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Email remains a primary driver of communications at most organizations, but the way we work has changed dramatically.
We read and send emails from home, the grocery store, and the cafe using whatever device is most convenient in the moment: phone, laptop, tablet. Sometimes we don't have a dedicated office, or dedicated IT teams. Working from multiple locations using multiple devices means that security on those devices and their doorways into your systems needs to be super locked down and manageable centrally.
Remember that time your staff member lost their laptop and you had to suddenly figure out if it was going to create a major security risk for your organization?
That is exactly why TechSoup Kenya strongly recommends nonprofits move their email and other critical systems to the cloud, and Office 365 is the most popular cloud software available through TechSoup Kenya.
In addition to cloud-based email using Outlook and Exchange online, Office 365 has features that help nonprofits dramatically increase their productivity, collaboration, and security:
- Teams for integrated communication, including group chat threads, document repositories, calendars, and conference calling.
- SharePoint and OneDrive for cloud-based document and information storage.
- Multifactor authentication for increased security of your devices and emails.
Moving to Office 365 eliminates the need for — and expense of! — maintaining your own email systems: managing that physical server, pushing software updates and patches. Your email server would now operate and be maintained by Microsoft in the cloud. Your email server would now operate and be maintained by Microsoft in the cloud.
For most organizations that TechSoup Kenya works with, the first step in moving to Office 365 is to migrate their email. This means moving email, calendars, and contacts from whatever email system is being used today (Exchange server is the closest, Gmail, or an email system provided by your Internet service provider) to Office 365. Email migration is the process of moving your entire email contents from one system to another. This includes all your emails — both current and archived — contacts, calendar appointments, and any other elements of your current email system.
The second step is determining whether you are up for doing this work yourself or want TechSoup Kenya to handle it for you. No matter how good your IT staff is, if you have them, migrating email systems is probably not something they do very often. And there are pitfalls that can make it downright difficult to catastrophic — think: lost emails, contacts, and appointment schedules.
Our Services team migrates nonprofit emails to Office 365 all the time, letting organizations quickly, painlessly, and efficiently reap the benefits of Office 365 email and letting the IT staff worry about more strategic IT projects.
The top reasons we see nonprofits migrating their email to cloud-based system include:
- The desire to work more flexibly — from anywhere using any device.
- Improved collaboration among teams when staff are remote or traveling.
- Requirements to comply with HIPAA or other standards given the sensitivity of the work that you do at your organization.
- Wanting to get away from a poorly functioning POP or IMAP email provider.
- Needing to retire an old on-site or hosted email server (such as Exchange) that would be too costly to replace, is posing security vulnerabilities, or both.
And now, our argument why TechSoup Kenya's email migration services are a good fit for nonprofits.
Hassle-Free Migration from Any Email Platform
TechSoup Kenya can assist with email migration from:
- Office 365 commercial subscriptions
- In-house or hosted Exchange servers (2003, 2007, 2010, and 2013)
- Gmail and Google Calendar POP and IMAP systems, including GroupWise, Zimbra, and Lotus Notes
We'll work with your IT administrator to set up user accounts, schedule the best time for the migration, and then complete the cutover to the new system. We also provide training resources for your staff on how to use all these fancy new Microsoft tools!
Easy, Fast, and Invisible to Users
It is all done remotely and often in a matter of hours. During migration, you can continue to use email without a hitch. Once the process finishes, you and your staff will receive an online notice to start or restart Outlook. And just like that, all of your contacts, appointments, and emails will have been moved to the new Office 365 account.
TechSoup Kenya's standard email migration service package includes:
- Establishing your Office 365 nonprofit account, if you don't already have one
- DNS redirect of your domain to the new system
- Setting up cloud-based accounts for everyone on your staff (including aliases and shared mailboxes)
- Migrating the email from each mailbox to the new system
- Transferring calendar items to Outlook online
- Transferring contacts to Outlook online
Migration costs vary according to the size and complexity of your organization. Contact us to get your free consultation. We can help with other projects too such as data migration (which means moving your files off that shared file server in the closet to SharePoint Online, which is included in the Office 365 licensing.
Because TechSoup Kenya only works with nonprofits and public libraries, we're all about working with nonprofits on their terms. Get in touch with us, we would love to help you out.
P.S. We also offer migration to G Suite if you're more interested in using Google's productivity suite that is part of Google for Nonprofits.