There have been some major announcements relating to MAD at Ignite this year. These announcements are very exciting! The dates are a bit. . . squishy let’s say? But there is hope for massive improvements in this space. Let’s dive in.
Ignite 2017. . . a rant
There was a famous session held at Ignite in 2017 where live on stage, there was a cross tenant Mailbox Migration. There was cheering and excitement. For three years, the program remained in some sort of locked down preview. Finally, we now see this in public preview. I can’t help but be leery that this year’s session will again be the same premature announcement and is just exciting news of what is coming in the years ahead. Let’s all be hopeful that this is not the case.
Cross Tenant Mailbox Migration
The ability to do essentially a cross forest MRS Mailbox move has been in some form of preview for quite some time. Those of us who did this on prem have demanded this feature for a long time! Without this feature, you have to use third party tools (https://www.quadrotech-it.com/office-365-tenant-to-tenant-migration/) or move the mailbox on prem and then back to the other tenant.
Programs don’t stay in preview for long periods of time if they work and perform. Where there has been such a demand, and this feature is just going into public preview, it remains to be seen if it will meet the performance needs. The claim is that it is “robust” but no definition is given on performance. We all desperately need this feature to be delivered and to perform, or we can’t take full advantage of it in large environments.
Some items with this feature:
- You have to have Azure Key Vault deployed in the target Tenant / Azure Environment with a billable subscription
- Just like Cross Forest Mail Migration, you can redirect mail from the source to the target
- The setup seems to take some doing, but all reasonable
- You can limit what mailboxes can migrate, which is truly amazing for divestiture scenarios
- This enters public preview, so production be warned
- User reconfig isn’t present here . . . see pending article from me in a week on some items here that can help
Timeline: In public preview, unknown full release
Step-By-Step Guide Here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/cross-tenant-mailbox-migration?view=o365-worldwide
You can read the statement here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/cross-tenant-mailbox-migration-in-now-in-public-preview/ba-p/1692465
Once I test this, I will post the article!
Spanning of the SMTP domain
I hate address rewrite, but for many MAD scenarios we needed to be able to brand users’ SMTP addresses.
From a risk standpoint, it adds another hop in the workflow and just adds another way for things to go wrong. For most, it also added another vendor or a migration vendor, who would get in your mail flow and try to do something unnatural. (I never did this for the record.) This is not desirable for so many reasons!
With this feature, custom connector policies allow you to redirect mail to another tenant with that domain. This concept was used quite a bit in the on prem days, so I am happy to see this familiar practice expanded.
Timeline: Going into private preview, release unknown
SPO / ODFB Cross Tenant Migration?
We see an announcement, without a timeline, but with a demo, in doing a cross tenant SPO migration. There are some huge claims here that I am really excited about. Here is why:
- Native support to migrate SPO/ODFB content between tenants
- Huge news: There is a redirect in sharing links from the old tenant to the new tenant!
For me, this appears to be an offering that does not require mover (Microsoft’s migration acquisitions https://mover.io/) and appears to be a native tool. However, with no doc or timeline, this is still a guess on when we will see this feature and its performance.
Watch this space!! I hope this offering will beat the MRS feature and we see this in public preview before Ignite 2023.
Timeline: Going into private preview, release unknown
The Dreaded Warning
The last part of the following video on this warns “license requirements to be determined . . . so let’s see what limits we will see on this offering.
If you want to check out the major MAD video from Ignite 2020, you can view it in the Video Hub here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/video-hub/supporting-mergers-acquisitions-and-divestitures-in-microsoft/m-p/1681208
I am still digesting all that has come out this week as with everyone else, so there might be a part two of this article!
