Supporting Mergers, Acquisitions, and Divestitures in Microsoft 365

[MelissaBathum]

Customers undergoing mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures often need to transfer the ownership of their data between Microsoft 365 tenants. This session will be focused on new tools to help with cross-tenant content migration in Exchange and SharePoint.

[Miguel Angel Tena]

Great presentation and amazing much needed innovations!

[Robert Lowe]

Thanks Miguel!

[Pontus T]

Exciting news! These are some of our most awaited features. Not only essential for M&A, but also for orgs with silo regional office tenants which needs migration to a single multi-geo tenant. Something we are looking to do but that is very costly and complex at the moment. Looking forward to the day we can define a satellite geo based on an external tenant with a single click, or configure cross-tenant hybrid AAD sync :) Thanks for investing in this critical area.

[TGibson]

@MelissaBathum @Robert Lowe This was a good overview of the capabilities and thank you for investing in these critical capabilities.   Can you share a link with additional documentation and requirements to use the migration tools you outlined in the video?   Thanks again.  

[Robert Lowe]

@TGibson, here's the link to the public preview announcement for cross-tenant mailbox migration: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/cross-tenant-mailbox-migration-in-now-in-p..., and the detailed documentation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/cross-tenant-mailbox-migration?view=o365-w....

There are links at the end of the presentation if you want to register interest in the other features that aren't in preview quite yet:

• Cross-tenant OneDrive & SharePoint Sites Move: https://aka.ms/SPOMnAPreview
• Domain sharing for email https://aka.ms/domainsharingpreview
• Cross-tenant people search https://aka.ms/crosstenantpeoplepreview

[Satyajit321]

Fabulous, this is going to make things a lot smoother for growing enterprises.

What will be the behavior for remote domains\ auto forwarding restrictions. Will it use the default or remote domain settings or behave like an internal accepted domain.

How many tenants can have it as an internal relay
Incase a tenant wants to be authoritative, guess the removal procedures will be similar.

Any plans or documentations for these would help.

[Nicolas_Gois]

@MelissaBathum 

Great set of features !

Is there news regarding the display of the tenant name in sharepoint urls, or renaming of a tenant ? This is a big issue that will prevent the merging of 2 tenants, because the name of the tenant is often the name of a company and this can become a marketing/political nighmare.

Regards

[Robert Lowe]

@Satyajit321 thanks for the feedback. We'll be producing the additional detailed documentation for the new features as they go to preview.

[NITIN SHUKLA]

This is an good start and I look forward to more maturation in this space.

In regards to Acquisitions/divestitures, we'd love to see the ability to move all/specific data for Teams and Yammer with full fidelity. This is a gap which we cannot currently address in our M&A scenarios.

For longer term cross tenant coexistence, in addition to people search would love to see the ability for permissioning across tenant boundaries for SPO/Teams (adding users from trusted tenants w/o needing guest accounts etc.). Easier means to a unified EXO OAB would be great too. 

[Nicolas_Gois]

@MelissaBathum Hi, very interesting...but I can't find anything about migrating personal chat history for Teams users.

I'm not talking about a chat in a channel in a Team, but personnal chat history.

It seems like it's stored in a hidden folder in the Exchange mailbox, but it seems like mailboxes migration tools can't access this folder...this is a huge issue regarding merging of tenants...any info on this subject ?

Regards

[Heinrich Wewers]

@MelissaBathum This is great news, who is eligible to request access to the preview.

Also when will documentation be available.

[LIT-RS]

@MelissaBathum @Robert Lowe  Thanks guys, this was brill, I really enjoyed watching this - we're testing this out our internal environments.

I did notice that this doesn't really touch up on migration from an Identity perspective - e.g. moving AADconnect and AD Users from one Forest to another but still keeping the same Azure/O365 tenant. 

Is there any documentation around this?

Thanks

Ron 

[Mark McCormack]

@MelissaBathum and @Robert Lowe  Hi, thanks for this great video! Can you tell me, does this type of functionality exist between a tenant in Commercial and a tenant GCC high?  Thanks!

[Robert Lowe]

@Mark McCormack the cross-tenant functionality demo'd in the video currently only works between commercial tenants.

[AlexandreSmialoski]

@Robert Lowe the Cross-Tenant Migration for Sharepoint is currently working? So can I try rigth now is my tenants?

Thanks,

Alexandre Smialoski

[UmarShaikh415]

@MelissaBathum 

Hello All 

Thank you for the detail. 

