Intractable problems of merging and splitting Office 365 tenants

[Tony Redmond]

Microsoft takes it easy for companies to use Office 365 and has been very successful in moving customers to the cloud. But when you get to the cloud and find that your company is involved in a corporate merger, acquisition, or split, things are not so easy because the tools to do the work don’t exist. Some glimmer of hope exists as ISVs have started to take interest in the space.

https://www.petri.com/problems-merging-office-365-tenants

[#2]

Seems like the only paths are DIY (real pain) or 3rd party software that are way too expensive for small/medium business that need to manage moving data between tenants.
There should be some tool provided by default, maybe some powershell-only solution (so external software could still leverage their ease of use).

[#3]

I think that it will be impossible to construct one tool to do everything involved in an Office 365 merger/split,

The tool has to update AAD, move mailboxes, move documents from SharePoint and OneDrive sites, deal with plans and teams, figure out Skype for business plans, deal with licenses, and so on. That's a heck of a lot of work for a single tool to do - especially when mergers and splits tend to happen over extended periods.

I think we will end up with a set of tools, perhaps provided by different vendors (select the best for each job) to handle all the different aspects of a merger/split.

[#4]

On the bright side, Microsoft should be making things easier, if only to ensure the "data portability" part of GDPR... :)