Help for Notes migration effort

If you happen to be facing a migration of all your users e-mails from IBM's Domino server to Microsoft Exchange, Richard Hoffman, vice president of product development for AXS-One Inc. in Rutherford, N.J., has a word of advice: Don't.

Don't get Hoffman wrong. He's not saying you should or shouldn't move your users from one product to another. That's your business decision. But he does suggest that instead of moving all your users messages in one fell swoop from their Notes client (Domino) to be readable in Outlook (Exchange), archive them in his company's Dynamic Data Migration (DDM) repository.

Old Notes e-mails can be seen in Outlook, but only when a user wants to read one does the data migration process take place from the DDM archive to Exchange.

Hoffman says this approach can lift some of the data migration load IT hefts during the transition to Exchange. He points to the problems associated with properly moving digitally signed Notes messages into Outlook, where signatures can be lost, potentially leading to compliance and customer-communications problems.

Then there are all of those Notes applications you've created over the years that are linked within Notes e-mails. Hoffman claims those links are maintained in the DDM. (So long as you keep the server running those apps alive, users can access them.)

Another problem you avoid with the AXS-One archive approach is Notes users screaming at you after you have followed what Hoffman says is Microsoft's advice and limit each end user mailbox to 150 Mbytes, generally much smaller than Notes users maintain.

The Dynamic Data Migration software ships later this quarter. Pricing has not been set.