Patterns from 650 Enterprise Accounts Migrated to Microsoft Platforms

Several of our previous blog posts, including Migrating Notes/Domino Deployments to Office 365, A Revised and Reduced Role for Traditional SharePoint in Office 365, and Google Apps => Office 365 Migration Patterns, provide details about enterprise content/collaboration migration patterns. This post provides a drill-down into migration cost savings that can be achieved with the CASAHL DART solution. The migration projects included in the sample analyzed for this post represent more than 650 successful enterprise migration projects undertaken since 2008, collectively covering more than ten million user seats.

A Quick Review of the CASAHL DART Migration Lifecycle

The CASAHL DART solution has been refined over the course of thousands of enterprise migration projects since CASAHL was founded in 1993, incorporating insights from a wide variety of real-world migration patterns. DART is named for the four phases of its project lifecycle:

• Discovery: generates a detailed inventory of deployed content/collaboration platforms and services

• Analysis: produces a detailed report of current content/collaboration deployments, including usage patterns and content/app characteristics

• Rationalization: facilitates collaborative migration planning among transition planners

• Transition: implements the migration plan created during analysis and rationalization

The CASAHL pre-migration assessment service combines the discovery and analysis phases, providing an efficient, flexible, and fast option for enterprises seeking to inventory and analyze their content/collaboration deployments. The reports produced during an assessment include preliminary migration recommendations based on automated analysis of deployed resources.

Assessment first identifies sites/apps/content that haven’t been used recently, and which are candidates for retirement (archival or deletion). The criteria for determining to-be-retired resources can be iteratively tuned (e.g., retire all content collections that haven’t been accessed in the last 9 months). The remaining subset of all resources identified for rationalization, the next step in the DART process, is usually far less than fifty percent of the total deployment(s).

For the remaining resources, assessment categories include:

• Automated migration: content and apps in this category typically share a template (e.g., a Notes/Domino or SharePoint app/site template), and DART can leverage source and target templates to facilitate peak migration efficiency

• Basic migration: resources in this category tend to be straightforward, e.g., simple document folders or lists, and are easy to migrate with simple migration tasks managed by ecKnowledge, the DART migration engine

• Complex migration: sites and apps in this category tend to be highly customized and not based on “out-of-the-box” templates, and be further subcategorized into elaborate intranet sites and complex workflow applications

The distribution of sites and apps among the three categories varies considerably by the source platform/service and by enterprise collaboration platforms. To realize the full benefits of a migration project, however, a migration solution must be able to address all three categories. Leaving complex apps/sites in their legacy platforms, for example, means the enterprise can’t fully retire the legacy source systems, and usually must continue to pay for ongoing software licenses and support.

With this brief overview in mind, we’ll next review the significant customer savings that have been achieved in CASAHL-led enterprise migrations from Notes/Domino, traditional on-premises SharePoint, and file share/sync services including Google Drive.

Many enterprises have deployments of multiple content/collaboration platforms, incidentally, so a single migration project may include a mix of Notes/Domino, SharePoint, and one or more file share/sync services. CASAHL DART provides a single solution for addressing multiple migration source and target system types.

Notes/Domino Migration Savings Patterns

Many enterprises have expansive Notes/Domino deployments, often representing content and app investments that began in the 1990s. While it’s relatively straightforward to migrate enterprise messaging (email and calendaring/scheduling) from the Notes/Domino platform, migrating the remaining resources can often involve tens of thousands of apps, many of which have been highly customized over many years.

Here’s a summary of CASAHL’s experience with enterprise Notes/Domino deployments over the last eight years, with enterprises averaging 26,704 Notes users per account:

Some highlights:

• CASAHL’s assessment service typically determines that nearly three-quarters of a Notes/Domino content/app deployment can be retired (archived or deleted), dramatically reducing the overall migration project scope, time, and cost

• Of the remaining resources, rationalization is used to finalize the selections of automated, basic, and complex migration candidates

• For Notes/Domino resources that can be addressed with automated migration, enterprises, on average, select 965 apps/sites to be migrated

  • With CASAHL’s highly automated process, the per-app/site migration cost is $400, one-fifth the cost of a less automated, more professional-services-based approach

• Of the complex migration candidates, enterprises on average select 40 apps to be initially migrated

  • Leveraging our ecKnowledge platform, advanced helper tools, and migration domain expertise, CASAHL can typically migrate a complex Notes/Domino app for one-eighth the cost of a less-automated professional services-based approach

Considering the fact that many enterprises start their migration assessments with tens of thousands of Notes apps, the migration time and cost savings can be dramatic.

SharePoint Migration Savings Patterns

SharePoint has not been available as long as Notes/Domino (introduced in 1989; SharePoint was introduced a dozen years later), but many enterprises nonetheless have accumulated very large site/app collections in their SharePoint deployments.

To summarize CASAHL’s experience in SharePoint migrations during the eight years, with an average of 41,201 SharePoint users per account:

Some highlights:

• More than half of a SharePoint deployment can typically be retired (archived or deleted) after assessment

• Rationalization is again used to finalize the selections of candidate sites/apps to be migrated

• For SharePoint resources that can be addressed with automated migration, enterprises, on average, select 1,550 apps/sites to be migrated

  • With CASAHL’s highly automated process, the per-app/site migration cost is $400, approximately one-fourth the cost of a less automated, more professional-services-based approach

• Of the complex migration candidates, enterprises on average select 25 SharePoint sites/apps to be initially migrated

  • Leveraging its ecKnowledge platform, advanced helper tools, and migration domain expertise, CASAHL can typically migrate a complex SharePoint site/app for approximately one-third the cost of a less-automated professional services-based approach

For a typical SharePoint deployment with very large amounts of content and thousands of sites/apps, savings from CASAHL’s migration solution can be significant.

File-Oriented Service Migration Savings

File share/sync services such as Box, Dropbox, and Google Drive have been very popular during the last few years, but enterprises often find enterprise content and document-oriented workflow processes can be more productively and cost-effectively consolidated in Office 365.

To summarize CASAHL’s file-oriented source migration experience during recent years, with an average of 7,123 users per account:

Some highlights:

• Approximately seventy percent of deployed content can be triaged and flagged for archival or deletion, using CASAHL’s assessment service

• The remaining resources to be rationalized are divided into candidates for automated and basic migration; the file-oriented services do not serve as platforms for complex apps

• For resources that are candidates for automated migration – usually more than 90% of a deployment, CASAHL DART can typically migrate resources for one-fifth the cost of competitive alternatives

For enterprises with large content collections in Box, Dropbox, and/or Google Drive, the overall cost savings can be substantial.

Recap: Real-World Enterprise Content/Collaboration Migration Savings Patterns

CASAHL DART provides a single enterprise migration solution for a wide range of source and target systems. Refined over the course of more than twenty years of enterprise-scale migration projects, DART is the most cost-effective and efficient option for enterprises seeking to migrate their full collections of content/collaboration resources currently deployed in Notes/Domino, SharePoint, file share/sync services, and other sources. Please visit the CASAHL site for more details on how DART may make it possible for you to fully address your content/collaboration needs for a small fraction of the likely cost of using less automated alternatives.