No matter what
the platform, migration is almost always a bear for both customers and channel
partners alike. As the channel continues to help customers migrate to Microsoft
Exchange 2010 from older versions, many have found that Microsoft has done a
decent job at providing seamless transition through its Migration Wizard
tool--with one big caveat. Organizations must have servers updated to Exchange
2007 with the latest service pack to make the jump using Microsoft-provided
tools. As most channel vets know, things are never so simple in the messy world
of IT.
"The
migration capabilities that you get with Microsoft Exchange 2010 are pretty
good if you can deal with the prerequisites," says Jim Reinert, vice president of product development
for Kroll Ontrack, who says that partners need to carefully consider their
options when customers can't or won't update old servers.
Reinert offers four
considerations partners should think about when dealing with migrations more
complicated than the cookie-cutter jobs that the Microsoft Wizard can handle.
Microsoft
Doesn't Have The Last Word On Migration Tools
"There are
more solutions out there than Microsoft provides you," Reinert says. "Especially when you're
dealing with legacy mail or legacy servers, the use of third party tools
becomes much more important and more valuable."
He suggests that
partners look for tools that enable them to migrate old content to an Exchange
2010 server without having the old server and new server online concurrently,
powered by a back end that can read Exchange databases without the assistance
of the Exchange server.
Not All Migration
Tools Are Created Equally
The number of
third-party tools out there can overwhelm your customers. Channel partners can
add to the value proposition by stepping in to do the homework on these tools
ahead of time. Reinert says that partners really need to do
their due diligence with hands on testing before trusting a migration tool to
handle customers' precious Exchange data.
"There are
quite a few details to performing a migration successfully, so by evaluating
the tool before purchasing it or having some kind of trial period with the
tool, is going to be essential to operate it in a test environment to get a
feeling for what its true capabilities are is going to be a very important
step," he says.
Plan To Support
Legacy Backups
For many
customers, it isn't just the current Exchange data that has them concerned.
They also hope to get years of archived data transferred over as well. Channel
partners need to be prepped with a way to handle potentially more than one
version of data, and of backup software used to archive it.
"If an
Exchange administrator is tasked with this kind of a project - going back into
the legacy backups - one of the first challenges that is presented is that the
backup system that may have been used to make those backups might not even be
around anymore. Or the version of software might not be around anymore," Reinert says, explaining that partners should
look for a tool that can read old backups without the assistance of the
software that made them.
Futureproof
Exchange Systems
Channel
partners, particularly service providers, need to be careful that they're not
only focused on the immediate outcome of the migration. Reinert says they shouldn't just be thinking
of how the migration will go over, but
also about how they plan to manage the new Exchange servers long-term.
This means
finding tools that will help them with things like granular restore requests
that will come to administrators on a daily basis.
"These are
complex matters when you're dealing with migrations because not only are you
managing the old data, moving it to a new platform, you have a new platform,"
he says. "Being able to work with your clients and advise them on
architecture on back up best practice in addition to best practice is going to
be really helpful."
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Microsoft Partner 
