life after ibm lotus notes: how to successfully transition to a sharepoint world
DESCRIPTION
Imagine you are a developer, administrator, or business person who uses IBM Lotus Notes (yes, it still exists!), and your IT department one day announces that your organization is migrating to SharePoint. Should you celebrate? Should you start looking for another job? Will your world as you know it cease to exist? In this session, you will receive a practical and realistic view of what a migration from Notes to SharePoint involves. You will understand the gaps between the migration vendor promises and the reality of what it takes to move an application to the new SharePoint platform. As a business person, you will gain an understanding of how your business processes might work within SharePoint. As a developer, you will discover the basic skillsets needed to start delivering functional SharePoint sites that deliver value to the business. As an administrator, you will start to get a handle on the parts of your Microsoft environment that are involved in running a SharePoint installation. Based on five years of successes and scars in a migration effort, I will help you avoid some of the headaches and heartburn that are part of any large-scale migration project. There is life after Notes, and you can be a star in your new world.TRANSCRIPT
Life After IBM Lotus Notes: How to Successfully Transition to a SharePoint World
Thomas DuffUS, GMT -8
April 16th /17th, 2014
Thomas DuffSoftware EngineerCambia HealthPortland, OregonUS
Contact
@[email protected] / sharepointduffbert.com
Pre-SP24 “Life After Lotus Notes” session…
Post-SP24 “Life After Lotus Notes” session…
Why this session? Moving from Notes to SharePoint (when you’re a Notes person) usually isn’t a voluntary decision on your part.
It can be (and is) a daunting proposition… I hope to give you some context on what’s going to change and how you can get ready for it.
Disclaimer! There is no “one” or “right” way to migrate from Notes to SharePoint (or anything else).
Pragmatism over perfection worked best for us.
This is our story and experience… your mileage will vary.
My experience and context Working with Notes and
Domino since 1996.
PCLP in development and administration from v4.5 through v8.
Spoke at conferences/wrote articles and books.
I really like(d) Notes/Domino.
My experience and context Company had been
using Notes/Domino since early ‘90s (version 3).
We used the whole IBM stack (mail, applications, Sametime, Quickr, etc.).
Our environment 2200 databases
(document libraries, discussion databases, team rooms, custom applications).
7500+ Notes clients and mail files.
Spanned versions 3 through 8.5.
• Servers… at the peak – 25 to 30? (NOT the admin!)
• Development staff of 1 to 15 (depending on when you ask).
• Administration staff of 2 to 6 (again, depending on when you ask).
So why did we migrate? General attitude of
“we prefer Outlook”.
Ended up re-justifying use of Notes/Domino each year.
Finally management decided to adopt the Microsoft stack of Exchange / Lync / SharePoint.
So why did we migrate? Migration of mail is
easy…
Migration of applications? Not so much…
My life started to change in 2009…
What was the “plan”? The mail and
calendaring would happen in September 2009.
• Applications would be analyzed and migrated “shortly after that”…
Um, yeah… about those applications…
Notes Applications
SharePoint (and other
stuff) ApplicationsMagic
Happens Here
Email and calendar migration… Testing showed that
actual migration of emails and calendar entries would be questionable in terms of accuracy and fidelity.
The decision was made to start with new Outlook mailboxes on the cutover date.
Email and calendar migration… Access to Notes mail files
remained for a few months during the cutover (forwarding emails, copying calendar entries, reference purposes).
Actual Notes mail file shutdown happened over a year later.
Application migration… Engaged a migration
vendor to analyze our application environment.
Statistics collected such as location, size, server location(s), template used, etc.
Application migration… The deliverable was a
spreadsheet and PowerPoint report on what was found.
And now the work begins…
Regardless of the advertising…
There is no silver bullet!
What we learned about our apps We really did have
~60% unused databases.
We had ~20% “pure” template-based databases.
Everything else was custom-built with varying levels of documentation and support.
What we learned about our apps This is the point where
decisions have to be made… archive, obsolete, migration software, in-house or vendor to rewrite applications.
Our decisions… We did not buy
migration software due to expense and “data cleaning”.
We did not engage consultants to help us migrate applications… cost was steep.
Our decisions… The goal was to
migrate “off of Notes”, not necessarily “to SharePoint”.
Our Notes development resources for migration to SharePoint and tracking Notes applications was… me.
Archiving vs. Obsoleting In many cases, no way
to track down business owners.
Biggest clues were dates of the last data created or modified.
Access logs helped determine if the data was still referenced.
Archiving vs. Obsoleting Archiving – moving
database replica to hub server and make read-only.
Obsoleting – moving database replica to hub server and make no access.
Five years later… All but 2 applications (3
databases) have been migrated from active use.
Most forms-based applications went to SharePoint (customized lists, team sites, InfoPath forms).
Five years later… Other applications
went to existing platforms (like Remedy) or were rewritten by other development teams.
Not all applications moved to SharePoint were “optimal”.
Lessons learned Application migration
and rewrites will take longer than expected.
There has to be executive backing to get the business to give up their Notes applications.
Lessons learned
There’s a high probability that IT management will under-estimate the use of Notes applications, as well as the effort it will take to get “off of Notes”.
More lessons learned
There’s a difference between migrating and “turning off Notes”.
No matter how much you mention it, it will come as a surprise to management.
More lessons learned You will need to
address data retention (legal, regulatory, operational, litigation).
That is not an easy job.
“Shutting down Notes” may mean “shrink it until it disappears”.
If you don’t have one, find one!
Make sure you have a
“SharePoint Buddy”
What if you’re a business user? In my opinion, you will
have much more power and possibilities.
The potential to be a “power user” or “citizen developer” is much higher than it is in Notes.
What if you’re a business user? The Microsoft stack
has very good integration between Office, SharePoint, and Outlook (and it keeps getting better).
What if you’re a developer? Defining a “SharePoint
Developer” is like defining “groupware”.
There are numerous ways to build “no-code” applications.
JavaScript and jQuery can be added to pages very easily.
Must-read post: http://www.markrackley.net/2014/03/12/so-you-still-want-to-be-a-sharepoint-developer/
What if you’re a developer? For “real
programmers”, there’s Visual Studio and .Net/C#/VB.
However, this should not be your “path of first choice”.
If you’re not a .Net developer, the learning curve can seem overwhelming.
What if you’re an administrator? Domino can be
installed and running in 15 minutes (even by a developer)…
SharePoint, not so much…
You need to know a lot more than “just SharePoint” (compared to “just Domino”).
What if you’re an administrator? Windows Server, Active
Directory, SQL Server, networking, security, firewalls, patching, etc…
The more you understand, the easier it will be to troubleshoot issues.
SharePoint can seem (and often is) much more fragile than Domino.
to
(or feels like it much too often…)
Summary There is life after
Notes (for both the business and IT).
Some things will work better, and some things will be worse.
The learning curve may be steep, but the opportunities are large.
Summary
Ultimately, it’s just software used to solve business problems… that’s why we are here!
Need help or resources? This conference (SP24
- http://www.sp24conf.com)
SharePoint Community (http://sharepoint-community.net)
SharePoint Saturday Events (http://www.spsevents.org)
• Microsoft SharePoint Support (http://support.microsoft.com/ph/935_)
• Microsoft Press Books (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=microsoft+press+sharepoint&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Amicrosoft+press+sharepoint)
...the anchor will pick some of them up!
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