The AvePoint Solution
Kingston University had several capability requirements for a migration partner, like scheduled, off-peak jobs and full fidelity of metadata, but more crucial, they needed to find a partner who could also help ensure long-term user adoption through user education. It was important that their data owners were trained on the importance of owning cloud data, but it was equally important the entirety of their 20,000+ users – ranging from corporate staff to academics and students – had access to M365 education and training content, or risk misuse or even disuse.
AvePoint offered these capabilities and more. AvePoint’s Microsoft Gold Partner status and expertise in migration and the cloud were appealing to the University, and the Microsoft 365 training gateway sealed the deal.
“We decided to partner with AvePoint because we trusted them to ensure our data migration was compliant, comprehensive, and quick,” says Steve. “Beyond the 20-year success rate with migrations, AvePoint’s experience in user adoption and the off-the-shelf Microsoft 365 training were huge pluses. With it, we can quickly tailor a range of training content in line with the University’s needs and deliver them before the migration completes, ensuring our users are properly and successfully onboarded.”
AvePoint started the project with a discovery, identifying important, relevant, and sensitive content. This provided Kingston University with insight into what content needed to be migrated into M365 and how to manage that data moving forward, in support of the University’s strategy and compliance.
Phase one has focused on migrating Kingston University’s professional services staff (IT, HR, finance, and backend teams) – including data in personal files, folders, and shared files to Microsoft 365. Though their migration is still underway (so far they have moved 150 TB of data), Kingston University is very happy with their migration results thus far.
Meanwhile, Kingston’s training and communication program launched to begin educating staff members on best practices, techniques, and functionality necessary to leverage M365 for better communication and collaboration. The content is personalized to staff members, students, and academics and built from real-life user scenarios so groups and departments better understand the impact these new tools will have.