There’s no such thing as a “cookie cutter” migration ─ every migration project presents its own unique set of challenges. That being said, the newest release of Dell’s Migration Manager for Exchange offers a solution that works for every Exchange 2000/2003 to Exchange 2013/Office 365 migration, whether it’s on-premise to on-premise, on-premise to cloud, or on-premise to hybrid. Our proprietary technology allows customers to migrate seamlessly ─ in just one step ─ while maintaining true coexistence with ZeroIMPACT to users.
Think of it like this: If you buy a new house, would you want to pack up everything you own, put it in a moving van, unpack it at a place that is NOT your new home, then pack it all up again and move yet one more time? Think about all the things that could break or go missing if you tried to do that, and how much extra time and expense it would take. While with Microsoft and other vendors, you must migrate everything ─ email, permissions and user accounts ─ twice to get to the same place, Dell is the only vendor in the Exchange migration space that can offer a one-step ZeroIMPACT migration..
In addition to a one-step migration with full coexistence, the new release of Migration Manager for Exchange enables the following:
- Migration of public folders from Microsoft Exchange 2000-2010 to Microsoft Exchange 2013 on-premise.
- Migration of Microsoft Exchange 2000–2010 mailboxes to Microsoft Office 365 Wave 15, without locking users out of their mailboxes during the migration.
- Setup of full two-way calendar (free/busy) synchronization during the migration process.
Dell also has released the newest version of Migration Manager for Active Directory, which supports user and resource migrations to:
- Microsoft Office 365 Wave 15
- Windows 2012 Active Directory
- Windows 8 computers
- Windows 2012 computers
The new release also provides efficient migration and restructuring of Active Directory with full coexistence during the migration. Providing access to “new” and “old” resources at the same time ensures there is minimal disruption to users. Once the “old” resources are moved to the new server, the end user continues seamlessly with their “new” identity.
Both Migration Manager for Exchange and Migration Manager for Active Directory offer flexibility to accommodate any organization’s unique business requirements. Our ZeroIMPACT migration technology ensures the transition is seamless, on-time and within budget, regardless of the platform to which our customer is migrating.
Microsoft’s support for Exchange 2003 will expire in June 2014, so it’s not too soon to consider moving to Exchange 2013 to take advantage of the new capabilities of the most current version, and to have a longer period of support than will be available for Exchange 2010. Regardless of the destination for your migration, following are a few tips to get the project started off on the right track:
- Perform a pre-migration assessment ─ so you have a clear understanding of what will be involved, and what criteria you will use to measure success.
- Establish coexistence between your current platform and Exchange 2013 ─ to ensure that the source and target environments reflect the same users, distribution groups and resources.
- Set a migration baseline ─ so you know how fast data can be moved.
- Run a pilot migration ─ to identify challenges you might face once full migration starts, and determine how to prevent or resolve them.
At Dell, we help our customers look beyond the migration itself. We partner with customers to make sure they catch issues that could become problems during the migration, with the end goal of migrating them to the platform that best fits their needs.