Identity War Stories: Surviving the Domain Cutover Nightmare!

In this episode, I sit down with Conrad Murray, a seasoned expert who lives and breathes the complexities of IT migrations during mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures.We dive deep into the real-world challenges that companies face, from the political battles of deciding whose tenant to use, to the technical nightmares of migrating three-quarters of a petabyte of data for a major global firm.Conrad shares some incredible "war stories" about the single hardest part of any migration—the domain cutover—and reveals why the success of a months-long project boils down to just the first four hours of the end-user experience on a Monday morning. Subscribe with your favorite podcast player or watch on YouTube 👇About Conrad MurrayConrad Murray is an expert in the IT lifecycle, specializing in complex tenant-to-tenant migrations for mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. With over 15 years of experience moving companies to the cloud, Conrad has seen it all, from early BPOS and Lotus Notes migrations to massive, petabyte-scale Microsoft 365 consolidations.LinkedIn - Conrad Murray🔗 Related Links* Google to Microsoft 365 Migrations* PowerSyncPro📗 Chapters00:00:00 Intro 00:05:40 The Politics of Merging Tenants 00:07:23 Greenfield Tenants: A Fresh Start 00:09:58 War Story: Migrating 750TB for S&P Global 00:19:13 The Nightmare of Domain Cutovers 00:25:14 The Critical Day-One User Experience 00:30:00 Reconfiguring Mobile Devices: The Hardest & Easiest Part 00:35:46 Multi-Tenant Orgs (MTO): A Long-Term Solution? 00:49:22 The Unique Challenges of Divestitures 00:55:17 Data Cleanup That Never Happens 01:01:06 Tools of the Trade for Migration SuccessPodcast Apps🎙️ Entra.Chat - https://entra.chat🎧 Apple Podcast → https://entra.chat/apple📺 YouTube → https://entra.chat/youtube📺 Spotify → https://entra.chat/spotify🎧 Overcast → https://entra.chat/overcast🎧 Pocketcast → https://entra.chat/pocketcast🎧 Others → https://entra.chat/rssMerill's socials📺 YouTube → youtube.com/@merillx👔 LinkedIn → linkedin.com/in/merill🐤 Twitter → twitter.com/merill🕺 TikTok → tiktok.com/@merillf🦋 Bluesky → bsky.app/profile/merill.net🐘 Mastodon → infosec.exchange/@merill🧵 Threads → threads.net/@merillf🤖 GitHub → github.com/merill Get full access to Entra.News - Your weekly dose of Microsoft Entra at entra.news/subscribe