I am in process of performing Sharepoint tenant-to-tenant migration and looking for help. 

I do not see most of the commands to perform SharePoint tenant-to-tenant migration. 

Do you have any team in SharePoint same as mailbox we have an email address Cross-Tenant Mailbox Migration Preview <crosstenantmigrationpreview@service.microsoft.com>

Do we have any team or EMail address who can help us for SharePoint tenant to tenant migration 

[Checo_Cano]

@UmarShaikh415 I have the same problem, I found the commands in the last version of SPO Powershell but when try to use it I receive the error: The cross-tenant content move feature is not enabled for this tenant

[Michael_Neikes]

Hello,

most wanted Feature for us.
How are we able to be part of the preview, to test this feature?

Regards
Michael

[Andre Cardoso]

Hello, 

this is indeed a very needed feature, how to signup for this feature preview?

Regards,

Andre

[Essifarahani960gmail]

Email address removed 

[James Lau]

@Robert Lowe  there seem to focus more on exchange and less on sharepoint/onedrive.  i dont see any documentation related to sharepoint/onedrive migration?

[scumdog]

You can sign up for the "Domain Sharing for Email Private Preview" at https://aka.ms/domainsharingpreview.

But these videos came out in 2020 are we will just in Preview status?

[ameetrajsidhu]

@MelissaBathum @Robert Lowe any update in regards to the domain sharing feature? 

[wniehof]

In case you are looking for a solution to combine multiple corporate address books (after mergers for example), but are not (yet) moving all the users into one Azure AD, you can have a look at https://www.federated.directory.

We partnered with Microsoft to build this solution.

[LucaHeller]

@Robert Lowe How is auto discovery in this case?
How would it work for hybrid environments with exchange onprimisses?

I see a case where auto discovery does not work completely in a tenant that already has preview enabled.

[LucaHeller]

@Robert Lowe @MelissaBathum 

I have a hybrid tenant with an Exchange 2016 connected to my tenant A of 365, I also have a tenant B cloud Only, which has the domain of tenant A configured as a shared domain, the auto discovery only works if the main SMTP and UPN were from Tenant B, if I have a main primary SMTP with Tenant A's domain in Tenant B's account, it doesn't work.
Do you have any predictions for this type of configuration?

[mikebaker26]

so SMTP multi tenant got dropped back to Dec 2023 from Feb2023 public preview?

the corporate political implications on M&A is making this problematic

[Michael_Neikes]

more than bad..postponed with every date reached...

[RussMeyer-Epik]

I used this at a previous job, worked solid...dont know why it was pushed back almost a year...folks have been needing this for some time, especially those whose companies do not grow by organic means but by M/A activities...

[simon734057]

@RussMeyer-Epik Keen to know how you were using this when it is not released, I'm assuming you were on the Private preview group. Our business have been hanging out for this feature to resolve our Corporate email branding issue as a result of M&A activity. 

[RussMeyer-Epik]

@simon734057 I was able to enroll via private preview at previous company...wasnt too hard to implement...like you I am in a similar situation where it would greatly help with a project at my new job

[PAlger]

@MelissaBathum and @Robert Lowe any updates here? I have applied for a private preview and received no response in months. This will help us immensely with M&A activity..

[igrigorjevs]

Currently, our company groups are in the migration process and wanted to merge all branches in to MS under separate tenants, and this feature would help a lot. How can we receive Private Preview? form filled up.

[bstuart01]

We enrolled in the preview months ago and never got a response. Due to this we've been checking the roadmap weekly and just noticed this morning that the dates have been pushed back dramatically. I can't imagine this is accurate information. Can anyone from Microsoft comment?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=67161

Preview Available: December 2023

Rollout Start: April 2024

[HANIFRIFQI890]

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[portwajn1337]

Bad news, folks: "[This item is being postponed indefinitely.] ". Source: Microsoft 365 Roadmap | Microsoft 365

I guess it's not because of the lack of interest from the admins and users, so if I were a gambling man, I'd put my tokens on the inherent complexity of this feature, as the reason for dropping it.

[mikebaker26]

back to on-prem for M&A.....

[Michael_Neikes]

? Where ist the Feature?
Under Roadmap not findable anymore...

[portwajn1337]

@Michael_Neikes - this has been postponed indefinitely in July 2023 and then removed altogether from the roadmap. End of dream.