Migration
Businesses generally find it difficult to migrate as there are many blockers
to change including legacy requirements, user considerations and downtime
intolerance. A
messaging system migration can be painful, expensive and long running if not approached and executed properly or without experience.
Embrionic have specialised in migration and moving businesses between systems since its conception. Our consultants have been planning and performing large scale migrations for many years and we are one of the very few organisations to have performed all of the following migrations
(click on each image for more information):-
Embrionic has learnt a great deal from the large number of our Exchange customers, who have already made the upgrade to Exchange Server 2003, and we have used this feedback to tailor a set of migration tools and resources to help customers like you make the upgrade.
Migrating Microsoft Exchange 5.5/2000 to Microsoft Exchange 2003
Migrating from a previous version of Microsoft Exchange Server is fairly
straightforward if youve planned, design, tested and then implemented your
preferred solution. Not everyone, though has the in house skills or indeed time
to dedicate to such a migration.
If you are migrating from Exchange 5.5 and have not yet deployed Active Directory then you may need assistance.
Did you know that Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 does not support an in-place upgrade directly from version 5.5, though
Exchange 5.5 can happily reside alongside both Exchange Server 2000 and 2003 versions.
In some situations, server refresh for example, new installs of the product are preferred
when moving users mailboxes and public folders. Although, this may appear time consuming, most, if not all, of the migration can be automated or at least performed outside of core time. In customer production environments Embrionic has seen at least 8 GB / hour mailbox migrations. Exchange 5.5 servers supporting up to around 800 users have been successfully migrated in just one evening.
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Novell GroupWise Migration to Microsoft Exchange 2003
Considering migrating to Exchange? Worried about the impact the migration will have on your business? Concerned about how well the products will co-exist?
These are just some of the questions you might be asking yourself. Migrating from GroupWise to Exchange can if not planned, designed and implemented correctly be extremely costly in terms of budget, re-work and user dissatisfaction.
Embrionic consultants have undertaken endless hours in the labs and worked with customers on Exchange 5.5 and Exchange 2000/3 implementations in complex environments including multiple mail systems to understand the issues you will face.
They have addressed many times most, if not all, the questions and issues you may or may not have thought. Consider the following:
What impact will Active Directory have on my environment?
How can I make co-existence and migration period as painless as possible when supporting users on disparate mail systems?
What migration options are available to me?
How can I migrate GroupWise frequent contacts?
How can I reduce the time spent administering my messaging
infrastructure?
How can I maintain my current SMTP address namespace across both mail systems?
How can I maintain calendars and free/busy (GroupWise busy search) scheduling across systems?
How can I deploy and customise mail clients to all my users?
How can I ensure virus-free protection to my messaging infrastructure?
How can I make the messaging infrastructure more widely available in terms of performance and access points?
How can I develop the messaging infrastructure to be more than just email and calendaring?
How can I fast track my own internal staff to administer and support the new infrastructure?
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Migration from Lotus Notes/Domino
If you are considering migrating from Lotus Notes or Domino then you will have to consider the messaging implications
and any number of in house developed Notes / Domino applications some of these
may now be mission critical.
To what level of co-existence are you looking for, with very little effort we can establish the following:
Message and conversion including attachments
Provide directory synchronisation for users, resources and groups (excluding group membership)
Provide free / busy searches across the disparate systems
We can help you migrate the following:
Consideration must be given as to whether Notes / Domino applications should be de-commissioned, migrated or a co-existence strategy adopted. If the application is migrated then it is possible it can be re-designed, whilst co-existence suggests that a Notes / Domino server will remain just for applications.
Application migration tends to be addressed in the following steps:
Run Microsoft Exchange Application Analyser for Lotus Notes this generates reports detailing the Notes application, the type of work required to migrate the application and how best to migrate
Reports are analysed and a migration plan drawn up
Exchange Application Converter for Lotus Notes, which incorporates Conversion Assistant and Application Converter, enables developers to convert the design of the Notes / Domino application
Notes / Domino data is migrated to Exchange
Timing of this change over is critical to the success of the project.
If you are considering migrating from Lotus Notes / Domino then we can offer advice and guidance
and assist your staff throughout your project life cycle.
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Migrating from Nexus MEMO
Embrionic has been involved in migrations of a number of mainframe based email systems. These
can prove both challenging and rewarding. By drawing on our experience we can
provide you with a path through some of the hardest messaging migration as we understand
and have worked through both the problems that will need to be addressed and the potential solutions.
In the case of Nexus MEMO a number of solutions have been tried and tested as well as some bespoke coding on the mainframe to help overcome some of the issues identified.
We can help by providing our migration and co-existence skills in addition to:
Migration technologies to convert memos, attachments, calendars and file cabinets
Client product comparison charts a review of key features / facilities of MEMO mainframe and Windows clients as well as Outlook and Outlook Web Access clients
Gateway Verification Test Reports an insight into what you can expect when performing key actions during the co-existence period. These include 130+ test routines including address mapping and routing, character set mapping, subject field length and contents, message time stamps, message importance, sensitivity and additional messaging functionality
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Migrating from IBM PROFS
There are very few consultancy companies globally that can offer you assistance in IBM Profs and Microsoft Exchange co-existence / migration. We have the experience to help you having been involved in large scale deployments
including multiple connected Profs systems.
This type of co-existence / migration springs up issues such as:
How will I synchronise directory information between the two systems?
How can I make this period as seamless as possible?
What can I migrate?
How can I maintain my current SMTP address namespace across both mail systems?
How can I view calendars across systems?
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Migrating from Lotus cc:Mail
You might still be running cc:Mail and are now looking to migrate to Exchange. Have you migrated to Active Directory yet? Are you looking to co-exist for a
short period of time?
You will need to consider many areas, the key ones are outlined below:
Will you co-exist, if so what is the timeline?
Will you migrate cc:Mail data into Exchange?
Will you want to convert Bulletin boards into Public folders?
What about mailing lists public and private do you need to convert these or will you re-create from scratch?
Will you migrate cc:Mail archives?
What will you do with cc:Mail Mobile users?
If you are migrating messages, do you want to migrate a subset or all of the messages to Exchange?
If you use Lotus Organizer, do you want to convert these to a format Outlook can import and read?
How will the two systems interact?
How will you maintain current SMTP address namespace(s) during co-existing?
How will you deploy and customise Outlook clients to your desktops?
The above list highlights the key areas that should not be ignored. Embrionic has experience of performing such migration and co-existence projects and can help and advise you on best practice and the pitfalls to avoid
and we can also fast track your staff to administer and support the infrastructure.
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