All posts tagged BPOS

By on August 30, 2011

Migrating to Office 365 from BPOS without Mimecast

This is a Guest Post from a prolific blogger- Andy Kemp who has recently moved from a long standing customer of Mimecast and to a Microsoft Gold Partner UniTech, one that doesn’t have Mimecast in place but excited about what the toolset could do for them. One of the recent things he’s been tasked to do is their Migration from BPOS to Office365 both internally and for a number of serviced clients, and it’s interesting to see what life without Mimecast is like…

I finally took the plunge and migrated our primary email domain to Office 365 from BPOS the other weekend- we still don’t have Mimecast but we didn’t want to wait any longer! It could have gone better but on the other hand it could have been more painful like it was when I migrated one of our secondary domains.

The two issues I faced when migrating were:

  1. Migrating the data from BPOS to Office 365
  2. Migrating the Domain from BPOS to Office 365

1. Migrating the data from BPOS to Office 365

Unfortunately there isn’t a really clean automated way to do this, the only way possible which I found to do this was to attach the new Office 365 Mailbox using the unitech-onmicrosoft.com address to their exchange profile and copy/move the folders across.

This was pretty simple for the mail, contacts and task folders but the calendar folder was done in a slightly different way, you need to change the calendar view to a list and then copy and paste the entries into the new Office 365 Mailbox:

As the Exchange Folders were cached I needed to let the local folders sync up to the Online Exchange Server to then enable me to setup a clean outlook profile with only the 365 exchange account connected.

As this was all done pre migration it meant I had all my data in Office 365 when I switched over domains. This was the next step, although what should be a simple process proved to be my biggest worry with the migration even though I had done it before.

2. Migrating the Domain from BPOS to Office 365

As I have mentioned before this process although sounds straight forward is the most laborious part of the migration. If you are moving from an on prem setup or another hosted solution, then it is nowhere near as painful as moving from BPOS to Office 365.

The problem I had was with FOPE (Forefront Online Protection for Exchange) for BPOS although the Domain no longer existed in BPOS there were still artefact DNS records in FOPE which meant if I added the domain to Office 365 and then sent an email to an account using that Domain I would get an NDR immediately due to a possible mail loop. As the FOPE for Office 365 would see the DNS records in FOPE for BPOS and get a little confused and then just return a “Computer says No!” in the form of the NDR.

What I had to do was fill in a Standard Request form for removal of artefact DNS records and submit that as a Service Request via the BPOS admin centre and then call Microsoft BPOS support with the Service Request number and asked them to hurry the process up… well that made them sort it in 2 days as opposed to 6!

After a week into the move things have finally calmed down and users are running with no issues.  I have several Service requests open with Microsoft for Office 365 due to small issues that I’ve had in the admin portal but on the whole things are running well.

We are taking full advantage of Lync 2010 and the ability to federate with other organisations. We are now in the process of setting up our company intranet and extranet using SharePoint online.

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By on July 7, 2011

Guest Post: BPOS to Office 365 Migration- Managing Without Mimecast (or not)

This is a Guest Post from a prolific blogger- Andy Kemp who has recently moved from a long standing customer of Mimecast and moved to a Microsoft Gold Partner UniTech, one that doesn’t have Mimecast in place but excited about what the toolset could do for them. One of the recent things he’s been tasked to do is their Migration from BPOS to Office365 both internally and for a number of serviced clients, and it’s interesting to see what life without Mimecast is like…

I have used Mimecast in the past for several reasons, email archiving, antivirus and malware protection, business continuity and compliance. These are all great reasons for using it but one other is for email migration. In the past when I have done system upgrades it has been pretty painless and stress free, moving from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2003 for example.  However I think that now it is a completely different ball game as the Cloud is involved.  Moving to the Cloud is again relatively painless (just a different approach), at least from a technical point of view; politically it can be very stressful.  But moving from Cloud to Cloud for me at the moment is proving a bit of a headache.

I’m in the process of moving from BPOS to Office 365, and you would think that this would be a pretty straightforward migration moving from one Microsoft Online Service to another.  Is it straight forward? No! As a Microsoft Gold Partner and one of Microsoft’s Cloud Partners we were an early adopter of Office 365 closed beta and I was getting to like it more and more the more I used it throughout the testing.  However, when it came to domain migration I started to like it less.

The main issue for me migrating from BPOS to Office 365 is migrating your domains from one to the other. It can take anything up to 48hrs for the domain to be removed from BPOS and FOPE (Forefront Online Protection for Exchange) and only then can you add the domain in to Office 365. Then if something had gone amiss and you needed to remove the domain from Office 365 (like I had to) you would have to wait for anything up to 24hrs. It turned out my problem was that the domain had not been fully deleted from FOPE on the BPOS side.

All this time means that your email might well be unavailable (more than likely to be honest) and could have serious knock on affects to your business as email is now treated as one of the most common ways in which we communicate with our customers.

