Files Are Not Enough

The rapid market shift to cloud services for enterprise content/collaboration needs has resulted in a large and growing demand for multifaceted migration solutions. Enterprises that focus primarily or exclusively on file migration are only addressing one part of the overall migration challenge, however, and risk stalling their new cloud deployments by not making all useful content and collaborative app resources seamlessly available for employees as they transition to the cloud environment.

While productivity app files – primarily word processing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations – will remain mainstays of enterprise computing for the foreseeable future, work and collaboration patterns have gone far beyond traditional files to include:

• Collections of web-centric pages such as intranet sites and wikis; the pages often support content/collaboration patterns that would have previously been addressed with traditional productivity app files
• Conversational tools that can make content-based collaboration more contextual and social, something that’s not possible with traditional file-based productivity apps (see New Enterprise Opportunities from Conversational Collaboration Convergence for more on this trend)
• Modern productivity apps that address the traditional domains (word processing, etc.) in a more web-centric way than traditional productivity apps, often running within browser clients and offering concurrent authoring and contextual conversations; Google G Suite and Microsoft Office Online (browser-based versions of the primary Office apps) are leading examples
• More links than file copies: all the above are also generally more connected – with links to other web and intranet pages as well as file links, helping to maintain consolidated versions of documents and other resources (rather than mailing copies of files as email message attachments to facilitate a document workflow)
• Multiple platforms and services: an enterprise that may have at one time been primarily standardized on SharePoint Server or Notes/Domino is now likely to also have content and collaborative apps spread across a variety of platforms and services, in many cases due to employees seeking simple and service-based solutions like the ones they now routinely use outside of work (such as Facebook and Twitter)

As an example of the content/collaboration variety and migration mapping requirements, consider an enterprise migrating from Google Sites (part of G Suite) to Office 365’s SharePoint Online. Google Sites offers a lot of flexibility with five base page types (templates): Web Page, Announcements, File Cabinet, List, and Start Page. Other page types can be derived from the base page templates. The table below provides guidance on how resources managed in Google Sites can be optimized for and migrated to SharePoint Online.

As this source/target mapping example suggests, modern content/collaboration migration projects involve much more than basic file movement. Other source systems have similar migration mapping challenges; for example, Atlassian Confluence deployments represent another source content model for pages, files, templates, and other resources. The different source types often vary in terms of content containment structures and access control policies, creating additional migration challenges.

Enterprises with collections of collaborative apps in SharePoint Server or Notes/Domino face additional challenges due to the need to disaggregate and recompose legacy collaborative apps to take full advantage of new cloud opportunities. If these legacy apps can’t be modernized and migrated, enterprises remain stuck with the ongoing cost and complexity of maintaining on-premises legacy content/collaboration platforms, and employee productivity is reduced due to the need to work with a hybrid mix of old and new collaborative apps.

The mapping table above reflects how CASAHL’s migration solution works for Google Sites/SharePoint Online migration projects today, along with a wide variety of other sources and target systems. CASAHL offers a unique multi-source and multi-target content/collaboration migration solution that addresses the full enterprise migration life cycle, including legacy app disaggregation and re-composition. Building on experience and expertise developed while being exclusively focused on content/collaboration migration and integrations since 1993, CASAHL can address real-world enterprise migration requirements, going far beyond file migration to handle the full scope of today’s common enterprise deployment patterns and making it possible for enterprises to accelerate and take full advantage of their cloud deployments.