See the original TechNet announcement.
Brief
Microsoft has been migrating Live@EDU tenants to Office 365 for sometime now and now we have a formal deadline for when Live@EDU will become history.
I advise any current Live@EDU tenants to be very pro-active about this one. While the inevitable mailbox migration will be done for you by Microsoft, any automated provisioning tools (i.e. MS’ DirSync or 3rd party like Tools4ever‘s UMRA) will be your responsibility.
Behind the Curtains
If your automated provisioning implementation didn’t go beyond basic mailbox creation, you may not care for the following. However, if you dealt with more advanced features i.e. username changes, disabled/enabled statuses, preventing password resets, SMTP proxies, etc. – read this.
There’s a fundamental difference between Live@EDU and Office 365 and understanding that difference is imperative to understanding the effort of transitioning between the two systems.
I could say Live@EDU = MS Exchange 2010 (/w supporting Active Directory), hosted for you by MS.
However, I would say that Office 365 = a platform with its own accounting system, with plugins:
- Exchange Online (this is the MS Exchange 2010 hosted for you by MS)
- SharePoint Online
- Lync
- etc.
In case of Exchange Online, it too has it’s own accounting system.
Take Away
With Live@EDU you were dealing with only 1 accounting system. With Office 365 and Exchange Online you’ll be dealing with multiple accounting systems that sync some things between each other (but not all), but also affect 3rd party systems (i.e. SharePoint online). If you had a complex Live@EDU implementation and are still a Live@EDU tenant – you have less than a year left.
BetterIDM 