SharePoint Hassle Free Migration with Sharegate & Metalogix
The migration of existing business content to SharePoint 2016 or SharePoint Online (including Office 365) is not a small task. Ideally, organizations should spend time discovering and auditing the content, then creating an ideal information architecture to improve upon existing models. Finally, whenever possible, comprehensive testing before and after the migration should be performed to minimize risk. Major factors such as SharePoint customizations and external system integration need to be fully fleshed out before the migration work can begin.
Move your business to Office 365 or SharePoint
Migration and upgrade projects are an opportunity to free SharePoint content so that end-users, developers, and administrators can all benefit from improved information architecture and functionality.
To complete the migration activity successfully to SharePoint 2016 on-premises or SharePoint Online (Cloud Provider under Office 365), need good planning and analysis. Many types of migration approaches exist, it is important to organizations (Architects) understand that they do not have to stick to a particular migration approach.
Gain full visibility and understand the risks
Migrations are not so much about the technical act of moving the data (although very important) but more about the planning that goes into preparing for the migration.
Migration could be defined as three separate activities.
Migration Challenges
Phased: Should be flexible based on end-user needs and not the limitations of the technology.
Iterative: Shouldn’t be limited by the number of migrations attempts but should allow users to provide their feedback.
Error-prone: There is no simple step to “Migrate”. Keep trying until you get it right via pre-checks, customizations or third-party tools (Sharegate or Metalogix).
Not the end goal: The ultimate goal should be a stable environment, relevant metadata, discoverable content and happy end users.
Enforce your governance and compliance policies
Governance is about mitigating risks, whether managing your intellectual property from creation through archival/deletion or meeting your auditing, compliance and other legal requirements. It’s about ensuring data integrity, enforcing your change management processes, and helping you to determine the education and training needed for each role, from the end user to farm administrator.
Once you have mapped your requirements against SharePoint’s capabilities, you’ll be in a much better position to be able to determine whether you should build or buy to meet those requirements. Document your environmental constraints, such as your data retention and compliance requirements, as well as Microsoft’s recommendations around site and storage limitations, performance tuning, and other SharePoint standards.
You need to review all the changes on a regular basis as you add your new workloads and refine your governance strategy until you find the right meeting cadence going forward and iterate on your strategy, as needed.
Protect your enterprise content
Archiving – An act of hiding content from users for a specific time period which could be accessed post time expiration.
Retention, protection and auditing Policy – help you guarantee your records are properly retained. Audit trails are in place to provide proof to internal and external auditors that records were retained appropriately.
Discovery and Record Management – To store and protect business records.
Migration Approach
- Microsoft introduced the SharePoint Migration Tool which could help Organizations to achieve the milestone. However, this product is still in BETA release.
- Using Third Party Products (Sharegate, Metalogix)
We not only helped our various clients to just migrate their legacy system to the latest SharePoint platform but also transforming the existing processes to meet their business requirements and operational processes. The planning and strategies could differ for each organization but primary roadmap remains the same.
Summary
Migration is not just about moving data to a new platform but using the move as an opportunity to realize your true operational vision and to get your end users and other stakeholders involved in the process. It’s a time to consider all of your business and environmental constraints, thinking about security, compliance, performance, and simplifying the platform for your end users and administrators alike.