Insights from an Advertising Agency That Migrated 10K+ Users

When planning a cloud migration involving more than 10,000 users, gaining actionable insights helps prepare better. To give you such cloud migration insights, we have shared a migration success story of a major marketing and advertising agency that moved 10,000+ users securely and successfully using CloudFuze Migrate.

Key Takeaways:

  • A large-sized marketing and advertising agency wanted to migrate more than 10,000 users.
  • The sheer size of users became difficult to manage for migration.
  • Upon our recommendation, they implemented the batch-wise migration approach.
  • The company chose CloudFuze Migrate upon careful migration tool evaluation.
  • They also governed their data (for AI readiness) before and after migration with CloudFuze Manage.

Overview of the Marketing and Advertising Agency’s Migration of 10,000+ Users

The marketing and advertising agency wanted to migrate from Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace to improve real-time collaboration for creative work. They had already been partially using Google Workspace despite Microsoft 365 being their main cloud ecosystem.

From their experience, they found Google Sheets and Docs more seamless to work with in fast, iterative cycles, especially with strategists, designers, copywriters, and clients. The collaboration reason, combined with other use cases, drove them to consolidate into Google Workspace.

They needed a cloud migration solution provider who had proven experience in migrating more than 10,000 users. We, at CloudFuze, were a perfect match for them with our credibility and proven expertise.

Explore key insights from this migration project below:

Cloud Migration Insight 1: User Base Is Not Always Straightforward

In many migration projects, the user base may not be simple, especially in companies that have a high volume of users. For example, the marketing and advertising agency had a diverse identity ecosystem in its user base, including:

  • Full-time employees
  • External agency partners
  • Freelancers and contractors
  • Guest users
  • Service accounts

In such scenarios, it is important to classify the categories of users to be able to take informed decisions on migrating or archiving them. For example, certain guest and service user accounts may not be needed in the destination cloud platform, which gives you the scope to delist them from the migration scope.

Migration Insight 2: Proper Batching is Critical When Migrating 10K+ Users

Migrating 10,000+ users is undoubtedly a large move which needs proven strategies that help avoid risks. One such proven approach is to migrate the users in batches. This involves segregating the total number of users into several batches. Additionally, you classify the user batches with parameters such as:

  • Highly active users
  • Moderately active users
  • Standard users
  • Users with low activity

With this approach, you can keep the migration impact little to none for power users and ensure they are transitioned to the new cloud platform fast. Below is an example of planning the migration roadmap and timeline with user batches:

Batch-Wise Cloud Migration Plan

The marketing and advertising agency used this approach to migrate more than 10,000 users batch by batch, securely and successfully.

Migration Insight 3: AI Readiness is the New Success Benchmark in Migrations

The biggest cloud migration insight for 2026 and beyond is that migration is now no longer just about moving data from one cloud platform to another. It is now also about governing the data pre and post migration that helps not only in optimizing the cloud ecosystem in use but also enables secure and compliant AI deployment.

According to our Head of Strategic Partnerships, Anthony Raymond, the companies that are migrating the right way is treating the transition like a “data transformation event.”

His take on this is:

The value in cloud migrations is no longer in “moving” the data, it’s going to be making that data usable, trustworthy, and AI-ready during the process.

The marketing and advertising agency leveraged this approach to make the most out of their migration, and that was to move data in such a way that it would create the best possible environment for AI adoption.

They used CloudFuze Manage, our SaaS and AI app management and governance tool, to perform an extensive pre-migration clean-up and governance of their data which helped them:

  • Eliminate duplicates
  • Optimize content sprawl
  • Control oversharing
  • Fix disjointed permissions

With this approach, they were able to optimize their entire datasets and user ecosystem which helped them avoid bringing messy workflows to Google Workspace to streamline AI readiness and adoption.

Cloud Migration Insight 4: Handholding Helps Navigate Complex Challenges

It goes without saying that large scale cloud migration projects are extremely difficult to navigate through. This is especially true for companies that have a large user base and don’t have a lot of hands-on experience in undertaking large scale migration.

To remove uncertainties and failure risks, opting for managed migration service (white glove service) is the way to go. From a dedicated migration team to priority support, you get end-to-end assistance that helps you ensure your migration becomes a smooth sailing journey.

With our managed cloud migration service, a dedicated migration manager, along with a team, handholds you every step of the way.

The marketing and advertising agency leveraged our managed migration service through which they could tap into our 12+ years of large-scale cloud migration experience. As a result, they were able to:

  • Migrate all 10,000+ users
  • Preserve all collaboration context and metadata (while leaving disjointed sharing back)
  • Retain all hyperlinks in files
  • Preserve external collaboration
  • Perform timely cutover and post-migration integration

Today, the marketing and advertising agency continues to use CloudFuze Manage to govern:

  • Google Workspace ecosystem
  • Gemini usage
  • Ensure regular enforcement of governance policies
  • Manage the entire lifecycle of users
  • Regularly control shadow IT and shadow AI (which helps them keep hidden costs and security risks in check)

Explore More Cloud Transformation Success Stories

We have a lot of similar success stories that share deep cloud migration and governance insights which you use for your company’s upcoming cloud migration and governance project. Explore our case studies.

Want a free cloud migration and governance assessment? Contact us for a free and no-obligation discussion today!

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are the best cloud migration tools for enterprise businesses?

CloudFuze Migrate is one of the best cloud migration tools for enterprise businesses that are planning to migrate terabytes and petabytes of data along with 10,000+ users while retaining full collaboration context along with rich metadata.

2. Typical timelines for enterprise-level cloud infrastructure moves

The timeline for enterprise-level cloud infrastructure migration depends on the size of workloads. The larger the workload, the more time it will take for the migration to complete.

3. Reviews of managed cloud migration services

You can explore reviews of CloudFuze’s managed cloud migration service in Gartner.

Start Migrating Today

Leverage our one-stop migration solution to securely migrate files, folders, emails, chat, hyperlinks, tenants, and more. We have 12+ years of experience in tackling migrations of all sizes and complexities!