'Cloud office migration' refers to the process of consolidating and transferring a collection of workloads. Workloads can include emails, files, calendars, document types, related metadata, instant messages, applications, user permissions, compound structure and linked components. Migration of such workloads from at least one permanent on-premises platform or cloud office to a new cloud office environment, across a variety of similar product classes, is typical. During the migration process, enterprises will choose to cleanse their existing platforms by archiving old and outdated data. Migration tools are able to conduct an analysis of the respective workloads, identify if the data is deemed suitable for migration while maintaining its integrity, migrate the data between the source and target, and ensure governance in the subsequent platform.
Gartner defines SaaS management platforms (SMP) as software tools that aim to help organizations discover, manage, optimize and automate the SaaS application life cycle from one centralized console. Core SMP capabilities include discovery, cost optimization, employee self-service via an application store, insights to increase adoption and automation of onboarding/offboarding activities. As SaaS adoption accelerates, IT leaders struggle to discover and support SaaS-hosted applications in accordance with company, market or geographic policies and regulations. Increased SaaS costs — combined with limited visibility into the entire SaaS portfolio (including unapproved SaaS) and high levels of overdeployed and underconsumed licenses — result in significant financial, operational and cybersecurity risk.