There are some basic prerequisites you need to check before you start the Pilot phase. You also need to make sure that you know what the customer’s overall IT environment is like, because that environment will affect the planning decisions you make throughout the deployment process. However, unlike a traditional IT deployment, you do not need to spend several weeks in research and planning before running the pilot.

Office 365 – Environmental Prerequisites

1. Supported version of Office
2. Supported Operating System
3. Supported Browser
4. Authenticated Access over Port 80 / 443

Office 365 – Detailed Software Prerequisites

Check the below link for the detailed system requirements for Office 365 for business.

https://support.office.com/en-US/article/Office-365-system-requirements-719254C0-2671-4648-9C84-C6A3D4F3BE45

Office 365 – Customer Information Collection

Before starting the pilot, there is essential information you must collect from the customer. This information will help guide the pilot and provide useful background data that will assist you in later phases.

This is further explained under Technical & Program Readiness for the better understanding.

Let’s deep dive in details a bit – Technical / Program Readiness

Service Readiness

• Does the customer have an existing trial account they can use?
• The tenant name is the initial domain name in the form <tenantname>.onmicrosoft.com.
• Indicate which ports are open, such as 80, 443, 110, 993, and 995.
• Check that the client computers can access websites such as *.microsoftonline.com, *.onmicrosoft.com, *.microsoftonlinesupport.net, *.microsoftonlineimages.com, *.microsoftonlineimages.net, *.live.com, admin.messaging.microsoft.com, and * r3.res.outlook.com.
• Are the clients using any Internet proxies?
• Service administration. The service administration must be performed from a workstation with the following requirements:
  • Operating system: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2
  • Microsoft .NET 3.5.1
  • Windows PowerShell
  • PowerShell unsigned execution policy

Messaging Readiness

Messaging readiness is key information to gather, because this data affects the migration options and implementation planning for Exchange Online. The two main areas to identify are:

• What is the current mail system in place?
• How can it be accessed from outside the network?

Client Readiness

Client operating system. Supported operating systems include Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2012. All other operating systems should be recorded but are not supported. System management software such as System Center 2012 Configuration Manager (SCCM) can collect this information within the organization.

Hard disk space. 3 GB is required for installation of Office 365 ProPlus. Again, SCCM can collate this information.

Browser type and version. Supported browsers include Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9, or Internet Explorer 10; Mozilla Firefox 10.x or a later version; Apple Safari 5; and Google Chrome 17.x.

Microsoft .NET Framework. Supported versions of Microsoft .NET include 3.5, 4.0, and 4.5.

Connection to the Internet. Clients have regular Internet access and can access the Office 365 service.

Office version. You should record the supported and unsupported versions of Office that the intended pilot users currently have deployed, including Office XP and earlier. Office Telemetry is a feature of Office 365 ProPlus and Office 2013 that IT pros can use to collect information about Office, including earlier versions of Office.

Management Readiness

Domain join. Verify that clients are domain-joined. Although it does not prevent the pilot from running, domain membership affects options in the Deploy and Enhance phases.

Deployment approach. Determine how you intend to distribute software within the pilot. Options could include self-service, group policy, or through a system management tool such as SCCM.

Software distribution. You should record how the organization currently distributes software, which may be through group policy, batch files, SCCM, or a third-party tool.

Change Readiness

The following items should be addressed when planning for change readiness:

Change approval. Here you need to find out if change approval has been obtained for this project or if each change must be approved during implementation.

Office versions. Office 365 ProPlus will be installed side-by-side with the existing Office version. You will need to check that you can make this change to the primary Office version for the pilot users.

Resource Readiness

The following items should be addressed when planning for resource readiness:

Team roles. Here you need to list the resources with the following or equivalent roles:

• Project Manager
• Client Lead
• Messaging Lead
• Network Lead

Participation. For each of the preceding roles, identify how each person will participate in the pilot process.

User Readiness

The following items should be addressed when planning for user readiness:

• User roles: Identify how users will fit into different roles within the pilot. These roles could be:
  • Technical team
  • Non-technical team
  • Management team
  • Other roles
• Pilot users. Selecting the appropriate users to participate in the pilot is essential to the pilot’s success. Selection of the pilot users is covered in the next lesson.
• Pilot users need to participate fully in both the Pilot phase and in the debriefing and analysis afterward.

I hope you are on track & if not here’s the quick glance on “Designing for Office 365 Infrastructure” Revising & Deployment Methodology.

Lets continue further…

Although Office 365 can provide an excellent service for the majority of potential customers, there are some scalability limits and potential conflicts of which you need to be aware. Some of these limits may complicate the FastTrack migration process, and some of these limitations are currently not addressed in Office 365. However, there are plenty of mitigating approaches available to address these issues.

