Wipro leverages Microsoft Data Graph Connect (MGDC) to classify data across Office 365 workloads for effective tenant-to-tenant migrations. 

Because mergers, acquisitions and divestures have considerable impact on the IT and user workloads of all companies involved, special care should be taken to ensure that disruptions are minimal – that no content is lost, that communications (especially legal, compliance, and auditory) remain open, and that operations keep running. 

This can be challenging, even when the organizations are migrating within the same platform. As the preferred workplace platform for global corporations, Microsoft Office 365 is integrated with many organizations’ on-premise Active Directory or cloud environments. Any activity stemming from a merger or divesture therefore involves multiple teams (infrastructure, security, procurement, management, and compliance/risk) and requires a strategic, data-driven approach to navigate successfully.

By combining the rich data of Microsoft Graph with the advanced capabilities of Microsoft Graph Data Connect, businesses can utilize the advanced capabilities within Office 365 like Outlook's intelligent experiences, Azure Cognitive Services language models, and AI-driven features in SharePoint, to chart a more successful course through the M&A process.

To see how, consider the following example.

Divesture Use Case

As part of corporate strategy, a group of business units of Pharmaceutical Company A is spinning off into newly formed Company B, which Company A will later divest in to focus on other high-risk, high-reward ventures in drug development. Certain users from Company A will migrate to Company B in a new Active Directory structure, making Azure Active Directory rationalization a common thread. The Office 365 tenant and users across both companies will still need to be able to collaborate throughout the process and Azure AD will create common access for all users in these M&A scenarios. 

Company A, the Office 365 tenant, has a huge inventory of SharePoint Online and MS Teams sites, around 140,000, with collaboration portals and unstructured data that has been accumulating for 10-15 years. The data in those 140,000 sites has grown significantly over the last 3-5 years, so the data size is huge – tera bytes. 

Key Considerations

A new tenant must be created for Company B and all user data and other assets must be migrated to that new tenant from Company A. All Office 365 workloads – AAD, SPO, ODB, EXO, Yammer, Teams – must also be migrated to the new tenant while maintaining the data integrity and sanctity in terms of data ownership and permissions.

SharePoint Online and MS Teams are shared between Company A and Company B users, so the businesses must be able to identify the assets that belong to Company B and are available for divestment. This requires some additional considerations for the content shared between the two organizations: 

• When divestment is being carried out, how long should Company B retain access to Company A assets?
• How do they manage user permissions and removal of access?
• How do they plan for the MS Teams tenant-to-tenant migration (chat, group and channel conversations) when partial migration of MS Teams having shared conversations may not be possible?
• How do they deal with legal holds when content needs to be shared across organizations
• How do they deal with encrypted content?

Because the data size is so large and spread across the organization, the business must leverage tools, frameworks and automation to improve the productivity and velocity for this migration to classify the data for segregation. Security, in terms of content compliance and regulations, is also critical while doing the content migration. As assets are migrated, teams must be sure to maintain proper authorization rules for who can access what. 

Solution Framework

There are four key phases to consider when outlining a migration approach: discovery and assessment, planning and design, migration and verification, UAT and deployment. Breaking down the various steps in each of these key phases can promote a more comprehensive, seamless migration.

1. Discovery and assessment

• Classify Company B users and their data across SharePoint and MS Teams sites. 
• Separate sites, assets, and security (Company A only, Company B only, Mixed).
• Clearly scope and size security and regulatory requirements (e.g., legal hold, AIP, remediations).

2. Planning and design

• Equip Company B tenant with all pre-requisites (AAD, user licenses, IA, security trimming, etc.).
• Draft detailed migration plan for SharePoint and MS Teams assets.
• Install tools and ensure POC readiness.
• Manage communication with stakeholders.

3. Migration and verification

• Conduct batch-wise migration based on the defined plan.
• Maintain continuous improvements (tools, processes, people) to ensure productivity.
• Conduct necessary verifications and maintain user communication.
• Maintain all possible automations for migration and verification.

4. UAT and deployment

Conduct all necessary validations, updates, trainings to support a smooth transition:

• User acceptance training (UAT)
• Bug fixes
• Deployment validation
• Hypercare support
• Documentation updates
• Hand-over support

Scoping Framework for Data Classification

It’s important to define the business rules across Office 365 workloads for scoping the data classification patterns for these scenarios. The diagram below shows the steps in data classification for MS teams and SharePoint Online sites. 

In the context of M&As and divestment scenarios, it is very important to classify data across the Office 365 workloads to perform the migrations more effectively. Microsoft Graph Data Connect can help in classifying and tagging the right data by formulating and aligning with the customized business rules. Data classification and assignment to stakeholders can be fully automated with auto tagging options, and tightly integrated with third-party or native solutions, reducing manual effort for an easier, more effective data migration strategy for large tenet-to-tenet migrations.

Wipro has partnered with Microsoft to define and strategize the Microsoft Graph Data Connect based solutions for more successful M&A’s and divestures for data classification scenarios.

To learn how, contact the Microsoft Graph Data Connect team or click the link below to schedule a demo.