The main drive for using Mimecast in my previous place of employment was to ensure that email was accessible at all times, even when the in house exchange servers were unavailable. This could also mean when you are migrating from one service platform to another, and I would say that the same principle could be applied to a hosted email service.

Through using Mimecast you could very easily remove the headaches from your migration from one service to another as the continuity that Mimecast offers would provide you with email delivery during the process of the migration. You’ll effectively be using Mimecast as a pivot I guess for the transition.

My migration from BPOS to Office 365 has been in process for four days now.   Fortunately it is a non-critical domain I am testing with, but if this was a live email domain that I relied on for business my customers would be receiving NDRs for every email that is sent in to me.  This could well be avoided by having Mimecast in the equation as email would be delivered through Mimecast to your email service, regardless of it being on premise or hosted.

Moving email platforms is something that you do not want to do or need to do on a regular basis but if you do need to migrate your email then you will find that having something like Mimecast will make the migration even simpler and reduce your down time to a bare minimum if any.

Even if you are doing a simple email migration/upgrade you’re at risk.  Sure you will have a full backup of your server to revert back to if the migration/upgrade were to go pear-shaped –  if you did have to do a restore how long would that take you? An hour? A day? A week? I previously worked for a law firm and lawyers like to hold on to their emails; I had mail stores in the excess of 150GB, mailboxes of 15GB and over! The restoration of the email data would take about a full day (in the excess of 400GB Email data) but once the stores were restored I would then have to do an offline defrag on each mailstore db which could take anything up to 8 hrs per mail store meaning email would be down for a week. With Mimecast you could work on your exchange servers for that week and still be able to send and receive email, even by using outlook on the user’s desktop.

How long could your business survive with email down time? I guess in all honesty not very long.

I eventually got the domain working fully in Office 365 after a few calls to Microsoft and a few days of waiting! Email was being delivered to the right domain in the right service, finally!

It was a good learning curve (which is why we did it with a test domain) so when it comes to moving the live production email domain we know exactly what to do and what to expect. I am hoping that the production migration goes a bit more smoothly now! Mimecast will not take every risk out of email migration, but it will certainly give you a great level of continuity if you did face any problems when it comes to email migration.

 

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By on December 15, 2010

BPOS now or Office 365 later- you need to decide now

In my last post I talked a little about Microsoft and their increased activity in the cloud and how that made me feel- very proud as it happens.

In this post I wanted to talk a little about how I think potential customers might feel about the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Services Suite (BPOS) offering.

You see, with so many of us telling IT managers and staff that the cloud is such a perfect panacea to many of their ails and consumers using online services for just about everything, it is no wonder that Microsoft created the BPOS cloud offering.

This is a service that delivers Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office and Microsoft SharePoint from the cloud. All of Microsoft’s core communications products, their crown jewels – outside of the OS space – delivered via the cloud.

The next evolution in this offering is nearly upon us and there is a significant facelift in the works, with a move to Exchange and Office 2010, an upgrade to SharePoint 2010 and the addition of Microsoft’s much talked about Lync communications server. Welcome to Office 365!

The Office 365 beta is already out there in production and details are starting to emerge about the transition. This got me thinking with my Sysadmin hat on- if I were thinking about buying BPOS, should I buy it now or wait until Office 365 is released?

It turns out quite an interesting strategic issue and one that needs actioning quickly if you are to take advantage of a number of things. The reason for that is new customers will get Office 365 when it’s released first and existing customers will wait before it’s released and then have up to a year to move- which is totally under their control.

So why would you want to go to Office 365? Here are some reasons:

  • Exchange 2010 back end with significantly improved management features (a lot more control for admins)
  • Sharepoint 2010 with extended customisation
  • Office 2010 available as a web app and as an installed desktop application on a subscription
  • Lync for presence, IM, video, voice

So why would you want to sign up to BPOS now?

  • You want to stay on Exchange 2007- e.g. because Office 365 doesn’t support Office 2003
  • You want to control your migration timescales

Even still, if you are waiting for Office 365 or going to BPOS, now is the perfect time to think about your migration strategy. Orlando posted on Monday about Migrations, but I can’t help but agree with esteemed Exchange MVP Nic Blank when he says “Archive before you migrate” and that’ll make your transition to the cloud quicker and easier. Even if you can have 25GB mailboxes- migrating them is a not a pleasant (or quick) task.

Personally, I would wait for Office 365 because we’re on Office 2007 and soon to be 2010, so there are no client side issues. Plus we’re already on Exchange 2010 and it wouldn’t make sense to go back to 2007. Especially considering the clever things you can do with routing thanks to the CAS role in 2010 and Office 365. But that’s another post.

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By on December 8, 2010

Why would you want to manage your own email?!!

Why BPOS is making me feel smug.

Microsoft has been doing some of their most prolific promoting in recent history about the fact that they are “all in” for the cloud.

They are offering services like Azure to provide application hosting platforms and BPOS to provide email systems and even SharePoint online!

