All posts tagged Migration

Looking at Exchange 2010?

In the Loudhouse research- “The Great Email Migration” commissioned by us at Mimecast- 57% of IT managers said they were upgrading to Exchange 2010 because of new features.

What are some of those features?

What’s been a real focus for Exchange 2010 is to directly enable the email user to do more, and to do it more easily.

Free/busy is a great example of where Exchange 2010 is a great improvement.

Free/busy is a well known feature to users worldwide, however in older versions of Exchange it’s nearly impossible to see the free/busy status of another user in another organization. Exchange 2007 enabled cross-forest free/busy lookup to another Exchange organization if the pre-requisites were in place. But it was still just free/busy.

Exchange 2010 builds significanly to that, by allowing organizations to federate with each other, and exchange free/busy information with detail, controlled by the administrators.

Assuming that partner companies in different forests and different networks need to see each other, Microsoft will broker and vouch for the authenticity of the relationship via a hosted service, and then enable each company to dial up or down the detail visible to the OTHER companies recipients.

Free/busy is akin to the availability feature of Lync or OCS when it comes to making the decision to make a call or not. Seeing another companies free/busy massively empowers users to work faster and more efficiently.

Another big step forward is MailTips with Exchange 2010 Outlook Web App and Outlook 2010.

MailTips enables the person emailing to see the Out of Office of the recipients before they send the mail. This eliminates that frustrating workflow associated with sending a mail again after thinking it was dealt with.

Managing availability between organisations and MailTips are just two of the many new productivity features available in Exchange 2010 which truly reclaim minutes in the information workers day. Help your people be more effective with Exchange 2010.

Migration on the other hand, isn’t always easy… so we’ve produced a series of webinars and how to guides to help you migrate in the Migration Readiness Kit (registration required).

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Messaging Architect
NB Consult

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Last week Mimecast announced the results of their Great Email Migration research, conducted by Loudhouse Research.  Loudhouse surveyed 500 IT decision makers in the US, UK and South Africa and asked them about their email migration plans.

According to the report, “The potential loss of data is at the top of the list with more than half (52%) of the companies mentioning this.”

Companies are right to be concerned at the possibility of data loss. Infrastructure which is in flux opens companies up to be vulnerable to data loss, due to bad process, unmanaged configuration change and/or bad discipline. How can companies possible hope to mitigate these kinds of risk.

It is an old axiom that failing to plan is tantamount to planning to fail. In this context, planning should be a formal activity of every migration project, with a formal and on-going deliverable known as the migration plan.

Migration plans are only as good as the effort put into them and the accuracy of the scope which they are fed by. Accurate quantification of source environments, labs which approximate live environments, and a sample of representative user data are all prerequisites to ensuring a migration plan has the best possible chance of succeeding.  In fairness, most of us don’t migrate for a living, so it’s not unreasonable to expect not knowing where to start. Here we will offer two suggestions:

Follow the military approach to planning by starting with the end goal in mind, and working backwards through every objective until the base understanding of the requirement is defined, without knowing how to solve every objective or process requirement. The end goal must be a clearly defined business or technical requirement.

Follow up by adding process planning for each stage, known or unknown, and add technology choices last, so that technology becomes the enabler to the process, and not the other way around.

Migrations are epitomised by environments in flux. Flux is risky and is mitigates by process, planning and management. Migration planning as an on-going exercise as well as a living document is a foundation stone in the on-going exercise to mitigating on-going risk.

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Messaging Architect
NB Consult

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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Cloud Strategist
Mimecast

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Migrating to the Cloud at the moment? Or at least planning to sometime soon? Lots of businesses are either moving key IT services out to the Cloud right now, or are planning to in the near future. Many organizations have adopted the “Cloud First” ethos, of procuring Cloud solutions for new platforms, rather than on prem.

Most IT departments I talk to have a solid plan for these migrations, a plan that’s been well thought out and even tested; but I think it’s fair to say some don’t. The latter is usually found when a C-level manager has dictated the use of a Cloud solution in a “get it done and don’t bother me with the details” type of management style. Very 1997 I know – I thought those days were over, Mr Gekko?

IT departments are unlikely to declare IT Bankruptcy and ship everything out to the Cloud over the next long holiday weekend, even if there is pressure from the C suite to get ‘Cloud first’ apps in place as quickly as possible. Migrating systems to the Cloud, needs careful planning and consideration, not just the move itself but an understanding of the data, processes, policies, APIs, people, & supporting platforms involved. In other-words, the details.

