was the ideal solution for their data and network security concerns, along with an opportunity to provide superior services to their user community.

Enter BitTitan

After evaluating SkyKick, Quadrotech, and native Microsoft Exchange migration tools, Blue Chip selected BitTitan MigrationWiz as the ideal toolset to facilitate such a large migration cost-effectively and within the desired timeframe. They based this decision on their own successful track record and experience with MigrationWiz, its ease of use, the consistent quality and timeliness of MigrationWiz support, and a highly competitive licensing program.

Since the customer has global operations that require continuity 24/7, MigrationWiz allowed Blue Chip to automate migrations around the clock, which reduced manual labor costs and shortened deployment times.

The project called for Blue Chip and BitTitan to help the customer perform several sophisticated changes:

• Migrate 9,000 mailboxes from Gmail to Exchange Online
• Perform 7,000 Windows 10 in-place upgrades from Windows 7
  • Enable employees to work anywhere on any device by integrating System Center Configuration Manager with Microsoft Intune
• Deploy Azure AD to secure identities
• Deploy Azure Multi-Factor Authentication / Self-Service Password Reset for single identity protection and password reset
• Implement Office 2016, OneDrive for Business, Teams, and SharePoint
• Increase cloud security via Azure Advanced Threat Protection, Azure Information Protection, and Advanced Threat Analytics.

Blue Chip + BitTitan Drive Results

Over the course of several weeks, Blue Chip Consulting and BitTitan helped a team of 14 internal IT professionals to complete this global migration on their schedule, providing the customer with the reliably-secure, highly-productive communications and collaboration environment they were seeking.

Blue Chip Consulting Group credits their tools for help achieving a successful transition to Microsoft 365.

“BitTitan’s MigrationWiz offers invaluable features,” says Ryan Fogle, Solution Architect, Blue Chip Consulting Group. “The solution can be quickly configured and, many times, gets working in under an hour. It offers a PowerShell module for automating migrations which drives efficiency and consistency. Not to mention, it supports a vast amount of source and target environments. One might even call MigrationWiz the Swiss Army knife of migration tools.”

The post Blue Chip Consulting Leverages BitTitan to Move Fortune 1000 Workforce to Microsoft 365 appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

With migrations between Office 365 tenants gaining popularity, BitTitan recently introduced new coexistence features for MigrationWiz to support large-scale migrations and flexible project timelines.

In the latest addition to our on-demand webinar library, BitTitan Senior Technical Strategist Kelsey Epps walks through how to minimize impact to end users while helping them work seamlessly together during a staged tenant migration featuring a change in domain name. Watch that webinar now to learn more about best practices for Office 365 tenant migrations and our new coexistence features!

CLICK HERE TO VIEW TOP TIPS FOR OFFICE 365 TENANT MIGRATIONS WITH MIGRATIONWIZ

The post On-Demand Webinar: Office 365 Tenant Migrations and Coexistence appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Google Cloud’s largest customer and partner event of the year, Next ’19, makes its way to San Francisco next week for three days of networking, skill-building, and problem-solving amongst Google partners and peers.

As a Google Cloud Technical Partner, BitTitan is sponsoring Next ’19 and will be providing demos of MigrationWiz at Booth #1649. We’ll have technical and business experts on-hand to field questions and meet new partners! Stop by our booth to learn more about accelerating the transition to G Suite from a broad range of Source environments or general troubleshooting and best practice tips for cloud office migrations.

Want to book a meeting with our team? Click here to add a reminder to your calendar or follow the Contact Us link to schedule time.

The complete session agenda for Next ’19 is now available – here are key sessions we’re keeping an eye on:

Monday, April 8

6:00-8:30pm PT: Partner Summit Welcome Reception (Moscone Center)

Tuesday, April 9

9:00-10:30am PT: Opening Keynote

2:00-2:45pm PT: Make it with G Suite: Compete and Objection Handling

3:30-5:15pm PT: Partner Summit Keynote (Moscone Center)

5:30-7:30pm PT: Next ’19 Welcome Reception

Wednesday, April 10

9:00-10:30am PT: Opening Keynote

3:00-3:45pm PT: Build Your Migration Practice with Google Cloud

4:00-4:45pm PT: Building What’s Next Together: Google Cloud and Partners

The post Event Preview: Google Next ’19 appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

As the Office 365 user base continues to grow, so will the need to migrate people and data between different tenants. It’s a trend we’ve seen emerge over the last 18 months and one we expect to proliferate in the near future.

It’s also the reason we’re investing in new capabilities for tenant to tenant (T2T) scenarios – coexistence to support users split between Source and Destination tenants as well as improved collaboration and reporting features for best audit and security practices (LINK).

Those who regularly manage migration projects know the secret to success lies in planning. A botched project is often the result of poor configuration or mistakes during the pre-migration phase that cause issues during the actual data transfer.

T2T projects are no different – in fact, they can be even more complex to assess and manage given the intricacies of Office 365, Active Directory, and the business drivers behind the project itself, such as an acquisition or divestiture. There are a lot of reasons to get it right the first time – and steep penalties for failure.

In a new white paper from BitTitan, we present high-level planning steps for your team to consider after the need to migrate between tenants has been established. This includes guidance around:

• Assessing Source environments and planning for the Destination
• Determining changes in domain name
• Evaluating potential migration tools
• Communicating with end users

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE COPY: PLANNING GUIDE FOR OFFICE 365 TENANT MIGRATIONS

The post White Paper: Planning Guide For Office 365 Tenant Migrations appeared first on Bits & Bytes.

Product Release Notes contain information about updates, upgrades and new features for BitTitan solutions and services. For the most current information, visit the Product Announcements section in the BitTitan Help Center. For additional questions, visit the Community Forums.

MigrationWiz

MigrationWiz Improvements

As part of our ongoing efforts to simplify and improve error messages throughout the solution, we have altered the alert when a non-encoded URL is provided by user when creating a SharePoint endpoint. The alert formerly displayed to the user was not helpful and was inaccurate. See below for the updated message.

MigrationWiz Bug Fixes

UI Improvements: fixed a UI issue whereby purchase details were truncated and unreadable on the billing history screen due to insufficient table width.

Mobile Responsiveness: fixed an issue whereby there were two different waffle menus on top left and right navigation. After the fix, the right waffle menu has been updated with a “user” icon to differentiate user-related functions.

Landing Page: fixed an issue whereby users reach an old MigrationWiz landing page with no projects created. Users are now correctly directed to the Workgroup page.

MSPComplete

New Task Library Components

Office 365: Update Mailbox Connectivity

Microsoft Teams: Archive/Unarchive Teams

Active Directory: Delete Users

MSPComplete Tasks: Transpose CSV; select values from CSV

Updated Task Library Components

Office 365:

• Grant/remove full access permissions
• Grant/remove send-as permissions
• Grant/remove send-on-behalf permissions
• Create users individually or bulk user task updates

Microsoft Excel:

• Populate Excel template; updated to handle five (5) CSV files

MSPComplete Bug Fixes

Office 365: import users into MSPComplete is now updated to include non-Exchange users

The post March 2019 Product Release Notes appeared first on Bits & Bytes.