This excites me no end as it’s no secret that over the past few years Mimecast has been pushing the value that “driving tin” into the cloud offers customers. Fewer servers to manage, fewer specialized non-core skills needed internally and less time spent on the never ending parade of vendors and systems integrators eating up your valuable time while they try to flog their wares.

So what does this have to do with Microsoft and Mimecast? When the largest software company in the world manages to adjust its strategy to begin delivering services in a way that we have been recommending for a very long time, it brings with it a certain amount of pride, personal validation, for me at least.

What does it mean for customers?

It means it’s no longer just hype- it’s real and is definitely a firm fixture for not only our future, but the present too.

So what exactly is it that is causing us to consider these things, especially in light of the fact that so many people I speak to are worried about the impacts that cloud computing could have on their jobs?

There are a few simple facts.

  1. Email is seldom a directly revenue generating service for organizations. While email is a critical application, and one that is tightly woven into many business processes, it is seldom the mail system that is responsible for driving growth, unless the organization’s business is providing email services.
  2. Email is a relatively standard and doesn’t differentiate you against your competition. Let’s face it, managing email systems seems pretty mundane to most tech folk, a system that can be run with eyes closed. The problem with this perception is that while the core mail server itself may be fairly standard, the conditions that evolve around email systems are far from it and fluctuate regularly making this seemingly mundane system a real nightmare to get right and keep on getting right.
  3. Email can be used anywhere. Users should be able to access it from the office, home, on the road from a variety of different devices, operating systems and mail clients.

In these changing times- we need to ask ourselves questions:

First off, should we dedicate so much of our staff’s time to a system that does not generate revenue? Surely the answer is no, we shouldn’t have to, remembering there is not a one size-fits-all policy for email. We cannot however ignore the fact that we have to run email systems and that they have to run well.

Secondly, does working on email systems interest the sysadmins and add value to the organisation? Retaining talent is hard in IT and in some sectors email systems are considered “boring” and “don’t move the needle”. So there could be a temptation to delegate email management to more junior staff who end up scared of this complicated beast where any slip means an unhappy incident that is almost always visible to every single user.

Thirdly, do your users don’t care where their email systems reside? Surely most only care that they are able to connect to those systems when they want to, and it works, Data Sovereignty aside.

So, one of the new found choices in an IT admin’s arsenal of tools for messaging is Microsoft BPOS. There is not a one size fits all policy when it comes to what you do with messaging, but if you don’t want to run your Exchange Servers in house- BPOS might be top of the list. Less infrastructure work for you to do, so you can focus on adding more value to your organization. A winner all round.

And now with Mimecast support for BPOS- you can get extended availability and a third party Cloud archive. Welcome to the Cloud everybody!

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By on August 27, 2010

Coca-Cola Australia ditching Lotus Notes and adopting Microsoft BPOS

Coke Can in front of a computer

Flikr image curtsey of poolie

Now it is not entirely surprising, that a Notes customer is switching to BPOS. It’s estimated that 90% of the circa 2 million users on BPOS were former Notes users. If you were thinking about migrating to Exchange from Notes, it basically makes no sense to go on-premise if you haven’t already got an investment in Exchange skills in-house, with the costs of acquiring BPOS relatively low. What shocked me about this story was the amount of data they’ve transitioned and how difficult that made it…

Coca-Cola Amatil is a drinks distribution company, which distributes drinks all across the Asia Pacific region and employs about 15,000 people, of which nearly 9,000 have company email and 695 are BlackBerry users. To support that, Amatil had 69 Lotus Notes Servers storing approximately 1 TB of email data. But if you divide that up by 9,000 employees, each employee only has 165.6Mb in their mailbox, which is extraordinarily small, especially considering BPOS has 25GB storage per user- they’re either already archiving or have had users locally archive to NSF’s- not good when approximately 80% of corporate IP is stored in email…

It hasn’t been completely smooth sailing for the transition. Meek said the decision to move all the email history in order to minimise the disruption for employees created additional challenges.

Yet the quote “the decision to move all the email history… created additional challenges” suggests they are not archiving- or at least not using one users can access quickly and easily, which meant an absolutely smooth migration was essential, otherwise users would be without their data and communication.

“There was significant effort in reconciling Lotus Notes,” he said, explaining that in some instances, employees found they were getting someone else’s email.

Yet the smooth migration that was planned wasn’t always the reality- and there were some diruptions to users. Despite the headline of “move to BPOS within two weeks”- they’ve actually taken nearly four months to migrate just two thirds of their user base.

But if you think about it- moving nearly 1TB from working email servers, restricted to just three nights a week over the internet link of the 69 branch offices spread out all over Asia is probably the main cause.

So how could this situation be avoided?

  1. Invest in archiving to replicate the data held in the working email system.
  2. While you’re at it, start a user stored email investigation – really get to grips with how much data is lying around your organisation – and get that into your archive too. Most people are genuinely shocked about how much there is!
  3. Once your archive accurately reflects your email history, think about migrating cleanly over to a new system moving just your users and relying on the archive for everything else.

It would be much more realistic to do a migration in two weeks if you’ve achieved step #3!

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