Lotus to SharePoint Migration

Transcription

1 Lotus to SharePoint Migration Understanding the Lotus Notes Application Landscape and the Transition to Microsoft SharePoint Ecotech IT Solutions Private Limited Web: Last edited: 06-July-2012 Ecotech IT Solutions Private Limited. All rights reserved. The Ecotech IT Solutions Private Limited name and Ecotech logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Ecotech IT Solutions Private Limited. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

2 Table of Contents 1. Executive Summary Migration Needs in Enterprises Keys to successful migration Risks of implementing an effective data migration strategy Technology considerations Ways to Migrate Next Steps Commit the Stakeholders and management Identify the right Vendor Identify and define your destination environment Analyse environments Lotus Environment SharePoint Environment Lotus Database Define Expectations for Migration Conclusion Appendix: Ecotech s expertise Migration services from Ecotech Migration process Migration plan Content Migration plan Applications Migration plan Migrating Application Designs Migrating Schema from Notes Applications Migrating Form Designs to InfoPath Migrating Approval Process and Workflow State Security Mapping Tools used Migration Tools Development Tools Sample Screens pre & post migration Page

3 1. Executive Summary Enterprises worldwide had almost no choice in early 1990s than to adapting Lotus notes for collaborating storing and sharing content, messaging, s, etc. all under one umbrella. It was Lotus Notes clients and Domino servers (initially Notes server, until version 4.5) from IBM that ruled the world in Enterprise middleware for more than Two decades, until other players came in to the foray. As the versions evolved, Lotus Notes was a widespread success due to the fact that it continued to encapsulate a broad range of components necessary in most IT environments. They include: 1. , Calendaring 2. Directory services 3. Database and Security 4. Rapid application development 5. Web server 6. Replication 7. Offline capability On the other hand, when SharePoint came up with their first official launch in 2001, they made SharePoint Portal Server and SharePoint Team Services. The server was positioned to help Enterprises aggregate corporate information through navigation and search. SharePoint Team Services enabled teams within Enterprises to quickly put together sub-sites, to organize and manage documents, events, and other digital information across the organization. They had little integration between them initially. In 2003, SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 2.0 were launched, both built on a common platform, with SPS offering Enterprise portal and search functionality and WSS 2.0 offering core collaboration capabilities. Businesses began to look at WSS 2.0, and because of the ease with which it could be deployed, it led to a mass viral adoption. With the successful delivery of Portal and Collaboration technologies, and the following clients feedback and additional requirement for managing their web content, Microsoft released Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 Page

4 SharePoint 2007 had tremendous business success, with more and more Enterprises adopting to it quickly, generating a revenue of over $1.3 Billion in revenue in one year. It changed the way Customers and Partners thought about business collaboration. It delivered an integrated platform featuring 1. Collaboration 2. Portal management 3. Search 4. Content management 5. Business forms 6. Business Intelligence technology Lotus Notes Trends Idle technology for some years Too little, Too late, in terms of features addition Approximately 70 Mil. Lotus users worldwide Many users considering other technologies now Planning and mingration from Lotus is complex Migration from Lotus requires professional approach So, there is a compelling gain in momentum in recent years for moving away from Lotus to other similar solutions, especially the SharePoint products. With this momentum, many organizations have started looking at the benefits that come with the migration - in terms of licensing, deployment costs, maintenance and support costs, and other associated costs. Besides the costs on these, there is a timeline that involves in migrating the applications, s, documents, etc. which still holds back some of the Enterprises who adopted the Lotus products early in the game. Broadly, there are three major areas involved in transitioning from Notes to Microsoft environment: 1. Notes Mail to Exchange Mails 2. Domino Directory to Active Directory synchronization 3. Notes/Domino to SharePoint/ASP.NET application migration Definitely the Mail and Directory components pose their own unique challenges; the area which by far presents the biggest challenge in transitioning from Lotus Notes is in the area of application migration, since these early adopters would have developed several thousands of simple to complex workflow applications in Lotus platform. Page

