Google Apps Adds Server-Side Microsoft Exchange Migration Tool

Google ramped up the noise for its Google Apps this week by offering a new server-side tool to help organizations and partners migrate company email, calendar and contact data from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps.

The move by Google is only the most recent against incumbent Microsoft which has dominated the corporate space with its Exchange email, calendar and contact server.

Google Apps recently celebrated the year anniversary of its channel partner program, boasting 1,000 reseller partners, some of which are migrating customers from Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes and Novell Groupwise. And Google recently announced its acquisition of DocVerse which ultimately promises interoperability between Microsoft Office and Google Apps.

“Today we're making it a lot easier for customers of Microsoft Exchange to go Google with Apps,” wrote Abhishek Bapna, Product Manager at Google, in the Official Google Enterprise Blog. The tool is available here. 

The tool enables migrations in four steps and allows the administrator to choose the combination of email, calendar and contact data to be moved and provides the option of doing the migration in stages. It enables hundreds of users to be moved at the same time. And users can continue to use Microsoft Exchange during the migration without any service interruption.

“The tool has been a boon to our Google Apps partners as well,” Bapna wrote. For instance, Revevol Consulting CTO Mayooran Rajan noted that this tool will increase the speed of migrating its customers, which tend to be from between 100 and 20,000 employees.  

Google said the tool works with Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007 and works with both on-premise and hosted implementations. It’s free with the Premier and Education Edition of Google Apps.