After 5 years, a Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 migration cleaned up digital clutter and improved collaboration.
At Yonder, we recently migrated from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365. Dreaded for a long time, at some point we decided that we would end the discussions and just do it.
As with all software tools, none of them is perfect, so you have to think carefully if retooling makes sense or is a waste of time.
Here are the reasons for our decision, and the revelations that we gained during the process.
The Reasons
There was one single reason why we eventually migrated from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365: Google Meet vs. Microsoft Teams. At Yonder, literally 99% of all our customers use Microsoft Teams. And well over 50% of all our customers block access to Google Meet on their firewalls. So it was always a huge pain to set up calls with customers, as we relied on customers sending out invitations with Microsoft Teams links.
The same problem existed in sales. At the start of the pandemic years, we relied on Zoom for reliable sales demos all over the world. Over time, Zoom was blocked within more and more countries and organizations, and Microsoft Teams became the standard.
The Revelations
During the migration process, we learned four things.
First, even in a well-structured organization, digital garbage collects over time. I think I am one of the most structured persons on the planet, and I set up the Google Workspace solution myself some 5 years ago when we founded the company. Nevertheless, I was surprised or even shocked by how many security groups, SAML mappers and other metadata have amassed over the years. I was even more surprised when I checked the logs and noticed that most of those groups were created by myself. So the first learning is that it’s a good thing to start anew every 5 years — you can get rid of tons of digital garbage with very little effort.
Second, the migration assistants from Microsoft have developed into powerful and easy-to-use tools. The entire migration of 30 mailboxes and calendars and 500 GB of stored data was done over a single weekend, and the remaining open items such as single-sign-on capability were completed over a couple of weeks.
Third, Microsoft has evolved a lot over the past few years. I have always been a die-hard Apple fan, and because of this, I was always suspicious of Microsoft. Nevertheless, looking at today’s Microsoft 365 suite and Microsoft’s verve in everything AI, it is clear that Microsoft has learned from missing the smartphone boat, and has continuously improved its products with learnings from the pandemic-induced remote work trend.
Fourth and last, as a B2B SaaS company it’s good to see how Microsoft standardizes its tools into a one-fits-all solution. Very often I hear urgent requests from a single customer for a certain feature, which threatens the development of our product into a one-fits-all B2B SaaS solution. Since the Microsoft 365 migration, I often use Microsoft 365 as a showcase to illustrate how B2B SaaS works — because literally all our customers use Microsoft 365.
The Obsolete Tools
After the migration, we not only demigrated Google Workspace, but also went through all of our software tools in use and decided what we could get rid of:
- Slack was replaced by Microsoft Teams, as it also features individual and team chat as well as integrations to CI/CD tools
- Zoom and Webex were our workarounds for the Google Meet blockings, and they became superfluous after we introduced Microsoft Teams.
Demigrating those tools not only streamlined our workflow but also saved us a handsome amount of money. As a lightly capitalized business, saving money and making work easier at the same time is certainly worth a migration weekend and two weeks of cleanup and tweaking.
