Tom Lewis, DirectorAcademic & Collaborative Applications

UW Information Technology

The Saga of UW’s Office365 Implementation

2

July – August 2011Foolish Optimism

o Live@edu migration/general availability O365 project kickoff meeting• Project end date of November 2011

o Equipment needs identified and orders placedo Decision to use F5 load balancers – new project spun upo Asked Microsoft for permanent test tenant• Senior UW-IT leadership emails senior Microsoft

leadership about delay and lack of response to our request

3

September – October 2011Uh-oh

o All equipment delivered and built outo Dogfood tenant finally provisioned by Microsoft• A month after UW-IT leadership email• Not a true EDU tenant or XL size

o Slippage of timeline o Start to realize how horrible the transition will be for

Live@edu users

4

November – December 2011Eyes Opening Widely

o Deep dive with Microsoft on O365 and UW environmento Contracting with Microsoft Premier Deployment teamo More discovery on how bad the migration for Live@edu

users o First taste of how poor Microsoft’s support of O365 versus

Live@edu o TAP & MSO based Strawman for migration

5

January – February 2012Holding….

o Engaged with Microsoft on deep dive for TAPo Standard non-EDU and XL tenant fiascoo UW Medicine decides they want to move to O365

6

March - May 2012: Holding…

o In-place conversion versus “greenfield” approacho Decision to go with “greenfield” approacho Problems with DirSync limitationso Confirmed with Microsoft a migration path for Live@edu

userso Move away from FIM and go back to DirSync

7

June – August 2012More Holding…

o Contract should be signed and ready to go by July 1sto Strawman for migrating Live@edu users finalizedo Ask Microsoft if we can keep old Live@edu tenant and

upgrade it to O365o Microsoft responds two months later that they can upgrade

our existing Live@edu tenant

8

September – December 20121 of Many Stages of Grief

o Microsoft does bait and switch on contracto Live@edu upgrade to Office 365 finally happenso Major outage of Live@edu o Contract and licensing for O365 finalized (signed)o Talks with Microsoft to confirm we have proper support for

O365o Changed the mail attribute value to <uwnetid>@uw.edu

9

January – April 2013Grief Diminishes

o Changed primary SMTP for mail enabled userso Followed the Google groups method of email address of

<group name>@uw.edu for Exchange enabled groupso Mega GAL testingo Decided to scrap everything with WAVE 14 and go to WAVE

15o Microsoft provisions WAVE 15 tenants

10

May – August 2013Change of Direction

o Decision to install Exchange 2013 for mailbox migrationso Setup DirSync in Dogfood environment (Wave 15) o Decided to deliver SkyDrive Pro (now One Drive for Business)

and Lync Online to campus before Exchange Onlineo Decided to migrate Exchange Local users to Exchange Online

before general availability (manual process)o Receive quote from Microsoft for Exchange Online migration

(~$1,000,000)o Production SkyDrive Pro and Lync Online environment setupo Early adopters given accounts (~1000)

11

September – December 2013Progress Finally

• Contract with Cloudbearing to help with Live@edu migrations established

• SkyDrive Pro and Lync Online released to campus (~140,000 accounts provisioned)

• Lowered UW Exchange Local message size limit from 60 MB to 25 MB (to match Exchange Online)

• Production Exchange Online (hybrid) successfully setup• First UW Exchange Local mailbox successfully migrated to

Exchange Online

12

January – April 2014Towards a Happy Ending?

o Large mail message report sent out to UW Exchange Local support groups

o Exchange Online pilot begins (migrated a couple hundred selected users)

o Mass migrations from UW Exchange Local to Exchange Online begins

o ~2400 migrated as of today

13

Lessons LearnedVendor Management

o Microsoft O365 technologies and support are not mature, so continual engagement required• Teams still working at cross purposes

o Ask not, do• Many things are not so enterprise with licensing and

otherwise• Beware the HIPAA-busting updates

o Verify and then trust with Microsoft and their partnerso NET+ helps

14

Lessons LearnedCampus Change Management

o Email costs will not diminish for awhile (if ever)• Will still need lots of hardware too

o Communicate the timelines, communicate the details• Lots of community meetings• Public product backlog• Talk up the value

o Work closely in pilot mode with department IT, early adopterso Pilot early, and pilot for a loooooong time• Create a public and open communication channel

15

Lessons LearnedPolicy Implications

o Account life-cycle management comes to the fore• Whither Alumni?• Separation business processes often Lots of community

meetings• Public product backlog

o HIPAA means lots of discussion on e-discoveryo Engage early and often with your counsel• I am not a lawyer, but I play one at work…