6 Common Box to OneDrive Migration Challenges

Box to OneDrive Migration Challenges

Many organizations that already own Microsoft Office 365 are looking to eliminate redundant cloud storage repositories and reduce costs by consolidating their content from third-party solutions like Box to take advantage of the built-in storage and collaboration solutions already included in their Office 365 licenses. For that reason, highlighted below is a better way to overcome the most common Box to OneDrive migration challenges.

6 Common Box to OneDrive Migration Challenges

One of the first things many IT departments ask is “can’t we just save money and do the migration ourselves?” But the hidden costs and risks with this “free” migration approach will start to add up quickly.

Content Analysis

Manual migration methods provide no way to scan your existing content to identify any large data islands, flag remediation issues, or obtain insight into permissions and collaboration information. It’s imperative to understand your data to plan for a successful Box to OneDrive migration. Some migration tools even offer full migration simulations, without ever moving a file.

By doing a content analysis, organizations can easily identify remediation issues, sort content by file type or size, flag any potential errors, and overall gain insight into permissions. This can also help to decide which content the organization should migrate to which storage space (Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive).

User Permissions

There are vast differences in permissions between Box and OneDrive, and no way to automatically map and transform them with manual or rudimentary migration methods.  In cases involving tens of thousands of users, this becomes an impossible task. Box uses a waterfall approach for its permissions, for example. This means if a user has access to one folder, they then also have access to every folder beneath it.

However, SharePoint Online doesn’t work like that. Therefore leveraging a migration tool that can transform permissions from Box into Office 365 may be essential depending on business and migration needs.

Security and Compliance

Organizations often have a lot of collaboration data that is important to the business and its users. On top of that, user permissions are also already tied throughout the organization – usually for good reason. With no reporting, auditing, or centralized control of the migration process, the organization is incredibly vulnerable to security and compliance risks.

Without oversight into internal/external sharing or tracking of migrated content, it’s impossible to enforce governance. Be sure to plan for oversight into sharing, permissions, and migrated content tracking to ensure that sensitive data successfully and safely migrated to the destination.

Box Notes and File Fidelity

This problem occurs when end-users move content from source to destination. Technical incompatibilities between Box and OneDrive make complicated migrations even more difficult. For instance, the issue with migrating Box Notes is that they technically don’t exist in Office 365.

Manual migrations and rudimentary copy methods will not easily transfer native Box Notes or maintain document version history across platforms. Nearly all the rich file fidelity of Box will be lost. However, there are some migration services that are able to maintain that file fidelity.

Remediation

Remediation is another big piece of the puzzle. Even with content analysis to help foresee challenges, there are things that an end-user can’t do easily. Manual remediation of failed file transfers due to incompatible name lengths, characters, or size limitations could take thousands of hours and still runs the risk of losing key file fidelity, version history, or other important content attributes.

If these key content attributes are imperative to business needs, the organization will need a migration tool that can carry them to OneDrive. DryvIQ offers a pre-remediation process to identify files it cannot migrate ahead of time. For instance, Box allows for thousands of characters in a file name, but Microsoft has a 400-pathway character limit. DryvIQ can do some pathway remediation, but it still has its limits. However, identifying these files prior to migration buys time to create an appropriate migration solution without risk.

Business Disruption

During migration, employees can easily be impacted by a disruption in their access to content. Relying on end-users to move their own files or establishing a hard cutover without a transition period can be damaging to business operations.

Thankfully some migration tools are very scalable and will allow organizations to run many migration jobs at the same time. This means a real-time synchronization between Box and Office 365. DryvIQ calls this continuous copy, which constantly streams changes in files, folders, and even deletes between source and destination. Ultimately, when it comes time for cutover, end-users aren’t as confused because they’re able to normally use the content in Box. There’s also less confusion over who’s been cutover or not since everyone is using the same source system.

6 Common Box to OneDrive Migration Challenges Infographic

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