I have been asked to get involved with a project looking to move Notes mail to Exchange for just 10 users. At the moment I don’t even know what version of Notes it is (I suspect 4) or what the requirements are, the brief was to: “Potentially move from LOTUS NOTES to a Microsoft family of products”.
I think that the users can also access their mail from home but I don’t know if they are using web mail or notes client. I don’t know how they access their accounts at the moment.
Having never done a migration I don’t know where to start? Any ideas on this? What to ask the client? How to move mail across…
What I do know is that Notes has been put in to this organisation but they don’t have a Notes developer or administrator available to be there in times of problems which they are having now. It might be a case of looking at their current set up and fixing whatever has been going wrong - this would be my ideal solution.
However, if I look at it (being more of a developer than administrator) and can’t see what to fix then the client will more than likely want the migration.
This brings me back to the first point…how to migrate from notes to exchange (sitting on Small Business Server)
Any help from you guys will be really appreciated.
You have some options moving from Notes to Outlook as mail client. First option is running Outlook vio Domino Outlook connector connected to a Domino server as backend. For this scenario, you might need to migrate Domino to 5, 6 or 7, but you can keep most of the existing server infrastructure. Second option is a coexistence of Domino and an additional Exchange server as backend systems which allows both Outlook and Notes clients to connect and exchange mails. For this scenario you can use the Exchange connector for Notes which comes with Exchange. I realized both options with release 6 and 7 of Domino, my Exchange was 2003 on a Win2K3 machine. In both scenarios you can use Domino Web Access (former iNotes) as an option to access your mail file from a browser.3rd option would be a complete change from Domino to Exchange and Notes to Outlook, you can find all required steps for this on microsoft.com. What you have to find out is what client and what server architecture your customer wants to implement and maintain, also depending on their skills in Domino/Exchange on admin sind and Outlook/Notes skills and requirements on client side.
There are various ways to accomplish this, and a variety of companies that will help. I know Casahl does migrations, and Binary Tree as well.
One thing to watch for is doclinks. If the company uses them for applications, it can take a LOT longer to move the applications than the e-mail, and in the meantime, or even forever if they decide to coexist, those doclinks won’t work too well going to Exchange/Outlook. Our CoexLinks product will handle the doclinks, and give you the control to move applications gradually from Notes clients to web apps.