Defensibility Guidance for Email Archive Migration and Transition to Cloud-based Platform

We assisted a large chemical manufacturer with decommissioning its legacy email archives and transitioning from an on-premise email environment to Microsoft 365 (M365).

Rather than migrate the entire email archive to M365, the project focused on isolating and migrating only those emails subject to legal holds or industry retention requirements and defensibly disposing of the remaining emails.  Our team assisted the client in identifying custodians subject to the legal holds, creating a timeline of relevant information for each custodian, and providing the timeline to the client’s IT department for use in isolating and exporting emails from its legacy email archives.  We then advised the client in vendor selection for the transition of the archived emails to M365, and we worked with the selected vendor to troubleshoot issues and perform sample testing.

After the migration, we assisted with creating and implementing an email retention schedule and process to right-size retention moving forward.  Our guidance enabled the client to transition to M365, decommission a legacy email archive environment, and implement processes to make informed data and risk management decisions.