Scale Your Business with Better Support
Are you ready to upgrade from Google Workspace and gain the enhanced security and product portfolio your growing business needs? It’s time to migrate your G Suite instance to Microsoft 365.
AdaptivEdge has migrated over 10,000 Google Workspace seats to Microsoft 365 across education and commercial industry segments. Our comprehensive approach accelerates and streamlines migrations, minimizes business disruptions, and focuses on helping you adopt the whole Microsoft 365 platform.
Microsoft 365 vs. Office 365
If you’re looking to migrate from Google Workspace to Microsoft, you’ve likely encountered the terms “Microsoft 365” (or M365) and “Office 365” (or O365). M365 is the new, rebranded version of Office — much like Google Workspace is the new name for what was once called G Suite. While the updated naming conventions are still new to many organizations, as long as you’re looking for a Google to Microsoft migration, we can help — no matter what you call it.
Why Migrate from G Suite to Microsoft 365?
Google Workspace offers simple solutions with gentle learning curves, making it an excellent fit for startups and some small companies. However, many organizations will eventually find they have outgrown Google Workspace or need additional capabilities that G Suite can’t offer. Microsoft 365 provides a more robust, enterprise-friendly solution, the logical next step for businesses ready to scale.
Better Security, Compliance, and Governance
One of the most common reasons our clients have moved from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 is the need for improved security, compliance, and governance capabilities not offered natively within the Google Workspace platform. Whether it’s improved identity management capabilities with Entra ID, Intune device management, or Purview compliance and data protection functionality, Microsoft’s native security products are far superior to what Google Workspace offers. Google customers who need enterprise-level identity, device, and data security tools must purchase multiple third-party products. The cost and integration challenges of these additional products make Microsoft 365 a more attractive option.
Support for On-Premises Presence
Microsoft 365 better supports cloud and on-premises scenarios. For larger organizations with significant on-premises investments, this is a considerable benefit. Some notable hybrid capabilities include desktop versions of Office apps (Word, PowerPoint, etc.), Active Directory integration, and Azure Arc. With a long history in on-premises IT infrastructure, Microsoft is better equipped to support organizations that need hybrid solutions.
Comprehensive Business Tools
Google Workspace offers alternatives to many of Microsoft’s flagship Office products (think Slides for PowerPoint or Sheets for Excel), but these solutions are typically less robust than the Microsoft products they emulate. Additionally, Microsoft has a more expansive product portfolio for collaboration, data analytics, and business process automation, offering capabilities G Suit doesn’t offer. These products include Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Power BI, Power Automate, and Power Apps.
Common Google to Microsoft Migration Challenges (& How We Help)
To ensure you smoothly transition from your G Suite environment to Microsoft 365, your AdaptivEdge consultant will work through some critical areas that are particularly important for the Google-to-Microsoft move.
Compatibility from Product to Product
The most common challenge in a Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 migration is ensuring compatibility across Google’s various products. Here’s a quick look at how we evaluate each migration within the platform:
- Gmail: We leverage IMAP migration tools to make email migration a relatively straightforward process.
- Google Vault: Since exports are not automated from Google Vault, migrating your archived content will take extra effort. Your AdaptivEdge consultant can help you navigate the details and move the needed files.
- Google Drive: Drive content typically migrates to SharePoint or OneDrive. We usually recommend some discovery and planning to identify department and organization-wide data that should move to SharePoint versus individual content that should move to OneDrive. This is a consideration we make during Box and Dropbox migrations, too, as neither platform offers an easy way to distinguish between document types.
- Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides: These files typically migrate seamlessly to their Word, Excel, and PowerPoint equivalents.
- Google Chat: Chat migrates to Microsoft Teams. We use premium migration tools like AvePoint FLY to make this a seamless, automated transition.
- Google Forms: We can help you migrate forms to Microsoft Forms with some minor tweaking, but it’s important to note that responses to your forms can’t be migrated automatically. We’ll help you export these into CSV or PDF form and copy them into Microsoft 365.
- Third-Party Google Integrations: Any third-party apps integrated with Google must be re-configured with Microsoft 365, assuming that integration is supported. Where a migration is not supported, we can help you identify alternatives or replacements. In many cases, Microsoft has a native solution for the capabilities G Suite users turn to third-party apps for.
Security Updates
Many customers leverage Google single sign-on (SSO) to authenticate users into other third-party enterprise cloud applications. When migrating to Microsoft 365, almost all organizations want to leverage Entra ID as their identity management provider. This means all SSO apps must be re-configured in Entra ID, which can be time-consuming (potentially many hours depending on the number of apps you use). We’ve done this process many times and can help you make this step as painless as possible.
Change Management & End User Adoption
Typically, the biggest challenge in a Google to Microsoft migration is end-user training, adoption, and change management. The migration represents a significant change that impacts how employees collaborate, communicate, and get work done. As such, migrations should include an organizational change management strategy that provides comprehensive end-user training and support.
Our change management and training capabilities set us apart from other firms focusing on data migration. When working with your team, we emphasize benefits that matter to end-users and how M365 can fulfill their favorite G Suite features. For example, users can still co-author and collaborate in real-time with peers, enjoy the richer client experience of desktop apps without giving up familiar cloud functionality, and easily integrate with other tools like Windows, Office apps, Teams, and SharePoint for enhanced features not available in G Suite.
Meet Your Google to M365 Migration Consultant
Eddie Alvarez is experienced with network administration and data center technologies. This background, combined with his strong interest in user experience and end-user adoption, makes him the right expert to help you move your data to M365 and make a seamless transition from Google Workspace.
Get to know Eddie more on our team page:
Our G Suite Migration Project Plan
Our step-by-step process will ensure a smooth and dependable experience for your Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 migration. Here’s what you can expect after we kick off your project:
- Google Workspace Discovery & Inventory
- Gmail Migration Design & Planning
- Google Drive Migration Design & Planning
- Microsoft 365 Tenant Creation & Configuration
- Pilot Migration & Validation
- Cutover Migration
- Training and Support
- Documentation & Knowledge Transfer