Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has acquired Edmonton, Canada-based data migration startup Mover.io Inc. to make Office 365 easier to adopt for businesses.

Seven-year-old Mover provides a cloud service that automates the task of transferring files among applications. Administrators can orchestrate migrations through a browser-based interface that offers ready-made data connectors. Mover can transfer records among two dozen different platforms, including Office 365, Google Drive, Dropbox and Box to name a few.

Microsoft will use the startup’s technology to help customers shift data from competing services over to its productivity suite. Specifically, the goal is to simplify migrations to Office 365’s OneDrive file sharing service and SharePoint collaboration platform. Reducing the hassle involved in large file migrations, the company hopes, will encourage enterprise adoption. 

Mover streamlines data transfers in several ways. The service enables administrators to schedule migrations for times when the files being moved aren’t in use, such as on weekends, and carries over user permissions along with the data. That means employees at a company migrating from, say, Google Drive to Office 365 retain access to all the files that were shared with them in their old folders.

“Today, we offer several options to support cloud file migrations, including FastTrack and offerings from trusted Microsoft partners, as well as the SharePoint Migration Tool for migrating content from on-premises SharePoint sites and file shares to Microsoft 365. Mover will enhance these offerings,”  Jeff Teper, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Office 365, wrote in a blog post.

Microsoft may end up applying the technology beyond the Office 365 suite as well. On top of collaboration platforms such as Google Drive, Mover can import files from Amazon Web Services Inc.’s S3 storage service, on-premises databases, OpenStack and other backend systems. Microsoft could potentially use the technology help enterprises more easily bring data into its Azure cloud platform.

The company is actively beefing up its capabilities in this area. In September, Microsoft acquired Movere Inc., a software firm with an infrastructure assessment platform used for cloud migration projects.

The Mover and Movere deals bring to mind the two data migration startups Google LLC bought earlier this year to boost its competing cloud platform. The Alphabet Inc. subsidiary picked up Redwood City, California-based Alooma Inc. in February after having previously acquired Israel’s Velostrata Inc. last May. 

Photo: Microsoft