Birlasoft had a managed services relationship with this customer for more than five years, providing them with a wide range of digital services. They saw an opportunity to help their customer increase efficiency and improve communications by moving files for 5,000 users from Google to Microsoft – and they recommended MigrationWiz as the solution.

Selecting the right tool

When initially scoping the project, Birlasoft’s customer wanted to limit costs by going with a free first-party migration tool.

As part of strategic project planning, the Birlasoft team set up a ten-user proof-of-concept project. During the test, the teams uncovered three differences in how MigrationWiz and free tools treated files when migrating from Google Drive to OneDrive.

• While MigrationWiz left the file structure intact, free tools consolidated the Drive files into a single folder at the Destination. The folder is named “from G Suite Drive,” which creates user inconvenience due to unnecessary nesting.
• In their test, Birlasoft also found that the free tools only copied permissions to folders, while MigrationWiz copies them at the file level.
• They also realized that, with free tools, they would have to provision OneDrive for all users after assigning licenses manually.

For the Birlasoft team, MigrationWiz offered a better experience for end users by preserving the file structure and permissions as they were assigned on the Source environment. MigrationWiz didn’t have the shortcomings of the free solution, and it was much faster.

A team with a plan – and seamless execution

The project team for the migration required only one IT person on the client side; they were supported by three people at Birlasoft. While BitTitan support was standing by alongside Stella Goh, their BitTitan account executive, Birlasoft’s previous experience with MigrationWiz gave the team enough knowledge to execute successfully with very little additional support.

The full migration of 5,000 users and 60TB from Google Drive to OneDrive took place over three months, between mid-August and mid-November. It was done in batches of 400 users at a time. The benefit of working with an experienced managed services provider like Birlasoft was highlighted not only in the success of the overall project but by the outliers. A handful of very large Drive accounts saw higher failure rates, so the team was on hand to address them on a case-by-case basis.

As part of their ongoing relationship with the customer, Birlasoft supports digital projects and environment stabilization, as well as identity and access management. Future acquisitions and organizational changes will likely call for more migrations, so MigrationWiz is one of the strong partners in the toolbox.

“MigrationWiz proved to be the ideal tool for this project after comparisons on several parameters like speed, reliability, and agility. In addition, our experience with BitTitan and the continual support we receive has made for a powerful partnership,” said Kapil Uniyal, VP and Global HBU Head, Infrastructure and Cloud Technology Services.

“Over the past year, we have invested heavily in document capabilities and connectors which enable faster and more reliable migrations,” said Manoj Kalyanaraman, VP of Product and Engineering at BitTitan. “We’re honored to have partners like Birlasoft trusting our tools to deliver transformative solutions for high-profile customers.”