Migrating from Telecom Business Email to Office 365

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Migrating from Telecom Business Email to Office 365

sahne

26 posts

Geek

#130912 2-Oct-2013 13:58

Hi all,

I was wondering if any of you have already done something similar to that and could advice me.
I have a client which currently has the telecom basic business mail and now they would like to move to office 365 exchange.
They also registered the domain name with telecom.

Now my question is can telecom just ad the dns records or do we need to transfer the domain name.

Has anyone done this type of migration and if could you tell me what you have done.

Thanks,
Daniel

Inphinity

2780 posts

Uber Geek

#906445 2-Oct-2013 14:05

As long as you can manage DNS records it doesn't matter where the domain name is managed. We've got all our domains managed with a third-party provider, yet "using" (I use that word loosely, because it's rubbish - or maybe it's just our pathetic international bandwidth) Office365 with several of them.

mattwnz

20141 posts

Uber Geek

#906465 2-Oct-2013 14:45

When I had a domain and hosting with telecom, you couldn't make any changes to the DNS or nameservers. So unless things have changed, you may need to transfer it to a domain provider that has a control panel and full DNS management.

Zeon

3916 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#906478 2-Oct-2013 15:03

If international bandwidth is costly/slow it could be worth looking at a local provider...

Speedtest 2019-10-14

Klathman

301 posts

Ultimate Geek

#906501 2-Oct-2013 15:49

If you still have the domain with Xtra then it will be a problem but if it's with Telecom's newer DNS then you shluld be able to add the necessary records to support Office 365. Having said that when I migrated a client from Telecom email to Office 365 I changed their DNS provider as well which resulted in a large saving for them.

sahne

26 posts

Geek

#906509 2-Oct-2013 16:00

Sounds great guys. Thanks for all the replies. Since it's my first migration changing the way emails are hosted. I am a little worried say if I have to transfer the domain what will happen to all the incoming emails currently with telecom. I don't think my client would be happy if they can't use their email till everything is switched over. I hope I can just add the DNS records. What do you guys think or recommend about that.

Thanks
Daniel

Klathman

301 posts

Ultimate Geek

#906546 2-Oct-2013 16:51

You will need to have a cutover at some point where email will move from telecom to Office 365. One thing to watch is that if you move DNS this may result in the cancellation of other bundled telecom services such as email hosting. Best to ring them up to find out what the service is before making any changes.

mattwnz

20141 posts

Uber Geek

#906603 2-Oct-2013 18:57

Normally if you transfer a domain, it shouldn't cut off any other services with that domain. But I recall reading a thread here about someone who did that with a telecom hosting account, and the hosting account got deleted when that occurred. So I would check with them and get everything in writing. It is not the norm though for that to happen.

Equinox IT

Cloud spending continues to surge globally, but most organisations haven’t made the changes necessary to maximise the value and cost-efficiency benefits of their cloud investments. Download the whitepaper From Overspend to Advantage now.

qraider

374 posts

Ultimate Geek

#906611 2-Oct-2013 19:12

sahne: Sounds great guys. Thanks for all the replies. Since it's my first migration changing the way emails are hosted. I am a little worried say if I have to transfer the domain what will happen to all the incoming emails currently with telecom. I don't think my client would be happy if they can't use their email till everything is switched over. I hope I can just add the DNS records. What do you guys think or recommend about that.

Thanks
Daniel

If the domain is hosted on the Telecom Business Hub you can make the DNS changes via the control panel.
Ns Name 01 ns32a.ssggrp-wc.com
Ns Name 02 ns32b.ssggrp-wc.com

If it's hosted with Xtra it will probably be more cost effective to transfer it to another provider ... like the Telecom Business Hub ( :P )
Ns Name 01alien.xtra.co.nz
Ns Name 02terminator.xtra.co.nz

If you like I can assist with info or DNS update, etc, just drop me a PM

Current Phone:
- Android: Samsung SM-G900F Galaxy S5 (XT)
- Win Phone 8: Samsung ATIV S (XT)

Current Tablet:

- Acer Iconia 7" Android Tablet

Twitter: qraider

mattwnz

20141 posts

Uber Geek

#906615 2-Oct-2013 19:33

qraider:
sahne: Sounds great guys. Thanks for all the replies. Since it's my first migration changing the way emails are hosted. I am a little worried say if I have to transfer the domain what will happen to all the incoming emails currently with telecom. I don't think my client would be happy if they can't use their email till everything is switched over. I hope I can just add the DNS records. What do you guys think or recommend about that.

Thanks
Daniel

If the domain is hosted on the Telecom Business Hub you can make the DNS changes via the control panel.
Ns Name 01 ns32a.ssggrp-wc.com
Ns Name 02 ns32b.ssggrp-wc.com

If it's hosted with Xtra it will probably be more cost effective to transfer it to another provider ... like the Telecom Business Hub ( :P )
Ns Name 01alien.xtra.co.nz
Ns Name 02terminator.xtra.co.nz

If you like I can assist with info or DNS update, etc, just drop me a PM

Do they still resell Domainz/Melbourne ITs domain names? It sounds like that is used for the 'business hub' by the nameservers. Possibily different domain pricing too?

qraider

374 posts

Ultimate Geek

#906639 2-Oct-2013 20:00

mattwnz:

Do they still resell Domainz/Melbourne ITs domain names? It sounds like that is used for the 'business hub' by the nameservers. Possibily different domain pricing too?

The Telecom Business Hub uses Melbourne IT as the domain registrar (they are in partnetship with Verio who do the web hosting for Business Hub). The NS are Verio's & they provide the control panel for the DNS records.

It's much better pricing that the old Xtra platform.

Business Hub: $39.95 per year from a .co.nz domain ($16 for a .net / $20.50 for a .com)

Current Phone:
- Android: Samsung SM-G900F Galaxy S5 (XT)
- Win Phone 8: Samsung ATIV S (XT)

Current Tablet:

- Acer Iconia 7" Android Tablet

Twitter: qraider

sahne

26 posts

Geek

#958163 28-Dec-2013 01:08

HI guys.
I thought I share my experience with what happened during the switch over.

We decided to keep the domain hosted with telecom NZ. Unfortunately you can't ad the records, you need to ring telecom to enter them for you. So I decided to arrange a meeting with the local telecom business hub manager to explain him that all existing records associated with the current telecom email service need to be removed and the new office 365 records entered. I gave him a print out with all records which had to be entered.

So now the fun started. Next day client complaining not all emails are coming in with office 365 exchange, so on the phone with the business manager explaining him what's happening and numerous more calls after, it appeared that they forgot to remove the telecom records, so what happened was some emails went to office 365 and others still went to old telecom email service. I told him they need to remove the records pointing to telecom asap. Mind you all the hassle after that getting all emails together what a nightmare since all workstations where already set-up to office 365 and quite a lot of emails from 12 users went to telecom servers. Anyway so that was sorted out and then two days later client is ringing up that some people especially with an xtra email account cant send us emails and they are bouncing back so back on the phone with telecom and this time they told me that they forgot to take an internal record out which stops emails going from xtra to office 365 because it thinks the email server is local.

So yeah that's my story with moving to office 365 hosting the domain with telecom NZ. It wasn't as straight forward as if you enter the records by yourself like with freeparking, godaddy, etc..

Be prepared for the worse. :-)