In 2019, Microsoft introduced the FastTrack migration program to make it easier for On-Premise customers to move to the cloud. Prospective clients require a partner nomination to qualify for the program. SIS has successfully nominated and migrated On-Premise clients to the cloud through FastTrack and wants to make this program available to other clients. This page features two customers who have recently migrated to the cloud through SIS and FastTrack.

The tool is available to all on-premise CRM customers that utilize supported versions of the application and related components.

Many customers expect that migrating to Online would be an easy task facilitated by Microsoft where the customer can provide their organization, which then becomes provisioned in Dynamics 365 Online. Until recently there has been no mechanism available for customers to easily move their on-premises deployment to the cloud. While complete automation is not possible due to the complexity of the solution, the tool and process described in this document provide a way to perform a migration with the least effort possible.¹

Typically, customers must engage an implementation partner who manages the implementation project to provide an organization in Power Platform on the customer’s Office 365 tenant. Subsequently, they need to migrate their customizations and configurations.

Once the configuration mapping is completed, the implementation partner needs to plan and implement a data migration using one of the available sets of data migration tools. This process is complicated and poses a risk to a smooth and successful migration. This complexity also incorporates an additional cost to the customer as they must purchase additional software to migrate their data.

When running a classic migration, using the Webservices/SDK/API calls to migrate data from CRM On-Premises to Online comes with certain challenges, for example, no possibility to migrate the Audit data and difficulties migrating inactive records.

Time can be the limiting factor as well. Gigabytes of data may take several days or even weeks to transfer while still keeping within the Service Protection Limits and API limits. These and many other obstacles are addressed when using the process described in this document.¹

The migration service provides a guided way to move CRM On-Premise instance to the Cloud without the need of reimporting the data and thus reducing time and costs.

The process consists of several steps many are automated and don’t require customers’ input.

As this is a major step and migrating older versions may bring a lot of challenges, it is recommended to perform dry runs during which you can identify the technical issues and prepare mitigation steps for the production migration.¹