By Valentin Vasquez, Senior Solutions Architect, E2E
Until recently, organizations looking to perform an
Exchange migration between different Active Directory (AD) forests really only had two choices of software tools for assisting with the migration. You could write migration scripts using the
Exchange Management Shell (PowerShell) programming method that Microsoft provided, or you could use legacy 3rd party tools from ISVs. Unfortunately, these choices have left a lot to be desired for organizations looking to perform and manage migration projects.
The PowerShell method lacks the ability to effectively schedule the migration processing, and it doesn’t give you the ability to inform your end-users of their personal migration schedule. In essence, you’re dealing with a completely manual method. It doesn’t give you any control over the management aspects to run your migration project unattended. And it requires a higher level of knowledge in order to properly execute the project in a way that doesn’t negatively impact your end-users.
The second traditional choice has been agent-based tools from ISVs that were mostly architected over 10 years ago to handle migrations from Exchange 5.5 to 2000. While these tools were somewhat helpful at the time, they are not well architected to assist with migrating recent versions of Exchange Server. Especially when you think about having to deploy multiple agents on all of the Exchange servers in your environment. That’s where they have to run, or perhaps crawl is the better term, as they are typically 10 times slower than PowerShell and PowerShell-based technology. These agents have a three-step process and work in a serial progression. First, they export the mailbox data to a file on the source Exchange server. And then you wait. And then another agent copies the data file from the source server to the target server and you wait some more. And then finally, another agent imports that mailbox data into a server. The net result is that these transitions are quite tedious and slow in their execution. These tools make for a very long, drawn out project.
So what’s the good news? The good news is that there is a new alternative designed specifically for a new generation of Exchange Servers and it’s dramatically better than the other choices available.
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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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Posted by Walter Monasterio, Microsoft Corporate and Regional SI Alliance Manager
Growth in business is great. It’s an objective that every company strives for day after day, month after month, and year after year. Most people I speak to envision growth in business as a time when sales and marketing are working in great synergy, sales reps can’t keep up with the demand, and products are flying off the shelves. Business growth is a good challenge. Wait a minute …did I say “challenge”?
When a mid-size company needs to scale into new countries, it can be an exciting, but somewhat daunting task. It would be great to have endless cash to put infrastructure in place in each country, but that’s not a luxury often available even to the largest enterprises. In order for Binary Tree to scale into new countries to meet the needs of our customers, we need to grow through partnerships in these geographies. So off we go to meetings, training, and conferences with our suitcases packed, and update our Facebook statuses from airports and hotels. In the time that we spend with customers and partners during our travels, we do our best to assess a new market and identify future opportunities for continued growth. Sometimes the report says we may need to invest with a Binary Tree sales/channel/technical resource in that area. In most cases, however, we identify success by investing in a local partner. Helping them through training and enablement to master our solutions and approach can provide an immediate service offering for customers in that geography. 
In addition to a local presence, we need strategic insights to get rolling in a new area. When trying to expand or break into other countries, our partners are vital to us getting this done quickly and smart. Whether it’s with a Regional SI or GSI, each organization gives us a peek into how their customers evaluate solutions. There are so many different subtleties in different parts of the world when it comes to how and when business is done that our partners are often the best tour guides. The ecosystem that they work in every day has all the information we need for success in a new market.
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