News
Microsoft-Mover Deal Aimed at Boosting Microsoft 365 Adoption
- By Kurt Mackie
- October 21, 2019
To nudge organizations toward using Microsoft 365 services, Microsoft on Monday announced its acquisition of Mover, maker of a platform that assists medium-to-large companies in moving their files to cloud-based services.
Based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Mover enables migrations to Microsoft's OneDrive and SharePoint Online services, as well as Box, Dropbox, Egnyte, Google G Suite and Amazon WorkDocs.
In the announcement, Jeff Teper, corporate vice president for Office, SharePoint and OneDrive, described Mover as "a leading provider of cloud file migration, including admin-led and self-service offerings." Microsoft already has some tools and services to support Microsoft 365 migrations, and Teper indicated that Mover will "enhance these offerings with proven tools, plus more self-service options over time."
As for what might get enhanced, Teper pointed to Microsoft's SharePoint Migration Tool, which is currently available for migrations to SharePoint Online from on-premises installations of SharePoint Server 2013, as well as SharePoint Server 2010. He also pointed to Microsoft's FastTrack, a partner program supporting Microsoft 365 migrations for organizations subscribed with 150 or more "seats."
Mover co-founder Eric Warnke indicated in a blog post that Mover plans to "bring our deep expertise and migration technology to serve Microsoft customers." He omitted any mention of support for non-Microsoft customers, so it's not wholly clear if Mover will continue to provide migration support for other services, such as Box or G Suite.
Teper indicated that Microsoft plans to "share more details" about the Mover integration and coming "new capabilities" for moving to Microsoft 365 at the Microsoft Ignite event, which will start next month. The terms of the deal were unannounced.
Microsoft's SharePoint Migration Tool perhaps needs a bit of a jumpstart. It has slowly evolved, and only recently gained the ability to move SharePoint Server 2010 files to the SharePoint Online service, a development that was announced earlier this month. The SharePoint Migration Tool currently can't move SharePoint sites that were customized with added code or that used "third-party tools."
About the Author
Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.