Take a move to the latest version of Microsoft Exchange for example. Of course I mean Office 365, but many businesses are still thinking about how best to get to Exchange 2010; you see they’re still lingering on their trusty Exchange 2003 infrastructure. We have spoken before about the complexity of the peripheral applications that surround the Exchange Server being a hindrance to a migration project, and how dealing with this complexity makes you and your business ‘Migration Ready‘. Most of the careful planning and consideration has to take into account all those peripheral applications and services first, extending the scope of the project into, perhaps, much more than was first considered. Hardly surprising we lose track of the details and start to focus on the final outcome.

So let’s stick with Microsoft Exchange as an example: How about this as an alternative strategy to get your business to the cloud. At Mimecast we often talk about a strategy called “Just Enough on Site” which is about finding the balance between on-site and Cloud. You’re augmenting your network with Cloud. Exchange 2010 is an on-ramp to Office 365 Exchange Online – what do I mean by that? Well, rather than try to move everything and everyone to Office 365 Exchange Online now, simply take your time. The Exchange 2010 migration should be a focused move to a platform that will allow you to introduce the Cloud into your business in small well planned steps.

Jumping into standing up cloud instances all over the place might work, but it’s far better to take your time to sweat the details for a while, and think about how you and introduce the cloud to the network over a number of smaller migrations rather than one great big one.

As they say round here – “Let the network see the cloud”.

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Happy SysAdmin Day!

Today is the 12th annual Systems Administrator Appreciation Day and everyone here at Mimecast wants to send a shout out to the techies who diligently serve their colleagues, customers and families, doling out their skills and time to make all of our lives that little bit easier.

We are also very interested in all things Microsoft Exchange related and as such to celebrate SysAdmin Day we have put together a little competition to give away a £50 worth of iTunes vouchers every week to SysAdmins that tell us a little about an experience that they had when migrating their users to a newer version of Exchange. The best story each week will get the voucher… sorry it won’t be everyone! We’re also asking everybody to share their story via twitter using a hashtag (#Migrate) so we can track and count the number of times your story gets mentioned. On September the 13th we will take the story with the highest overall number of retweets and that person will be given a cool new iPad 2!

So come on, join the fun, tell us about the pain, the misery and the joy of pulling an all weekend shift to get your users working fine first thing Monday morning!

For myself personally, my best/worst migration was one where I had to move a user base from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2003…

Not a difficult task, just a very, very lengthy experience. Many hours spent watching exports and backups take place, waiting for mailboxes to be moved to the new server. That was a full weekend of waiting with only a few hours of real interesting work though without my active monitoring, things could easily have gone pear shaped. That was the first time I ever heard the term “the only difference between running a backup and watching paint dry is that paint doesn’t tell you how dry it is…”  I call this my best/worst because all the waiting drove me insane while I knew all my mates were off having a blast on their weekends, but it was one of my best experiences because it went through smoothly with no major hiccups and NO OUTSIDE HELP… Thanked my lucky stars that weekend for the good fortune of being supremely paranoid and in control of all the elements that I had to touch on to get the job done. AD, Firewalls, switches. A one man job well done…

Spread the SysAdmin love – I know at least three albums I would buy with that £50 but would certainly have fun deciding what else to get considering all the bands currently on tour…

Go to this page to submit your entry now!

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Enterprise Consultant
Mimecast

Another in our series of Guest posts by Exchange specialists is Glen Knight, aka Demazter. Glen is tackling a tough topic- preparing your environment for a migration- essential for keeping the migration free from additional Costs, Risks and potential Downtime.

Glen Knight is the founder of Demazter IT Services, a UK based IT consulting company which specialises in installation, support and maintenance of secure environments based on VMWare and Microsoft technologies. He has been working in the industry for the past 14 years providing support, installation and consulting services for all sizes of businesses working with all versions of Windows, Microsoft Exchange and Small Business Server, including large scale Active Directory design and maintenance.

Glen also has a blog: http://demazter.wordpress.com and very active in one of the leading technical community sites - Experts-Exchange.

Welcome to my series of short tips on migrations. Whilst based on Microsoft migrations the same principles can be applied to any type of migration.

My first tip Migration Tip #1 – Source Server Health can be found here.

My second tip Migration Tip #2 – The Practice Run can be found here.

So, we now have a healthy source server and you have practiced until the match sticks snap, what next?

My third tip is about making sure you are prepared for the task ahead. Any type of migration needs to be taken seriously, it is a business critical operation you are about to embark on. If you are in any doubt about it at all, now is the time to say so, and if necessary call in help.

