How to Migrate From Rackspace to Office 365 and Why You Should Consider It

First, migrating off of Rackspace and into Office 365. It can be a pretty simple process, and if you were to look up how to do it, it would seem that it's no big deal, but once you actually experience it, there can be some pretty big roadblocks. They host their email in Exchange On-Prem and, in our experience, Rackspace is pretty locked down and they do not like to give a lot of access to companies migrating their customers off of their platform. Normally, we would do a hybrid migration in a situation like this, but the lack of access given makes this nearly impossible. 

It has always been hard for us to get global admin privileges from the customer through Rackspace, which is the first step in being able to migrate into Office 365. Because of this, we always have to do an IMAP migration using a migration tool and then getting the individual username and passwords for the accounts. Basically, this is an Exchange On-Prem IMAP migration to Office 365 with a cutover all at once. It would be very hard to know that if you haven't experienced it, so it's always good to seek a professional to help with this.

Now let's look at why we think you might want to consider migrating into Office 365 with a CSP. There are many reasons that we can think of, but let's give a short list of some of the most important:

1. License cost markup -  Rackspace marks up their Microsoft 365 and Exchange licensing and the markup varies based on the type of licensing. As a CSP, RyanTech charges the same exact price as Microsoft for email licensing, so you will never see licensing from us go above the Microsoft pricing.
2. RyanTech specializes in Microsoft - We are specialists in all things MS, so we have all of the knowledge, plus some, when it comes to MS products and services. Rackspace is in all kinds of spaces and platforms. They have a wide variety of products that they works with and services they provide. If you are looking to come into MS from another platform, or need a partner that support your MS services at a high level, you may want to consider a CSP like us.
3. RyanTech has extremely competitive migration and projects costs - We are able to offer project work and migrations at low costs, sometimes free, whereas you may not get that from Rackspace depending on what you are looking to do.
4. Personal relationships with small business feel - RyanTech is a small to medium business itself and we understand the value in creating relationships with our customers. This helps us to understand customer needs better and provide great service.