5 2. Migration Needs in Enterprises Migration is the process of making a copy of applications and data from existing environment, build a similar system and data structure in the new envornment and moving them from one device or system to another into the new environment, preferably without disrupting or disabling active business processing. It is a known fact the only constant in IT is change. Chnges, besides in the processes, the management, the board, the place, etc., changes also extend to the basic IT environment itself. This could be due to various reasons, internal or external Planned Strategic Decision for technology alignment, cost saving, upgratding controls / security, modernization, storage, collaboration needs, etc. or an outside factor such as a merger or a compliance requirement. Most enterprise application changes will involve migration of data which is more critical than moving the applications themselves into a new environment. Recent consolidation by big names like Microsoft and Oracle in the enterprise application market, pushes Enterprises in accelerating the rate at which many they rethink the future of their current enterprise application platform and consider a migration. Key Migration Needs Scalability Cost Saving Availability of resources Consolidation Security Relocation of data Open up environment Mordernization Broadly categorizing, there are a variety of business drivers that cause enterprises to undertake a migration, including: Increasing licentsing costs of current environment, with / without a corresponding increase in work force Lack of mordernization options in current environment Compliance to changing security and other Enterprise requirements such as social networking Breaking away from legacy to move into a more open environment Inclusion of new users or businesses into an existing system (mergers & acquisitions) Server or storage consolidation for Enterprise wide efficiency in data management Relocation of the data center, for example from On-premise to the Cloud Workload balancing or other performance-related tuning As we see there are different elements that need migration during the process. Without going to all in detail, the two primary elements are the Data and the Applications. While the applications are mere placeholders for data management, the data itself could be of structured or unstructured in nature. Structured data are the ones that are strored in an RDBMS in standard structures, with regular updates, and standard UI to manage. These are fully Page

6 automatable, highly repeatable and could be migrated easily, by using pre-mapped data schemas any standard migration tools. Unstructured data on the otherhand needs a lot of planning, manual intervension, staggered migration, rigorous testing, and additional overall efforts. With the Unstructured storage ability within Lotus enviornment, it is critical therefore, to plan meticulously and execute the plan in stages followed by a rigorous test plan, to ensure the migrated / new environment has no hidden surprises to the end users, nor to the management in terms of data location, quick / easy access, security lapse, etc. For the same reason, a Lotus to SharePoint migration calls for a combination of Migration tools with Manual intervension within the entire process of migration. Page

7 3. Keys to successful migration Enterprises need to minimize the business impacts of such migrations in terms of downtime, data integrity issues, costs, control problems, and so on. The way to do this is to utilize a robust methodology for migrations, especially when you move the base environment such as from Lotus to SharePoint. A majority of respondents to data migration surveys report one problem or another with these migrations. Simply scheduling migrations during off-hours is not always a sufficient strategy, since: it increases migration costs and decreases employee morale due to staff overtime migrations which go over schedule can disrupt processing during normal hours most enterprises no longer have a significant off-hour window for activities like data backups or data migrations due to their global operations or other customer demands for availability Key Success Factors Data integrity Addressing security policies Business continuity High availability of data Minimal Down time Minimal Data loss Minimal Quality issues Automation tools Target Data size Effective data migration strategies go a step further and can avoid such risks. Therefore, it is key to lay down the operational goals clearly for effective data migration. Primarily, data must be migrated from the source platform to the target platform completely and accurately, with related applications to manage them efficiently, and in line with the company and regulatory policies on information controls and security. This means no dropped or incomplete records, and no data fields that fail validation or other quality controls in the target environment. Another goal of data migration is that the process be done with as short a downtime window as possible (given the enterprise's Maintenance Time Objective targets) Finally, the cost of data migration and the timeframes must be manageable, in terms of technology and staff requirements. There are many metrics that can measure the effectiveness and efficiency of data migrations: Number of customizations required in the new environment Percentage of migrated records including historical data Percentage of migrated records by application Percentage of data with quality problems Number of migration errors Migration impact on database size Downtime due to migration for each application Page

8 Required staging storage / hardware Percentage of reconciliation errors Percentage of cleansed data 3.1 Risks of implementing an effective data migration strategy Migrating data brings many risks and challenges: Migration might be done as part of a larger chain of dependencies, especially when we move from Lotus to SharePoint (operating system upgrades, application upgrades or implementations, database structural changes, etc.) thereby increasing the complexity. Data requirements not defined clearly - data rules for integrity, controls, security, availability and recoverability are often illdefined. In the absence of such rules, data is migrated incorrectly or insufficiently in terms of addressing organizational goals Migration acceptance criteria may not be defined. Data is often too distributed to be migrated easily (affecting end-user computing). Budgets may limit technology options for performing migrations. Expertise in data migration and management may not be present. Management attention might be insufficient (migrations are typically routine operations and not major attention-getting projects). There could be poor support from the storage vendor(s), making migrations all the more taxing. The effective data migration strategy Considering the high risk factors, it becomes incumbent on the management to appoint the right IT consultants for such critical migrations, typically an IT Vendor who has experience in Managing huge migration projects, High familiarity with the source and destination environments, Technical expertise in analyzing and performing the migration seamlessly without involving the top management, and Familiarity with the third party tools for migration The business driver for effective data migrations is to strike the optimal balance between data accuracy, migration speed, low or no downtime, and minimum costs. We will see how to formulate such a strategy. Page

