“Divestitures require careful planning and execution, but they can create tremendous opportunities for companies to transform their businesses and unlock new growth potential.” – Ginni Rometty, former CEO of IBM.
Divestitures are widespread in enterprise, and IT professionals and MSPs needs to be ready for them. There are completely different sorts, however often, a divestiture includes a enterprise being acquired by a separate firm, leading to a merger with the brand new firm’s IT surroundings. This might be Office 365, Google Workspace or one other tenant.
Whether firms create a brand new group, purchase an present firm or spin off a brand new enterprise, they usually must restructure information property. Assets can vary from enterprise information to doc databases, emails and extra. This restructuring typically means MSPs must execute a migration.
Migrations, after all, aren’t any easy activity. There are quite a few steps, challenges and greatest practices MSPs ought to think about to make sure a easy migration throughout a divestiture. Whether that is your first divestiture or not, it’s by no means too late to hone the method.
Challenges
It’s vital to establish which environments are concerned within the divestiture. Does it make sense emigrate to an present surroundings or create a brand new one? Perhaps one firm makes use of Microsoft Office 365 whereas the opposite firm is utilizing Google Workspace. MSPs are sometimes tasked with both making a greenfield surroundings the place every thing is ready up from scratch or working with the CIO and IT groups to find out which productiveness suite and practices work greatest for the merged firm.
“Divestitures are an important way for companies to divest themselves of businesses that are not performing and focus on their core business and growth areas.” – Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.
One problem MSPs face is matching a number of items with the mother or father firm. These embrace safety parameters, licensing schemes and even e mail setups. For instance, the mother or father firm might use firstname.lastname@companyname.com for his or her e mail addresses whereas the acquired firm makes use of firstname_lastname@companyname.com. This creates a problem for the mother or father firm, which now has to inform its new workers they’re getting a brand new e mail deal with after 20 years.
MSPs additionally need to be sure that safety protocols between the environments match. Mismatched protocols create alternatives for hackers to entry the surroundings and harm operations.
Geography can even current a problem. Divestitures can occur between firms in numerous international locations, creating an IT barrier that may complicate migrations. For instance, an organization in Germany that shops the vast majority of its information on native methods may must migrate all of it to the OneDrive of a brand new mother or father firm in Japan. This causes an immense problem as a result of many international locations have completely different restrictions in place concerning information migrations. As a consequence, it’s vital to grasp what information will be moved relying on regional legislation for the international locations concerned within the divestiture. This could also be a time-consuming course of, however will probably be value it in the long run.
What to know earlier than migrating
Before a divestiture migration, think about a couple of questions. What are the prices related to the migration? What are its staffing wants? What is the timeline for ending? How a lot information must be moved? These are key questions that have to be answered beforehand.
In addition, you want the proper instruments. The proper migration software can make sure the transition is profitable and minimally disruptive to finish customers. These instruments additionally provide predictability. Migration instruments with numerous bundles assist MSPs choose the most suitable choice for his or her particular migration. This tells them how a lot a migration will price and helps them keep away from disastrous surprises.
MSPs must also think about bringing in a buyer success engineer as quickly because the divestiture pre-sale is finished. Handover between pre-sales representatives and the buyer success group is an important step to the success of a divestiture migration. A buyer success engineer will help deal with any points or issues that come up throughout a fancy migration. This will guarantee there’s added assist through the migration course of to forestall mishaps and maintain finish customers glad.
Best Practices
Whether it’s earlier than, throughout or after a migration, there are a number of greatest practices that assist guarantee a easy course of. If you’re utilizing a migration software, at all times be sure that to look at the timestamps and monitor the migration because it progresses. Don’t await the software to inform you the migration is full. Some recordsdata could not have migrated, which might trigger complications for the tip consumer and delay the mission. Always be sure that every file is actually full by checking for any errors that will happen through the transition. One easy option to confirm that is to match file sizes.
You ought to at all times ask extra questions than seem on the usual working process (SOP). All buyer environments have hidden quirks. An organization could have stopped utilizing EMC SupplyOne over three years in the past however doesn’t understand there are nonetheless stubs pointing to the e-mail system. Now, it’s the final day of the migration, and this data hasn’t been moved. Unknowns like these can hobble the complete migration, delaying each authorized and enterprise deadlines for the divestiture.
Finally, be sure that finish customers are skilled within the new environments and productiveness suites. A brand new suite will at all times have a studying curve. Because of this, it’s best to provide coaching to workers unfamiliar with new environments. With entry to coaching sources, workers can guarantee they perceive tips on how to use the platform and its instruments and work throughout groups effectively with out slowing down operations.
Migrating information throughout a divestiture will be sophisticated, however it’s not inconceivable. By following these steps and greatest practices, MSPs can guarantee migrations run easily, enabling CIOs and executives to deal with the general divestiture course of and reassuring finish customers their information is safe and guarded.
By Tosin Vaithilingam