Google Workspace APP
Executive Summary
This guide offers five key Google recommendations for migrating to Google Workspace. It outlines proven tools, resources, and support, in addition to stories from customers who have successfully migrated. For chief information officers (CIOs) seeking a modern productivity and collaboration solution, Google Workspace offers a compelling alternative to legacy tools for enterprise businesses. Trusted by 10 million customers and 3 billion users worldwide, Google Workspace provides organizations with a familiar, modern, and intuitive environment for communication, file management, document co-creation, and more.
Why Google
Workspace? A Brief Recap
Google Workspace can help organizations of all sizes and across virtually every industry enhance security, productivity, and collaboration. With AI-powered security features and cloud-native and zero-trust architecture, businesses rely on Workspace to protect their most sensitive data. Artificial intelligence (AI) embedded across the productivity suite can help organizations save time and improve work quality.
Using Google Workspace with Gemini, businesses of all sizes are securely deploying AI at scale. According to our recent study of enterprise customers using Gemini, users save an average of 105 minutes per week, and 75% of daily users say it improves the quality of their work. Organizations migrate to Workspace to seize the opportunity for IT and cultural modernization, to streamline workflows for faster decision-making, and to help eliminate bottlenecks through seamless collaboration.
Chapter 1
Five key recommendations for a smooth migration to Google Workspace
Migration to any technology is a multifaceted process, but it doesn’t have to be daunting. Organizations from around the globe choose to migrate to Workspace every year. A successful migration requires a strategic approach that prioritizes understanding the technology environment and source data, minimizes potential risks, and recognizes that change management for employees is a crucial component to success.
Every migration journey will be unique, and the timeline will vary depending on the organization’s data volume and complexity. When planning a migration, it is critical to begin with careful consideration of the organization’s current environment and specific needs and circumstances. Customers often benefit from starting the process 1–2 years before the end of their licensing agreement with a legacy provider.
Here are five steps you can follow to begin this process alongside your Google account team and selected implementation partner.
Audit and understand the source data
Accurately assess data type, size, and complexity to anticipate challenges and optimize the migration approach. Identify your data distribution to uncover how the data is spread across the source system. Keep in mind that organizational data requirements may vary by department, and these needs should inform your migration timeline and strategy. Proactively address any unsupported data types or hard limitations within Google Workspace to prevent disruptions.
Leverage source scans
Conduct a comprehensive data analysis by utilizing scan functionality, such as Google Workspace Migrate, to gain deep insights into the source data. Optimize the migration process by effectively distributing workloads across migration infrastructure and prioritizing large datasets. You can use the Google Workspace migration product matrix to proactively research tools that can be used to migrate specific types of data.
Plan your migration approach and include change management from the beginning:
When planning an enterprise migration, it is critical to align your IT team, Google account team, and implementation partner on intended outcomes with defined goals and objectives. Some organizations may choose to adopt Google Workspace in coexistence with specific legacy tools and point solutions.
Others may choose to migrate fully to Google Workspace. Google supports both models of migration; however, a full migration helps organizations maximize the benefits and return on investment of Workspace.
While there are many ways a business may build its migration strategy to meet business goals, Google recommends a three-phase approach with core IT, early adopters, and global go-live.
Google’s suggested phased migration approach
The three phases of core deployment activities can typically take 3–9 months.
- Phase 1: Planning & Core IT Deploy to core IT team only.
This phase begins in collaboration with a partner to align deployment plans with Google’s best practices and to create a success path for the overall project. This phase confirms and tests technical design, identifies integration points, and allows the team to become familiar with tools and technology. - Phase 2: Early Adopters Deploy to 5–10% of total users. This phase validates the migration, tests the change management plan, and gathers feedback on training and communications so the plan can be adjusted as needed to best meet users’ needs.
- Phase 3: Global Go-Live Deploy to all users. This phase brings the remainder
of the organization on board, conducts extensive training and communications, and transitions to long-term adoption and transformation. as outlined in the deployment guide for large organizations. This process typically takes 3–9 months, and it can be adapted to your organization’s specific requirements and needs. - A well-executed change management strategy is essential for a smooth and successful workspace migration. By focusing on communication, training, and support, you can minimize disruption, empower employees, and achieve the desired business outcomes. You can use this guide as a template for your change management strategy.
Prioritize data migration
With careful planning and consideration, determine your organization’s critical data for go-live and what is non-essential data for go-live. It is not necessary to migrate all data by your go-live date. Focus on migrating essential data first to ensure a successful go-live experience. Consider migrating non-critical data after going live to streamline the initial migration process.
Mitigate risks proactively
Anticipating challenges before a migration will help keep your team on track. Open communication, proactive planning, and a focus on data integrity will pave the way for a seamless migration experience.
Chapter 2
Customer success stories
Equifax drives cultural transformation after migrating over 20,000 employees to Workspace.
As one of three credit reporting agencies in the U.S., Equifax helps millions of consumers and businesses each year to reach their financial goals. Equifax drove cultural transformation across its business by adopting Google Workspace. It migrated the data of about 21,000 users before deploying Workspace for employees across 20 countries. By using technology as a lever, Equifax helped its workforce foster a culture of collaboration and community, resulting in nearly 100,000 Google Chat messages each day. The simplicity and security of Workspace and the ability to work on documents from anywhere have helped Equifax streamline communication and collaboration.