9 3.2 Technology considerations How old is the operating system(s) under which data is to be migrated? Some migration tools do not support legacy operating systems. Which storage tiers and devices are involved? Can a framework be used for building applications in the environment quickly? Can identical data structures be used for the target data (this will reduce the time and complexity of migration)? What staging area requirements are present, given current technologies and data migration requirements? Do you need or want the option to recover quickly from the source disk, or to fall back to the original storage device as a fail-over? There are both procedural and technological ways of accomplishing this. Is a central console needed to manage data migrations across multiple servers? Is there a need to control the data migration from a local server or a remote server? If remote, which protocols must be supported? Is there a requirement to throttle or control data flows between servers? Must data integrity be checked before and during (not just after) migration? Which staff and consultants are available to assist with migration analysis, design, and deployment? 3.3 Ways to Migrate Correct content migration is often considered the most business critical aspect of the migration process, as failing to preserve the legacy content with adequate fidelity and completeness will result in unhappy end users and potential disruption to the business. Lotus Notes QuickPlace, Domino.Doc As it may seem at the surface, migration is not that simple a process. More the number of years you are used to your current environment, more the complextities in migrating to a new Comprehensive Migration Batch or ad-hoc, user-driven Rich text documents Images, attachment, OLE Document Links Dynamic Formulas ACLS and Document Security SharePoint Target List Item Document Libraries InfoPath Forms one. There are cases where hundreds or thousands applications built around Lotus environment which throws the primary challenge in even planning to migrate, as it would be a minimum 5-7 year process in migration, which will make it more complex with changing dynamics (internal as well as external) hrough the period. Page

10 In general, depending on the organizational needs, criticality of applications, budgetary constraints, availability of required resources, the migration project could be planned in different ways All at once In logical sections (by application, operating system, database, business function, etc.) Via a pilot migration or proof of concept for risk mitigation, with a parallel run for some applications In phases for Data (first critical data, then less critical or historical data). Page

11 4. Next Steps 4.1 Commit the Stakeholders and management Migrations projects are rarely seen as value-added technology activities, but seen as a necessary step towards a consolidate storage, implement stronger technology controls, upgrade / replace systems, and merge / rationalize technologies, etc.. This makes keeping management focus the holders of IT budget a particular challenge. Therefore it is necessary to present a strong business case to them that outlines the business advantages of controlled data migrations, justified in traditional cost-benefit form. A clear migration must support that business case, bringing together all of the pieces of the puzzle storage and tool vendor support, internal or external staffing, requirements, and performance metrics. 4.2 Identify the right Vendor It is equally critical (if not more), to choose the right external IT Consultant to come in and take charge of the project. Though big enterprises already possesses staffing, tools, and experience, and migrations become a matter of staffing costs, one has to consider the Risk / Challenges involved, High costs involved in data migration tools, and the high costs inovolved in deploying internal data analysts and developers which are typically a high-cost business. Going by the above facts, you will be better off with an external consultant who has the knowledge and expertise in Enterprise migrations of Lotus to SharePoint environments.

12 4.3 Identify and define your destination environment Though this document talks primarily about Lotus to SharePoint (2010) migration, your Enterprise need may be of a mixed destination. For some applications you may want to build a simple.net application, or for that matter you may want to take some applications to the SharePoint online (Office 365). Considering the organization wide migration, your focus will still be on SharePoint 2010 as the primary destination, you would still require to check possible options for some of the applications depending on their criticality, security requirements, external access, availability needs, etc. Check out some of the factors to decide your destination needs. SharePoint 2010 SharePoint Online (Office 365).NET Security Secured - Active Directory, FBA authentication can be used Secured - Active Directory can be used Secured - Active Directory, FBA authentication can be used Development Time Less, by using Out Of the Box features Less, by using Out Of the Box features More, comparing to SP2010 and Office 365 Customization Control Limited Limited Full Migration Data To - Lists, MS SQL Server Data To Lists Data To - MS SQL Server MIS Reports Out Of the Box, SSRS, Third Party Components like Telerik, DevExpress, Dundas Dashboard etc. Out Of the Box SSRS, Third Party Components like Telerik, DevExpress, Dundas Dashboard etc. Infrastructure - Hosting On Premise, Cloud Cloud On Premise, Cloud - Software Licensing On Premise - Licensing Cloud - Licensing Subscription On Premise - Licensing Cloud - Licensing

