Non Typical Messaging Projects

As a solutions architect working for Blue Chip Consulting Group, I spend a fair amount of time speaking with potential clients about an upcoming project or a vision of where they want to be with their messaging and collaboration services. Since Blue Chip is 100% focused on Microsoft technology that means the destination is going to be either Exchange or Exchange Online.

The good news for me is that with a few third-party vendor relationships any project can be delivered with the quality of delivery that is expected by our clients. The majority of messaging projects fall into two main buckets native Exchange tool migrations and third-party tool migrations. When designing a potential solution for a project I will always prioritize two things. First, does the solution meets the client’s goals and business objectives. Second, does the solution minimize additional costs. The rest of this article will focus on messaging projects that do not use native Exchange tools for migration.

When I review third-party tools, I look for a few things in order to even consider using it for a project.

• Do we think we will use this product for other projects?
• What does the partner incentive program look like?
• What is the cost and support model for the product?
• What is our internal experience level with this product?
• What automation capabilities does the product offer?

The last bullet is usually where a lot of tools fall short. Blue Chip is in the business of performing complex migrations as seamless and as accurately as possible. Those items begin trending upwards when automation and experience with the product are achieved. I read a study once that if you are tasked with doing a basic mouse clicking task that if given a list of 25 objects that most people are unable to complete it without making at least one mistake. That kind of natural error rate is not acceptable by Blue Chip or our clients and it is why some level of automation is critical to our success on every project.

I personally lean on Quest Software and BitTitan as my preferred third-party tools of choice. Each of these tools has their ideal scenario in my mind which I will outline below.

The easiest vendor to discuss is Quest Software. For me there is no other vendor that comes close when doing a Domino to Exchange migration project. If you called it a Lotus Notes to Exchange project you should be been immediately excluded from doing the project. Domino is the server while Lotus Notes is the client software.

Quest has two main products in order to execute on this project the Coexistence Manager for Notes (CMN) product which does all things rich co-existence. Rich co-existence is defined as mail flow, free busy, and a unified address book. The second product is Migrator for Notes to Exchange (MNE) and this product is all about the migration of content. Quest Software is still making and releasing updates for these tools and Blue Chip has a study stream of projects moving clients from Domino to Exchange each and every year.

BitTitan is a little more complex to discuss because their product Migration Wiz has a lot of flexibility and covers a lot of different use cases. I have used Migration Wiz to migrate from Exchange to Exchange Online, Exchange Online to Exchange Online, and Google G-Suite to Exchange Online to name a few. Some of the key benefits with Migration Wiz:

• It is a cloud-based service that runs in Microsoft Azure and requires nothing to be installed in a client’s data center or on a messaging server.
• It migrates much of the content expected/required with high messaging fidelity from the source to the destination even in the most complex of cases like Google G-Suite to Exchange Online. They have published knowledge base articles clearly outlining what migrates and what doesn’t per every source and destination they support.
• It gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of source and target mapping. For example, you could have Jane.Doe@companyA.com as the source and you want the data to be migrated to JDoe@companyB.com. Another case could be a former employee to a new employee or their manager.

I find that BitTitan is my go-to tool in use cases like mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. Since it has a zero footprint on the source and target side the conversations around security and access are much easier, especially in those cases where the companies are not friendly. The latest enhancements from BitTitan are being able to provide free busy in certain use cases which is typically not even an option. BitTitan is also my leading option when it comes to a challenging project like Google G-Suite to Exchange migrations.

I have also used BitTitan for a tenant to tenant migration when speed is more critical then cost. If speed is not a factor, I would consider a double migration from tenant to Exchange on-premises and then up to Exchange Online, especially if the primary domain name is not changing. The requirement to use a 3rd party software for tenant to tenant migrations may go away in the future as Microsoft has had rumors since 2015 around offering a Exchange Web Services (EWS) tenant to tenant migration path. I have recently even heard rumors of it being available through Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) as a pilot program to large customers.

BitTitan not only offers a powerful and flexible mail migration product but they have some additional tools that can make the migration experience even better for an end user. One tool I want to highlight is called Deployment Pro, this is an agent-based tool that helps an end user with the creation of an Outlook profile. The tool creates a new Outlook profile and migrates over items like mapped .PST files and user signatures to name a few.

Are you considering a messaging migration project in 2020 or 2021? In never hurts to hear how a consulting company like Blue Chip Consulting Group would architect and deliver your messaging project and it all starts with a free whiteboard session!