Save & Upgrade by Migrating to Microsoft
Still using Box and Dropbox for cloud-based file sharing? You’re likely losing money — especially if you’re already a Microsoft 365 customer. Box and Dropbox contracts can easily exceed $100k per year, a significant cost over a five-year ROI timeline. Microsoft’s SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business offer significant savings and upgrades, including robust integrations with other Microsoft products.
Take advantage of Microsoft’s built-in file-sharing capabilities with a guided migration from Box or Dropbox. We know many internal IT departments lack the capacity or expertise to migrate terabytes of content and train users on a new toolset. At AdaptivEdge, our expert consultants can help you do both, making migration an easy win for your revenue and efficiency goals.
Is Microsoft 365 Different from Office 365?
Microsoft 365, or M365, is a new and improved version of Office 365. While the “Office” terminology has been sunsetted, many professionals may still know or refer to Microsoft 365 by its old name. Whatever your organization calls it, we can help you get to the right destination from Box, Dropbox, and many other platforms.
Why Migrate from Box & Dropbox to M365?
A move from Box or Dropbox to Microsoft’s SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business gains your company:
Significant Cost Savings
Box and Dropbox require standalone subscriptions. By using SharePoint and OneDrive, you can save tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars per year by eliminating redundancy and leveraging the tools you already own.
Streamlined Operations
Microsoft 365’s unified platform helps you reduce the number of vendors, platforms, and applications you need to manage; Box and Dropbox add to the clutter.
Enhanced Collaboration & Communication
While Box and Dropbox focus on file sharing, Microsoft adds value with robust collaboration features, including chat, presence, meetings, conversations, intranet and departmental portals via SharePoint, templates and design features to unify your internal branding.
Clearer Document Management
Box and Dropbox store content in user accounts and don’t differentiate between personal and departmental content. This creates significant challenges when an employee leaves and your organization must recover important shared documents belonging to that user.
In the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, document management is clearly delineated; SharePoint is for departmental content, and OneDrive is for personal content. Since SharePoint sites are not tied to a specific user and permissions can be granted or revoked as people join or leave the organization, you won’t need to re-assign, copy, or migrate content from a terminated employee.
Better Security & Compliance
Microsoft Purview provides robust data classification and data protection capabilities to help ensure that sensitive data is not exfiltrated or shared with inappropriate persons, far surpassing the basic security capabilities of Box and Dropbox. Microsoft’s ecosystem can also enhance security and compliance through Power Platform’s automated workflows, detailed reporting, and seamless integration with Microsoft Information Protection.
Meet Your Box/Dropbox to M365 Migration Consultant
Jim Eagleton is an M365 and SharePoint expert with experience across diverse industries, making him a great fit for file migration projects and helping your team adapt to a new file-sharing environment.
Get to know Jim more on our team page:
Our Box/Dropbox-to-Microsoft Migration Process
- Project Kickoff and Planning: We review Box or Dropbox content with key stakeholders, document collaboration requirements, and discuss the current Information Architecture structure. The goal is to identify the content to migrate and plan the migration process.
- Inventory and Assessment: Inventory the Box or Dropbox environment and determine the optimal Microsoft information architecture to facilitate collaboration while adhering to compliance and governance best practices.
- Pilot Migration: Perform a pilot migration to test the migration process and identify any potential issues.
- Incremental or One-Time Migration: Depending on the environment and customer preference, the final migration and cutover will be performed in batches by department/locality or as a one-time cutover of the entire organization.
- Post-Migration Support: Provide support and assistance to end-users.
- Documentation and Knowledge Transfer: Provide documentation and knowledge transfer to the customer’s technical staff.
Key Considerations During Your Migration
Since Box and Dropbox fundamentally differ from M365, migration isn’t a simple 1:1 move. Before we begin migrating files, your AdaptivEdge consultant will ensure your new environment is set up from the beginning to take full advantage of Microsoft’s features.
For example, an important design and planning component of any Box or Dropbox migration is to identify departmental content separate from personal content. We’ll do this by interviewing department stakeholders and reviewing logs to understand what content department colleagues frequently access. This will help ensure you can leave behind the confusion of your old document management system and start benefiting from Microsoft’s clear structure.
We’ll also closely review external sharing and data security since many Box and Dropbox environments are configured overly permissively, allowing widespread external sharing of content without expiration, authentication, or encryption. At AdaptivEdge, we comply with best practice governance and compliance, which requires a review of the content and audience of externally shared files. Ideally, this step will include:
- A data classification strategy governing the migrated Box or Dropbox content to auto-label sensitive data
- A review and update of your company’s data loss prevention (DLP) policies to accommodate the migrated data and collaboration use cases with external parties