by
John Wethington, Product Manager, Application Transformation Group
When it comes to Application Transformation, nothing gets me more excited than hearing a customer talk about their transition project and providing them with a holistic solution. Next week,
Trent Overton and I will be doing just that as we represent
Binary Tree at the
Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011 in Anaheim. We will be hosting live demonstrations and in-depth discussions of Binary Tree's
Application Transformation Framework (ATF).
ATF is a solution that we have been evolving rapidly over the last 2 years. While the software components of ATF have been available separately for a much longer timeframe, after talking with many customers and integration partners, we saw a need to more closely tie them together and to align them to a comprehensive approach for moving applications to SharePoint.
ATF’s metamorphosis really started when we realized the current solutions in the market only addressed a small part of the process of moving applications from a legacy platform to SharePoint. While it’s true some offer some kind of generic discovery tool these tools are simplistic at best and do not provide a comprehensive approach to analysis or rationalization. In fact, most of the current
SharePoint migration software “solutions” only focus on migrating content, or worse, they force you to use costly 3rd party components that you will forever be dependent on in your new environment. And while they may do a good job at moving content, that is only one piece of the puzzle.
Customers and integrators were missing the help they needed to…
- Accurately and completely inspect all of the legacy applications
- Analyze and rationalize the applications so that they can make informed decisions on how to transform each one
- Redevelop applications with insight into the legacy design and code
- Retire applications and servers as their initiatives progressed to reduce the cost and load of the legacy platform
- Tie all of these processes together and be able to manage and control the transformations from initial planning all of the way through to the launch of the new SharePoint applications and the retirement of the legacy platform
So we developed ATF (the Application Transformation Framework). ATF is a comprehensive methodology and solution suite designed to address the true needs of our customers and our
integration partners.
The guiding methodology incorporated into ATF contains the “Seven R’s of Application Transformation” which signify the primary processes for holistically transforming legacy applications to SharePoint.
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People often ask me "How can Binary Tree help ensure that my migration will be successful?" I think this is a great question that I am always happy to answer. And recently, a customer found out first hand the lengths we are committed to their success.
Thursday, August 25, 2011, I received a call from a client asking to understand how our
CMT for Exchange solution can help them migrate 50 NSF files to PST’s. They explained to me that their company had recently acquired a small organization and they promised the business that they would have the PSTs available on Monday morning.
Understanding that there was a huge time crunch to meet their deadlines, I set up a conference call with my Solutions Architect, the customer and myself. We began to show them the steps they would need to do to complete this migration. As I listened to the customer ask questions about completing this
email migration on their own, I quickly realized that for them to read the manuals to learn our product, set up and configure the solution, and complete the project in less than four days was a very tall order.
So I offered up our
Support team. I explained to the client that if they would like,
Binary Tree would be happy to take their NSF files and convert them After considering the challenges they were facing, the customer agreed and we set up call for later Thursday afternoon to discuss how they would send us their files.
Binary Tree offered the customer two methods for doing the conversion. The customer could ship us their files on a hard drive or they could upload the files to our ftp site. Since there was such a time crunch involved they asked if they could drive the files to us.
We were about 3 hours from each other and we agreed that we would meet Friday morning to receive the hard drive with the NSF files. Within 24 hours we had the proper NDAs in place and the files were on their way to our support team. The plan was to retrieve the hard drive, use our own migration farm and start the migration on Friday and finish up by Sunday morning. Then we would meet back up with the customer on Monday morning with the hard drive and newly migrated PST files.
Normally this would be a very simple process for us. The next day, Saturday, August 27, 2011, Hurricane Irene had other plans in mind and our location for the migration happened to be directly in Irene's path.
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Binary Tree would like to welcome Kris Honkola as our guest blogger. Kris is an Engagement Manager for
VMC Consulting. As a global technology consulting company, VMC provides flexible and scalable solutions and services, with best practices, proven methodologies and world-class resources. Visit VMC at both the Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange Connections conferences to find out how we can help you with SharePoint and Exchange solutions.
Working with Binary Tree, the
VMC Consulting services group has designed a new approach to more quickly and efficiently transition customers from their old Exchange environments to the latest
Microsoft Exchange 2010 platform. This new solution offering helps our customers control the cost of the migration, and provides a more effective process to manage the project.
VMC Consulting has been successfully planning, organizing, directing and executing large
Exchange upgrades for several years. We had created best practices for our migration clients, but were continuously seeking improvements that would provide increased value to our customers.
We have a culture of reinventing our best practices every 12 to 18 months. We asked ourselves four key questions:
- How can we make it more cost effective for our customers?
- How can we improve the Exchange mail migration process?
- How can we reduce the technical, people, process, material and cost risks associated with executing enterprise level migrations?
- How can we scale better to do more migration projects simultaneously?
Our best practice SWOT analysis identified that:
- Our people are highly experienced and successful engineers, consultants and architects.
- Our processes are best-of-breed and continuously optimized.
- Our risk, project and communication management excelled.
- Our Clients were pleased with our migrations projects.
- Our automation technology was strong, but not best-of-breed.
The result led us to investigate world class automation and management tools versus our own in house solutions. We performed an exhaustive evaluation of the tools and companies in today’s marketplace.