Transferring email and website from council to 365 & new webhost

[RobW]

Hi peeps!

 

First real post on here so be gentle with me!!

 

Looking for a bit of advice to clarify things in my/our head(s). At present all of our services are provided through the council in the form of a contract that runs out next year end Q1. The prices for renewal are a tad on the high side to say the least, which has sent us down the road of looking at alternatives. The stage we are at is that we have suitable quotes for ISP link provision but are now seriously looking at Office 365 to essentially provide email for the school (plus we get the other goodies of Lync, Team Sites etc.) Microsoft have put us in touch with one of their partners and they have set us up with a trial which has impressed us so......

1) What do we need to do to get the domain verified so that we get educational pricing then eventually swung over to 365? We have mentioned it to the contact in the council and we are getting some hmms and aaghs at the mo. We will also need it redirecting/moved at some stage - which?

2) Can the email accounts and data be copied into 365 from the councils exchange set up? If so how?

2) We are looking to move the website to another host as it currently built in Joomla and we don't want to have to do too much whilst the rest of things are kicking off. Would we have to move the domain to 365 then redirect web traffic to the external host or get web traffic moved directly to the new host?

 

Sorry if some of this is a bit basic to some but we need pointing in the right direction..

 

Thanks, Rob

Edited October 11, 2012 by RobW

[plexer]

2) using the built in migration tools or a 3rd party tool can import users email. You basically feed it a list of old_account@old_server.com, [email protected]

 

Ben