13 4.4 Analyse environments Lotus Environment Sr. No. Questions Details 1 Number of Domino servers 2 Server type and versions E.g. Lotus Notes/Domino 8, Lotus Domino.Doc, Lotus Quickr? 3 Server locations 4 3rd party software integration with Lotus e.g. LEI, Domdoc, WPS, ILM, IDM etc. 5 Are you using inotes or Domino Web Access (DWA) 6 Number of Lotus Notes users 7 How many Lotus Domino / Notes databases will be migrated? 8 How many custom Lotus applications are in use? 9 Is the Corporate Fax server integrated with Lotus Domino server? e.g. RightFax, Extrafax

14 4.4.2 SharePoint Environment Sr. No. Questions Details 1 Is SharePoint Environment ready? 2 What is the primary business objective of the SharePoint environment? 3 Version and Type of SharePoint Server Foundation/ Standard/ Enterprise 4 SharePoint services configured 5 Other Microsoft product details 6 Other line of Application integration 7 Company standard User Interface designing (CSS,JS) 8 Any 3rd party tool installed? Telerik, Nintex, Dundas etc.

15 4.4.3 Lotus Database Sr. No. Questions Details 1 Application Name 2 Is this a custom application? (Yes/ No) 3 Database Template names and version 4 Size and distribution on disk 5 Number of documents 6 Complex Forms (more than 25 fields) 7 Simple Forms (up to 25 fields) 8 Number of Agent s 9 Serial Workflow 10 Parallel Workflow 11 Company standard User Interface designing (CSS,JS) 12 3rd party software dependency? e.g. SAP, AS400, Oracle etc. 13 Reporting Tool 14 Is migration required? Or can the database be archived?

16 4.5 Define Expectations for Migration Once you are done adequate groundwork and are ready with some key information, you will have to lay down some expectations for the whole process, working closely with your external consultnts Overall project plan (cricital) Data Classification report Acceptance Test Considerations Application Migration Strategy Data Migration Strategy Audit and reconciliation report formats Tools used for data migration and associated costs Testing / Staging environment required including licenses IT and other Support required from your organization Change in User experience in destination environment Application and Data Enhancement requirements Define Support and Maintenace phase, including external costs and internal deployment of staff and system Define and agree on Key deployment milestones

17 5. Conclusion Migrating Lotus Notes applications to Microsoft SharePoint is a complex process, but with the paramenters planned meticulously, consultations from expert IT guys, management blessings, user acceptance and right tools and infrastructure available, the process could be smooth. You should begin your migration in one of these ways: Correct content migration is often considered the most business critical aspect of the migration process. You can always tweak the design of an application later, but if you fail to preserve the legacy content with adequate fidelity and completeness, your users may be very unhappy. Some legacy content is very sensitive for compliance reasons or other business reasons, so the stakes are very high to get both the content and access permissions right. In many cases, there is no need for design migration. You simply migrate the old content into one of the new SharePoint site or list templates and you re done. In some cases, you will want to take the time to rethink the application design to take advantage of all the great new features of SharePoint and SharePoint Online. This would also eliminate the need for a design migration.

18 6. Appendix: Ecotech s expertise 6.1 Migration services from Ecotech Lotus Notes to SharePoint 2010 migration Lotus Notes to Office-365 migration (SharePoint Online) Lotus Notes to.net migration Lotus Notes to MS Exchange (mails) 6.2 Migration process 1. Identify migration requirements 2. Synchronize Active Directory and Lotus Domino Directory - Exchange Connector 3. Route mail between Exchange and Lotus Domino - Exchange Connector 4. Perform free/busy lookups between Exchange and Lotus Domino - Exchange Calendar Connector 5. Migrate users' data from Lotus Domino mail databases to Exchange mailboxes - Exchange Migration Wizard 6. Retire Domino mail servers

19 7. Analyze Domino applications: 8. Identify which applications are active and which applications should be archived. 9. Eliminate admin and mail applications from the migration or integration list. 10. Determine which applications to migrate and which to integrate with MS technologies. 11. Build Proof-of-concept to test migration to new or existing applications. 12. Migrate or integrate applications, or move to existing applications or off-the-shelf applications - Microsoft Application Transporter for Lotus Domino,.NET or third-party tools. 6.3 Migration plan As the old cliché goes Who fails to plan, meticulous planning involving key stakeholders in the whole process of Lotus to SharePoint is key to successful migration. There are different elements involved in migration but the king of all is the Content. Typical List of Lotus Applications and Key content information

