When transitioning
to a cloud first strategy for their organization, many CIOs are reluctant to
consider infrastructure upgrades as a preliminary step in migrating from a
current On-premises server solution. We have created some guidelines to help
you prepare for an increase in internet traffic from your user base.
The benefits of
workloads on Office 365 over Hosted applications are clear.
- Best of class collaboration among employees scattered across various locations and geographical areas.
- Better productivity by using multiple devices to access applications.
- Great visibility on compliance reporting.
- Easier setup, little to zero end user maintenance from IT.
- IT resources are freed up from performing server and software upgrades, dealing with licensing from vendors, and general server management.
Your company will
experience an fairly significant increase in Internet based traffic. We see an
average 40 percent increase in internet traffic across most organizations. This
is because all Office 365
traffic is Internet based. You know that users can get to the internet in the
office, but your current Internet workloads may not be as heavily used as
Office 365 will be. For instance, Your SaleForce.com usage might be
representative of a very limited subset of employees. Simply increasing your
network capacity is not the panacea that will bring about any Networking
Nirvana.
Routing your desktop users through your
network firewalls, proxies and Internet gateways before sending them to Office
365 may just be limiting their experience and could have your end users
screaming at you. During the initial migration phases it is the internal
networking architecture limitations that’s one of the biggest challenges,
especially when users are initially synching their 50GB .ost file!
Readiness To Do
List:
- Read Microsoft's network performance guidance
- Upgrade your firewalls
- Increase bandwidth
- Run Office 365 Health, Readiness & Connectivity checks
- Model and test your network capacity or move to an Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365 circuit for a more predictable experience.
- Review your current Firewall software and revise its rules for Office 365.
