I am currently working for a medium sized company in the South East of England that are migrating their Notes apps and Mail files to a Microsoft platform.A large percentage of the mail files have now been moved to Exchange however we are still left with 2500 applications. We can manually migrate 2000 teamroom databases to Sharepoint, however, we are left with roughly 500 custom written in-house apps that need to be migrated to some sort of Microsoft platform.
Does anyone have any experience of a similar project? We need to understand which Microsoft application is most suitable to migrate to from Notes, which tools are available to help us with this process and are there any companies in particular that have a proven track record of developing migration solutions.
Many thanks
Subject: Notes to Exchange migration - suggestions required
It is of course impossible to say from the information given but you are most likely looking at bespoke coding. As I’m sure you know, Lotus Notes/Domino provides such a rich and flexible development platform and those 500 applications could all be different meaning a lot of work.
Your options in order of cost might be:
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Leave them as legacy Notes apps.
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Convert them to run as Domino browser applications. There could be significant work to make the applications look good and work as they did in the Notes Client.
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Leave the data where it is and write a .NET front-end either using COM or web services technology to get the data out of Domino.
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Redesign the apps to run in Sharepoint and/or MS SQL with a .NET front end (probably browser) and migrate all the data across. Not trivial.
If the Notes apps had been developed with a lot of standard features, it may be possible to automate some of the application logic.
Difficult to say without knowing what drove the project migration (i.e. politics / price / personalities)
Rob Wills
http://www.inter-weavers.com/
Subject: RE: Notes to Exchange migration - suggestions required
Hi,
MS Vs Notes portfolio
http://www.ebiztech.com/documents/Microsoft_vs_Domino_v1.4.pdf
A few years ago, it was call Red Bull, now it’s MS Analyzer I think
http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/ah-theres-that-red-bull
http://www.pmooney.net/blogsphe.nsf/d6plinks/PMOY-6XLN4C
http://www.pmooney.net/d6plinks/PMOY-6QJSFC
http://www.pmooney.net/d6plinks/PMOY-6MJ4G4
http://www.pmooney.net/d6plinks/PMOY-6MWTJN
http://www.pmooney.net/d6plinks/PMOY-6L2TN4
http://www.pmooney.net/blogsphe.nsf/d6plinks/PMOY-6L737R#comments
http://www.pmooney.net/d6plinks/PMOY-6JMQHZ
Migrating Notes Apps to DotNet from Declan Lynch
Well somebody should proof read these documents before they are released. The first line of the second paragraph in the introduction states that ‘Notes/Domino R6 is the last planned release of the existing Notes architecture’… Hmm, wonder what I’ve been beta testing then for the past few weeks…
A few years ago, E-PRoMag released a document named “Converting From Notes to .NET, According To Microsoft”
http://edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/09032004080000AMEBRH9K.htm
The on-line article no longer exist. I have an old copie and it’s very funny to read ! Abracadabra Notes to .Net!!! 
JYR
Subject: Notes to Exchange migration - suggestions required
Basically David, there is no (easy) way. Having just come off the back of a Notes to Exchange migration, it still amazes me how mangers think things can just be moved and them still work. Most of the time the migrations are just because “Notes isn’t Microsoft” and to that, I say “Thank God IBM bought Lotus when they did”.
The easiest way has already been alluded to - keep one or two Domino servers running and have the apps on those, people who need them can just fire up their clients to access the db’s or make them web enabled.
A good idea would be to find out who uses the databases and how often to see if decommission of the db’s is an option.
Phil.
Subject: RE: Notes to Exchange migration - suggestions required
An old debate
Converting From Notes to .NET, According To Microsoft
· Retire - the application functionality is no longer needed.
· Replace – off-the-shelf applications perform this function.
· Connect – keep the current application.
· Convert – redesign and implement the application.
JYR
Subject: Notes to Exchange migration - suggestions required
The first thing you need to get used to is that you (or your client) will be dealing with coexistence for a long, long time, and you might be better worrying about that prior to worrying about migration. For example, your doclinks are likely to stop working, or at least stop working consistently. (We sell a tool, CoexLinks to take care of that, so that is why I focus on it first, but it is only the first worry) Your calendars are going to be hard to keep in synch until 100% of your users are migrated. You need to think about how to change your workflow so that people used to sharing with Notes databases start using something else, and users who are used to sending a doclink send some other link, and so on. You need to rethink their user experience so that while some of their apps are in Notes and some are elsewhere (web, Sharepoint?), they don’t have trouble getting back and forth, or finding things without undue loss of focus. Some applications may be easier to migrate to the web but leave on Domino otherwise, but that will require retraining as well. There is just a whole lot of process to think about which is in your users’ immediate future, long before you can practically migrate applications, even if you eventually do.
Subject: RE: Notes to Exchange migration - suggestions required
Very well said… But it all comes down to user training in the end, and unfortunately, Microsoft is sort of gaining terrain on this side. I hate this… Like others said, it’s an old debate, and now that ND8’s release is coming closer, the balance might come back in Notes favor… hopefully. But still, it comes down to user training and what the end-user thinks and how they feel about the “user-friendlyness” of it all.
Depending on the size of the company and how many custom applications they are using (web or not), it might be more difficult than you think to get the end-users used to an alternative way of doing things (i.e. Sharepoint to replace web apps, the co-existance of both environment for a while, the confusion…). Of course, nothing in the IT world is impossible if you have the money and the resources, but migrating a fully customized Domino environment to Exchange 2003 or 2007 is not that simple, and even though the end-result may look appealing to end-users (many end-users prefer the easy and look of Outlook 2003, or the way MS Office 2003 and 2007, Sharepoint and MS SQL all integrate into each other), but I suggest you take a closer look to Lotus Domino 8 and all the new features that will answer most end-user’s prayers and limit the migration cost by 10 folds if not more!
To be honest… ND8 even LOOKS like Outlook and MS Office, and uses several of the same concepts so that users will be able to learn it more easily without having to spend hours in training.
Subject: Notes to Exchange migration - suggestions required
I’d like to apologize up front for not offering any helpful information.
I can’t help wondering how a decision to migrate could be made without first knowing how it would be done and how much it would cost. Maybe cost is no object? Or the value of the custom applications was low (at least in the mind of the decision maker)?
Subject: Notes to Exchange migration - suggestions required
You cannot migrate your applications until you fully realize the customization that exist in Domino today. I would suggest an environmental analytical tool to review your apps today. Take a look at http://www.binarytree.com/website/msg/home.nsf/vContentW/0007DE68B0EFA8B486257171007A0868 and see if it might help.