The transition to the microsoft cloud is not to be taken lightly. The planning and processes involved in transitioning from an established infrastructure to a cloud environment is a major undertaking and will be able to save money after moving to Microsoft Office 365. Microsoft is encouraging organizations of all sizes to begin migrating operations to the cloud when Microsoft Office 365 becomes available, and is doing its best to help smooth the process. Microsoft Office 365 is made up of cloud versions of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Lync Server. Some Office 365 subscriptions will also include access to Microsoft Office Professional Plus, as well as the Microsoft Office Web Apps.

Here are the steps to start with. Microsoft EHLO team do have improvements coming in Exchange Server 2010 SP2 that will simplify the process of O365 migration..till then, this is the option.

1. Preparing your internal domain…aka Microsoft Office 365 Deployment Readiness. Download the readiness tool. Click here to download
2. The following assessments are provided:

• Domains
• Email domain discovery and number of users leveraging each domain
• User Identity and Account Provisioning
• Statistical information
• Active Directory schema and forest/domain functional data
• Trusts extract (checks for multi-forest constraints)
• Directory Synchronization
• Pre-requisite checks
• Attribute assessment
• Single sign on
• Attribute assessment
• Exchange Online
• Statistical information
• Public folder, public delegates, and proxy addresses extract
• 3^rdparty and unified messaging proxy addresses information
• Lync Online
• Statistical information
• SIP domains summary
• SharePoint Online
• User object count assessment
• Client and End User Experience
• Summary of domain joined machines for rich experience/SSO readiness
• Network
• Port analysis on certain Office 365 endpoints
• DNS records assessment

Once the assessment is done, you have to start correcting your active directory, DNS and mailbox restrictions. Active Directory must have certain settings configured in order to work properly with single sign-on. In particular, the user principal name (UPN), also known as a user logon name, must be set up in a specific way for each user.

Depending on each of your domains, you may need to do the following:

• The UPN must be set and known by the user. Click here to know how to do it.
• The UPN domain suffix must be under the domain that you choose to set up for single sign-on.
• The domain you choose to federate must be registered as a public domain with a domain registrar or within your own public DNS servers.

Before committing the migration, once admin/user should know the limits of O365..read my blog.

Step by step actions:

1. Verification: Your current enviromment and domain architecture: You have to verify the running infrastructure, whether it is matching the specific requirements for O365. Click to see the O365 client requirement
2. Migration Approach: Decide the approach that needs to be taken for the migration. Read my blog – O365 Migration Approach – for more details.
3. Domain selection:Choose the domain to migrate – Whether it is Federated domain (The domain you choose to federate must be registered as a public domain with a domain registrar or within your own public DNS servers) or Non-Federated Domain.
4. O365 Tenant Enrollment  You have to enroll to the Office 365 as tenant and go with a plan. You must subscribe to Office 365 to create a service tenant that is used in the selected deployment with your on-premises Exchange organization. After you create your cloud-based service tenant with Office 365 for enterprises, you’ll get an e-mail from Microsoft that confirms the successful creation of the tenant. Logging on to your cloud-based service will confirm that creating the service organization was completed successfully. First user will always be the global administrator for office365 and the email id/ user id for the office365 will be username@domain.onmicrosoft.com.
5. Set up your desktop for Office 365: After you’ve signed in to the Office 365 portal for the first time, you should set up your computer to work with Microsoft Office 365 for enterprises.Sign in to the Office 365 portal. In the right pane, under Resources, click Downloads.
   • If you have Microsoft Office Professional Plus, under Install Microsoft Office Professional Plus, select your desired language option and choose either the 32-bit or 64-bit version, and then click Install.
   • Under Install Microsoft Lync 2010, select your desired language option and choose either the 32-bit or 64-bit version, and then click Install.
   • Under Set up and configure your Office desktop apps, click Set up. The Microsoft Office 365 desktop setup tool starts.
   • Sign in using your user ID.Office 365 desktop setup will check your system configuration. If the scan completes without detecting any problems, you’ll be presented with options to configure your desktop applications and learn more about the important updates Office 365 desktop setup will install.
6. To troubleshoot issues you encounter when running the Microsoft Office 365 desktop setup tool, Click here.
7. O365 requirements..click here.
8. Active Directory Federation Services & Sing Sign-On (SSO): AD FS provides the various end-points that the Microsoft Federation Gateway uses to redirect clients to the AD FS server for different types of authentication. AD FS must be installed on a separate physical server that is a part of your on-premises network organization. To know more about the ADFS installation / Configuration, Click here.
9. Prerequisits fo the Directory Synchronization preparation..read the requirements by click here
10. Active Directory Synchronization for O365…Click here