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Most of us are very much well aware of the benefits of migrating from Novell GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange. But the one major aspect that one would require to look upon is the intricacy involved in performing the GroupWise to Exchange migration. In fact, if you are one of those who are looking to perform such migration at a large enterprise level then it requires careful planning and project management. In fact, it is very important for you to understand that high-level checklist of necessary tasks can be quite long.
Before you perform GroupWise to exchange migration, it is important that you take care of few vital aspects.
Preservation of precious information stored on the GroupWise system
When we talk about important information then it generally includes the mail, attachments, tasks, and so forth stored on the server. Now the point that you need to take care of is that data on the GroupWise server should be moved to the Exchange server while GroupWise local stores must be moved to desktops in Outlook “personal storage” format (.pst files).
User involvement in the migration project
It is very much possible that most of the users may likely be using a new mail client (Outlook) with the new server, and so it is also essential for administrators to be able to carry out the migration operation with minimal end user involvement.
Coexistence of the two systems during migration
As an administrator, just you got to ensure that coexistence must be established between the GroupWise and Exchange directories. In fact, for organization with strength of more than 400 users, it gets essential to provide for some level of coexistence. During a period of co-existence, two disparate mail systems must look and feel like a single cohesive system. You got to give a proper consideration to various factors like:
- Directory integration and synchronization for internal address resolution
- SMTP mail flow and routing
- Calendar free/busy and schedule information
It is vital for you to determine how directory synchronization between GroupWise and Exchange will be achieved to make sure that the GroupWise Address Book and Exchange Global Address roll and reveal the same users, distribution groups, and resources.
Moreover, most of the time individuals presume that entire data need to be migrated. But this is a worst case to plan for, but you could give a proper consideration. Many experts recommend opt for the email migration of the last four to six months mail, or even possibly a clean Exchange mailbox may be sufficient.
Thus, by taking care of the points mentioned above, you can very well perform GroupWise to exchange migration very effectively. A migration to a new email platform can be one complicated project but with careful planning and its proper email migration can be achieved successfully. Today there are numerous products and services available in the market that can help organizations with various pieces of the migration puzzle. Kernel for Novell GroupWise to Exchange Server is one such software that can migrate multiple mailboxes from Novell GroupWise to Exchange Server in few mouse clicks. It has got many exciting features like filter feature that facilitates user to migrate selective mailbox data within specified date range. In fact, by using this tool you can very well conduct selective conversion in Batch mode using filtering option. The tool supports every version of Novell GroupWise, MS Exchange Server and MS Outlook.
So the next time you require to conduct GroupWise to Exchange migration, make sure you plan carefully or if required take help of a proficient GroupWise to Exchange migration software. Follow this link to download the demo of Kernel for GroupWise to Exchange migration.