Brazilian government institution migrates 3.5 million+ files to Workspace in 2 months
In Brazil, the Ministério Público do Estado do Amapá (MP-AP) is the Public Prosecutor’s Office for the State of Amapá. It is an institution governed by Brazil’s Federal Constitution and committed to defending the law, democracy, and the interests of individuals and society as a whole. In 2 months, it migrated 4TB of data spanning more than 3.5 million institutional files. Now, MP-AP has 99.9% service uptime and a 90% adoption rate of Google Workspace among employees. It has gained more flexibility for remote workers, easier document sharing among teams and external entities, and greater governance over data stored by the agency.
LifeCell executes a full-fledged migration for 1,200+ employees in under 3 months to enhance efficiencies
Founded in 2004, LifeCell is India’s largest stem cell and tissue storage bank. It is a main provider of genetic screening tests and is a leading player in cell and tissue-based therapeutics. LifeCell executed a full-fledged Google Workspace migration in under 3 months for 1,200+ employees, which transformed collaborative capabilities with granular privacy settings. Google Workspace has also helped the organization enhance workflow efficiencies from top management to frontline staff by reducing spam attacks to zero.
Within 4 months, Humanamigrateds 13,000 users to Workspace, cut IT costs, and tightened security.ty. The easy-to-use collaboration tools in Google Workspace have improved morale and efficiency among 13,000 field and in-office team members at Humana, a leader in care provision services in Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The IT team is now confident that time-tested Workspace security features are keeping sensitive customer data safe, and Humana expects the migration to Workspace to reduce tech support requests by at least 50%. Humana migrated 22TB of data, including 55 million emails, 5.5 million documents, and 4.5 million calendar items.
I’m 100% confident that the Humana team is happier and more productive with Google Workspace than they were with our previous platform, and together with Chrom OS, it will make our data more secure than ever before.”
Adam Nerell CIO, Humana
Colgate-Palmolive migrates 28,000 users to Workspace in 6 months
“Google Workspace stood out because it’s truly an integrated toolset, with single sign-on and one directory. Google Workspace is built for the cloud, with no on-premises legacy. We felt that Google would continue to be the biggest innovator in cloud collaboration and a partner we could grow with,” says Mitch Cohen, director of collaboration at global consumer products company Colgate-Palmolive. In just three months, more than 94% of users were actively using Google Drive and over 57,000 hours of Google Meet sessions were conducted in just one month. Now, everyone from the C-suite to the mailroom at Colgate has a Google Workspace account and uses it daily.
Chapter 3
Migration tools and resources from Google
During a migration, organizations can access an array of first and third-party tools, processes, and support from Google to help ease the process from planning to execution.
Your Workspace account representative
As your first stop, contact your Google Workspace account representative, who works closely with our partner ecosystem and offers a variety of end-to-end services as you make the transition. These services include consulting, advisory, technical account management, change management, enablement and training, transformation labs, and more. Your account representative will work with you to engage the right partner for your migration needs.
Partners
Our extended network of managed services and implementation partners helps customers choose a solution that is right for them and leads the overall migration and deployment. Our partners accompany many organizations in their Workspace journey, bringing decades of experience supporting large customers with up to 200,000 employees.
Google Workspace has strategic partnerships with partners across all regions. Technology partners (ISVs) assist in the data migration process as well as connect with the enterprise’s reseller partner. Working with your account manager, your selected partner will work with you to create a detailed plan for each of the Google-recommended phases. These phases could include discovery, strategy sessions, enablement, training, and demos from planning to deployment and beyond. The full list of partners can be found here.
Professional services
Additionally, your account representative team can engage Google Professional Services to complement your service partner and safeguard the deployment journey with an additional layer of technical, change management, and governance support. This support may include access to expert advisors, best practices, a liaison with the Google Product and Engineering team to ensure the success of key implementation milestones and more. The full list of services offered by Google Professional Services can be found here.
Our teams have developed a specific methodology and tools to guide customers through the migration journey from the planning phase to a successful launch. For example, with Google Workspace Migrate, you can manage large-scale migrations into multiple Google Workspace core services from a single place. We provide detailed documentation and deployment guides to help you choose the best option for moving your email, calendar, contacts, folders, files, and permissions into Google Workspace. We have curated resources to help you every step of the way, including:
- Enterprise deployment resources and our deployment guide for large organizations. Organizations can use these change management resources and technical guides to roll out Google Workspace to large organizations. Follow our 90-day rollout plan to introduce Google Workspace to your users, test services and data migration, and successfully transition your entire organization.
- Technical deployment guides and migration guides for in-depth guidance. These resources provide detailed, comprehensive information on more granular topics, such as data migration from Microsoft Outlook to Google Workspace and more.
Google Workspace empowers enterprise organizations with modern collaboration tools and a secure cloud environment. With a structured approach, proven tools, and expert support, migration is a manageable process. Let Google Workspace help unlock the full potential of your workforce.
Documents / Resources
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Google Workspace APP [pdf] User Guide Workspace APP, Workspace, APP |