If you are happy with the process and confident you are able to complete the steps to achieve your goal then the next thing we need to do is plan a time to do it.

Most migrations are not time limited other than SBS to SBS migrations that have a limit of 21 days where both SBS servers can co-exist at the same time.

Make people aware of what you are doing, involve them, explain that you are expecting to have teething problems but would prefer if they collated them and then passed them to you when you ask for them. The last thing you want is to try trouble shooting whilst trying to complete a migration.

Find out if there is anything business critical happening (a big bid/contract etc that needs to be out just when you take the mail system offline) that could be delayed by the work you are carrying out, and if so, delay your migration. Talk to absolutely every member of staff. Manage Expectations.

In reality, if you get it bang on, the end users shouldn’t even notice and I would say 99% of the migrations I have done this has been the case. But there is always the odd one.

Have a recovery plan, know how to back out of what you are doing if it does go pear shaped. If you need to lock and migrate huge amounts of data then make sure you plan this stage of the migration for when people aren’t going to be using the system as heavily.

Document what you are doing, make notes of which stage you have got to and what action you have just taken.  This might seem like a waste of time, but take it from someone who has picked up a few failed migrations from people, it’s not.  Knowing exactly what stage you are at will help a consultant very quickly get to grips with the situation and this means a faster resolution.

And, most importantly of all, make sure you have backups! Take more than one, take one off-site, and do it different ways. I like to have a backup on either removable storage so I can access it quickly but also on tape just to be sure.

Watch out for tip Migration Tip #4 – The Migration

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Cloud Strategist
Mimecast

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Next in our series of Guest posts by Exchange specialists is Glen Knight, aka Demazter. Glen is tackling a tough topic- preparing your environment for a migration- essential for keeping the migration free from additional Costs, Risks and potential Downtime.

Glen Knight is the founder of Demazter IT Services, a UK based IT consulting company which specialises in installation, support and maintenance of secure environments based on VMWare and Microsoft technologies. He has been working in the industry for the past 14 years providing support, installation and consulting services for all sizes of businesses working with all versions of Windows, Microsoft Exchange and Small Business Server, including large scale Active Directory design and maintenance.

Glen also has a blog: http://demazter.wordpress.com and very active in one of the leading technical community sites - Experts-Exchange.

Welcome to my series of short tips on migrations. Whilst based on Microsoft migrations the same principles can be applied to any type of migration.

My first tip Migration Tip #1 – Source Server Health can be found here.

My second tip is about making sure you are familiar with the technology you are migrating to.

For many people, migrating to a new technology will be the first and only time they perform this task. So, it’s always a good idea to familiarise yourself with the setup process before you do it for real.  With the use of virtualisation technologies we can install and test new products without the need for new hardware and without the possible impact on our live environment.

There are a number of virtualisation products that will allow you to do this on your desktop/laptop computer. You need to consider that most new products (if not all) will be based on x64 bit architecture. This does limit the virtualisation technologies that you can use on the desktop. Some of my favourites are listed below.

  • VMWare Workstation, this is a paid product but worth its weight in gold
  • VMWare Server, this is free for use and technically should only be used on a Server Operating System, but it does work on Desktop OS for testing purposes.
  • Virtual Box

Whichever technology you use, virtualisation will allow you to install the new software in a test environment, and keep installing it until you are happy with the process. Run through it 2, 3 even 4 times. Make sure you are familiar with the screens and what answers you are going to provide to the wizards. Take notes, even write a step-by-step of what you encountered and when you encountered it. Remember, the more you do now when you are in a safe “sandbox” environment, the easier and less pressurised the real thing will be. Don’t pay too much attention to the actual data you are entering as some of this will change when you do a migration as opposed to a new installation.

For the actual Migration Pick a migration guide for your technologies, it’s always best to use one that’s recommended by others and they have had good success with.  You will find my migration guides here. I use my guides in my own migrations and update them with any changes as often as possible.  Read the guide thoroughly before you start the migration.   It’s easier to get answers when you are not under pressure to fix things.

If you have the time and the inclination I would also suggest that you convert your physical source server to a virtual one. This will allow you to do a test migration with your actual source server. There are many tools for performing the capture and they depend on the virtualisation technology you are using and whether you want a free or paid product. Some examples of methods that can be used to convert physical machines to virtual ones can be found here.

Doing a virtual migration with a virtual copy of your actual source server is a great way to identify any problems you may encounter during the real live migration. You then have the opportunity to rectify these issues and then try the migration again. Once you are happy the migration has worked you are then in a position to do the live backup. I would be doing 3 to 4 virtual migrations just to be absolutely sure.