Note: I assume in this example(like wise you should consider doing research for other plans) customers will be migrating to the Enterprise E3 plan. Therefore, inherent scalability limits with the mid-sized and small business versions of Office 365 are not discussed.

Office 365 Scalability Limit

Exchange Online

Exchange Online in a hybrid environment is only supported with single Exchange organizations.

SharePoint Online

You should contact Microsoft Support if you are migrating an organization with more than 500,000 users. SharePoint Online does not support full-trust code, but it can be configured in a hybrid arrangement with on-premises SharePoint implementations.

Windows Azure Active Directory

If your customer has more than 100,000 user accounts (previously 50,000) and you are planning to use directory synchronization, contact Microsoft support.

Office 365 Resources

The following resources will assist you to get started with the Office 365 FastTrack process.

• Office 365 FastTrack Deployment Center: Use this site to get the customer facing deployment content – http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=306546

• Office Ignite Readiness : Access to Office technical readiness content, events, and resources – http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=321170

• TechNet Center for the new Office : Get the IT pro resources you need to try the new Office (Office 2013 and Office 365 ProPlus), including details about activation, compatibility, and deployment – http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=321171

• Office IT Pro Blog: Provides frequent topics about Office deployment and compatibility issues. Includes articles about Office Telemetry – http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=195811

• Office 365 Trust Center : Information about protecting the privacy and security of customer data – http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=321172

• Office 365 Service Descriptions: The service descriptions provide detailed descriptions of the services and features that are available with Office 365 – http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=285516

• Service Updates for Office 365 for Enterprises: Here you will find information about the latest features and improvements to Office 365 – http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=195811

• Microsoft Planning Services: Planning service site for partners. Learn about engagement options – http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=321173

Stay tuned for the upcoming articles…

I hope you’ve been through the beginning article to start with & move upwards in the ladder to “Design for Office 365 Infrastructure”

IT infrastructure projects, consultants, implementers, and IT professionals have to do a lot of planning and risk mitigation because they are building the new environment often from scratch, rather than migrating to an already proven system.

This is the key fact that enables you to implement the FastTrack approach for migrating to Office 365, thus reducing the time to get the customer to the live environment and mitigating the risks of the deployment.

Deployment Methodology : Old-Fashioned Approach

In a traditional on-premises deployment, you typically go through a structured process that involves many never-ending planning meetings, filling in numerous checklists, and attempting to reduce risks to the minimum acceptable level. The old Office 365 deployment model uses five phases, consisting of pre-deployment planning and consultation, followed by a planning phase, a preparation phase, the core migration phase, and some consequential post-deployment work to ensure everything is working correctly.

With an on-premises deployment, this complex, risk-adverse approach is understandable, particularly as you are migrating to an environment that is not working. But this approach does result in considerable disadvantages, which are at odds with the responsive nature of the Office 365 platform itself.

Deployment Methodology : Old-Fashioned Approach – Drawbacks

With the traditional deployment approach, you might spend several weeks or even months before you even get to the migrate phase—time when the customer is not able to experience the benefits of Office 365 first-hand. Even when you finally began your pilot deployment, that pilot environment would often be lightly used and then discarded, in effect invalidating the pilot and minimizing any useful operational experience that the pilot might provide.

The result of this approach is that it may be two or more months until the first users are migrated across to their Office 365 mailboxes, and three to four months before the organization finally benefits from moving to the new service. This situation is not ideal, both from the sales perspective and from the customer viewpoint.

A key message that you must fully appreciate is that cloud deployments are not like traditional on-premises deployments, and they need a new methodology to suit.

Deployment New-Fashioned Approach – Advantages

Instead of five phases, the FastTrack deployment process has only three main parts.

Pilot

The Pilot phase is implemented in hours and has minimal prerequisites. The aim is to get a representative group of users onto the service and redirecting their mail from their current messaging system to their Office 365 mailboxes. The overall aim is to:

• Use the service early.
• Allow the customer to use the service and see how it fits their needs.
• Show the options for a simple and quick deployment.

Deploy

The Deploy phase follows directly after the Pilot phase, so none of the pilot effort is wasted. The customer transitions rapidly into the live environment, which enables the organization to:

• Achieve broad production use quickly.
• Meet time to service use with deployment options.

Enhance

Finally, in the Enhance phase, the customer can include further optional enhancements to meet its business needs. If these additions are not required, they are simply never implemented.

This table breaks down the phases, identifying the function, time-frame, scale, and activities within each phase.

Stay tuned for the upcoming articles…