20 6.3.1 Content Migration plan Following notes elements can be successfully migrated to SharePoint Document items and display column values Attachments Embedded images Embedded OLE objects Rich text DocLinks Multi-valued items Unread marks Dynamically computed values

21 Typical Lotus Notes Document Library View

22 Typical SharePoint Document Library View

23 6.3.2 Applications Migration plan Migrating Application Designs Good tools are available today for migrating the content of your Notes applications to SharePoint, but what about migrating the design? What about all the forms, views, agents, workflows, and so on? One of the biggest barriers to moving large numbers of Notes applications to SharePoint is the cost of rebuilding complex applications. Unfortunately no migration tool allows you to press a button and magically reproduce the entire design of a custom Notes application in SharePoint. As we will see in this section, there are certain aspects of design migration where it makes sense to use a migration tool and others where it does not Migrating Schema from Notes Applications A custom Notes application may have dozens or even hundreds of fields, it is fortunate that high-end migration tools contain features that help you automate this task. This is typically a two-part process of deducing the schema being used in a Notes application and then provisioning a similar schema for SharePoint. Mapping the Notes schema to a SharePoint schema may be as simple as doing a one-to-one field mapping; in more complex cases, you may need to significantly transform the data between the two systems. A sophisticated migration tool will allow you to write formulas, perform lookups and apply other data transformation techniques Migrating Form Designs to InfoPath Structure your solution as a SharePoint List and customize the default web pages used to add, view, and modify documents in SharePoint. This form of development usually occurs in SharePoint Designer and requires a good understanding of web parts, web parts pages, and SharePoint internals. Structure your solution as a SharePoint library and use custom Microsoft Word templates to create complex documents. Your Word templates can contain content controls and be very structured and form-like. Word integrates with SharePoint very nicely, and portions of your Word documents can be synchronized with SharePoint properties for viewing and searching. Structure your solution as an InfoPath form library (as described above) and design a custom InfoPath form template to edit and view them. This is a popular solution if you have complex, multi-level Notes documents. Structure your solution as a SharePoint lists, but use InfoPath forms to edit them. This is an exciting new capability that was introduced with SharePoint It is in many ways the best of both worlds: the data is stored as a simple flat SharePoint list and developers can use InfoPath Designer to create nice looking form layouts.

24 Migrating Approval Process and Workflow State Organizations trying to migrate complex applications often consider workflow migration to be their biggest hurdle. The basic problem is that in the Notes world, workflow consists of buttons, forms, agents and scripts. In other words, all the workflow logic is buried in bits of code scattered throughout the application and implemented differently by each developer. This is quite different than SharePoint s modern declarative workflow environment. With declarative workflow you have a structured set of human-readable conditions and actions that is interpreted by a central workflow engine. No migration tool is going to be able to automatically convert code-based workflow to declarative workflow, so human intervention is definitely required here. The good news is that implementing workflow logic is generally much easier in SharePoint than it ever was in Notes. Don t be dismayed when you find a Notes application with hundreds of lines of code; depending on what that old code actually did, you may not have to write any new code at all. Of course, plenty of existing Notes applications cannot be rebuilt using just code-free declarative workflow as is, but many migration teams are looking at how they can simplify the application requirements so they can. The result is an application that is easier to understand, maintain, and upgrade later.

25 6.4 Security Mapping An extensive set of options are available for mapping various access control properties of the source Notes database and individual Notes documents to the equivalent security constructs in SharePoint. The following diagram summarizes the possible security mapping options available. Document items and display column values. Security Mapping Options allow to set access control rules in SharePoint

26 6.5 Tools used Migration Tools Migration tools from Microsoft and third party are available Select appropriate tool based on requirement and availability Development Tools Development tools from Microsoft and third party are available. Select appropriate tool based on requirement and availability. SharePoint Designer

27 6.3 Sample Screens pre & post migration Typical Lotus Notes Portal - Landing page Typical SharePoint Portal - Landing Page For Lotus Users, Ecotech Offers Consultancy and Services for: - Workflow identification, development and deployment - Integration with SharePoint - Application & Data Migration to SharePoint - Remote Administration & Helpdesk Support Contact us on or marketing@ecotechservices.com