Watch out for tip Migration Tip #3 – Preparing for Live Migration in the next day or two.

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Cloud Strategist
Mimecast

Fifth in our series of Guest posts by Exchange specialists is Glen Knight, aka Demazter. Glen is tackling a tough topic- preparing your environment for a migration- essential for keeping the migration free from additional Costs, Risks and potential Downtime.

Glen Knight is the founder of Demazter IT Services, a UK based IT consulting company which specialises in installation, support and maintenance of secure environments based on VMWare and Microsoft technologies. He has been working in the industry for the past 14 years providing support, installation and consulting services for all sizes of businesses working with all versions of Windows, Microsoft Exchange and Small Business Server, including large scale Active Directory design and maintenance.

Glen also has a blog: http://demazter.wordpress.com and very active in one of the leading technical community sites - Experts-Exchange.

Welcome to my series of short tips on migrations. Whilst based on Microsoft migrations the same principles can be applied to any type of migration.

My first tip is around source server preparation.

No migration is an easy migration, there is always potential for something to go wrong. All we can do is try to minimize this risk.

The biggest risk comes from the system we already have in place, the integrity of this system is paramount in ensuring a successful migration.

Making sure your source system is healthy and configured correctly will go a long way to ensuring you have a smooth migration.

Use analyzers and health check tools that are available from the vendor. Microsoft, for example, have a number of best practice analyzer tools. These can be used to identify any problems the system may have and provide advice on how to resolve them. Some of the ones I use regularly are listed below:

In a Microsoft migration I will use tools like DCDIAG, NETDIAG, REPLMON and REPADMIN to check for errors, even if it’s a single server. You would be surprised how easy it is to misconfigure a single server. Further details on the usage of these tools can be found here:

Make sure the source system is up-to-date. All updates, service packs etc need to be applied. This may seem like a waste of time on a system that you are soon to be migrating out of your network but really it isn’t. New products from the same vendor normally rely on the source system being up-to-date. I have been known to spend hours installing service packs and updates on a source server.

It’s worth spending the time getting this part of the migration perfect. There are no timescales in play here you can take your time, once you start migrating there are pressures at play that will make the slightest hiccup seem like your whole world is imploding. I would consider this part of the migration process the most important, and therefore if you are not comfortable with this process, hire someone who is. Buying in consulting services to make sure the server is healthy can save you a lot of money.

Watch out for tip Migration Tip #2 – The Practice Run in the next day or two.

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Enterprise Consultant
Mimecast

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Confused about where to take your Microsoft Exchange architecture?

I mean let’s face it, it was less than year ago that Exchange 2010 SP1 came out and the Exchange world breathed a collective sigh and started upgrade planning. In that time we have seen the rise and replacement of Microsoft BPOS, a major increase in the number of Hosted Exchange providers and Microsoft’s and shiny new baby – Microsoft Office 365 with Exchange Online. You also can’t pick up an IT journal today without it being pasted full of talk about Cloud being “the future“.

So with all this choice and drive to push you to Cloud services, should you be jumping out of the plane without a parachute to get to the Clouds?

Obviously not (without your parachute), but some organizations will be able to transition all the way to Office 365 from their locally deployed Exchange 2003 deployment, while others will see the value and be tempted, but will not be able to migrate quite as easily. Don’t forget there are also scenarios where a hybrid deployment that includes both on-premise and the cloud really makes sense. For example, users who previously didn’t have email can now have corporate email for as little as $2.00 per user per month!

So there are lots of options, but also some pitfalls – so what to do?

Jack’s beanstalk was the ultimate “Cloud Enablement Service”. It got him off of the ground and to his destination in the clouds safely. Not only that, it was there to support him when he no longer wanted to be in the clouds. So is Exchange 2010 the magic beanstalk for our email Jack?

Exchange 2010 has a number of really nifty capabilities; among them is a native ability to be configured as a fully local, or part local – part Cloud (hybrid) deployment. There is still some heavy lifting to be done, however, to get to this utopia…

Firstly with data: moving large mailboxes around takes time and effort. We have come to a school of thought that says the data should be archived before you migrate, so that hardly anything needs to be moved; and that applies to a migration from an older version of Exchange to Exchange 2010 as well. The less data you move, the more you reduce the time the migration takes, the risk involved in the process and the potential of  unplanned downtime.

Secondly, with routing: out of the box the routing capabilities in Exchange 2010 are excellent and numerous, but it still relies on having emails routed to an Exchange Server, either on premise or to Exchange Online. In an ideal situation, you want the right email delivered to the right location, without having to route traffic over WANs to the right location. In addition, a lot of people want to apply consistent security policies, inbound and outbound, to ensure their compliance and security requirements are being met.

Thirdly, continuity: hey we’re biased! But seriously – nobody wants email to go down… it’s always the nightmare scenario! Provisioning real time Cloud based continuity enables the IT admin to remain fully in control of the uptime across their email estate, be that Cloud, On-Premise or Hybrid.

After these points it becomes clear that Microsoft Exchange is Jack’s house, the Giant’s castle is Office 365 and Mimecast is in fact the magic beanstalk!  An infrastructure that is architected to be as flexible as possible without exposing risk is what IT departments so desperately need, and the Cloud is an excellent way to deliver just that.

There are already ways to leverage the Cloud to deliver more flexible, responsive messaging architectures, even if you don’t want to put all your mailboxes there right away.

Don’t wait until the giant has built higher walls. Plant your beanstalk today!

Photo CC via o0bsessed and ïCliff on Flickr

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Enterprise Consultant
Mimecast

There is no doubt Microsoft Exchange 2010 is project many CIOs will be tackling this year, but I wonder if they’ve really thought about what it means to be, ready to migrate? I wonder how many CIOs, IT managers and admins have considered how ‘migration-ready’ their existing environment really is?

When I think about ways to help organizations achieve a smooth Exchange 2010 migration, I’m often setting my sights on the fragmented email environments that hamper this migration readiness. These are the LAN based email management tools we’ve proudly built-up over the years that run on the periphery surrounding Exchange, they are many, and they are a problem; the time has come to declare them and the fragmentation & complexity they cause – The Enemy!

Why is this? Well, we live in a throw-away society where planned obsolescence is built into everything. The life of our ‘stuff’ is limited. The technology in our lives, whether domestic or professional, is a perfect example of this planned obsolescence; especially if you happen to be a slave to a particular vendor who is prone to releasing a new version every twelve months. I hear the iPad 3 is going to have five cameras, by the way.

We generally try to find a balance between making our technology functional and keeping it up to date. At work, our IT departments are always finding innovative ways to solve problems with what they have already got, the ‘doing more with less’ principle. Every once in a while they splash out on a new gadget – usually to solve another problem! This ‘mentality’ is about being able to balance budget with functionality and effectiveness, it’s how we’ve operated the corporate IT department for the last thirty years. Our IT managers and CIOs have added solutions to the network as and when a new problem occurs (remember your first Anti-spam solution – oh the relief!!). They’ve added tools on a reasonably regular basis, holding onto the ones they already have, slowly growing the infrastructure.

Of course all these IT infrastructure tools are designed to be replaced too, but finding the time and budget to do that is hard. Patch and replace is another ‘mentality’ that allows us to simply keep on upgrading everything in place – but it doesn’t solve the new obvious problem of complexity and fragmentation and certainly doesn’t help you when it comes to being migration ready. Take your email management environment as an example – probably a collection of various solutions all working independently in support of a single Email Platform like Microsoft Exchange.

With many IT managers and CIOs thinking about ways to upgrade to Microsoft Exchange 2010, or perhaps even BPOS or Office 365, it’s natural we take a look at their current setup. They like to ignore it but the fragmentation that’s been built up over the years, and is getting in the way. You could even say the fragmentation is the enemy of an effective migration to Microsoft Exchange 2010. All of these fragmented point solutions simply conspire against you when you try to migrate any key component; they create unnecessary risk, unanticipated cost, planned (and unplanned) downtime. When we talk about this fragmentation we really do mean it has become the enemy of your migration plans, especially if you are thinking about moving all or parts of your services to the Cloud.

Getting rid of this fragmentation now, before you migrate, will make life a lot easier afterwards, and getting rid of on-premise clutter in favor of the Cloud means you won’t be looking at the same problem again when the next major upgraded is needed. I think in order to have a really effective plan for migrating any solution, especially Microsoft Exchange, you need to find a way of making as many efficiencies as possible during the migration. A piece of core infrastructure like Exchange almost requires you to do the best job you can to make sure you’re not just swapping out to a new version. De-cluttering and life laundering your current environment is the only way to really make this an effective move; it is the only way get a clean break on that tangle of technology you’re so entrenched in. I mean, why bother migrate, unless you can make the outcome as perfect and brilliant as possible. You’re only selling your users’ short if you don’t.

 

Image thanks to Joe Shlabotnik via Flickr

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