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Thursday 12 February 2015
2/12/2015 10:20:00 pm 0

Overcoming Challenges of Migration from GroupWise to MS Exchange

While working as a messaging platform, GroupWise provides a lot of top class features such as Web Access, Mobile access, Instant Messaging and Contact Management which makes it more popular. Some of its features such as LDAP authentication, encrypted data storage, SSL & promptly patched code etc. makes this platform more secure.

However every mail platform has its different cons and pros attached to them. Some users find it difficult to work with GroupWise platform due to its inconvenient work environment .So why would someone choose GroupWise if there are a lot of other mail platforms providing same features at lesser cost. MS Outlook is one of those most popular mail client Email Platforms at present because of its easy to use interface and simplified approach. 
         
Why to go for Migration

Users which are working with GroupWise from long time may find it easy to work in this environment but new GroupWise users find it difficult to use all features and work in GroupWise Environment. There are also a lot of other factors like lesser flexibility, More Cost, difficulty to understand which force users to migrate towards MS Exchange. In those conditions, migration from GroupWise to Exchange is performed. As Exchange provides users with much better flexibility and effective front end, some users migrate from GroupWise to Exchange just to avail advanced inbuilt features such as Task Management, Notes, Forums, and Large Community Support etc. of MS Exchange.

How to Migrate from GroupWise to Exchange: 

For migrating GroupWise to Exchange, Novell’s GroupWise has provided Exchange Server connector for accessing GroupWise data with Exchange Server, But for that user need to configure both servers in coordination, which is very costly,lengthy process, and need time to accomplish. Moreover,you cannot halt this process during migration, and doing so may result in data loss. All this process is not easy to perform, you should have complete knowledge of migration process else migration may result in complexities.

Common Problems migrating GroupWise to Exchange:

Migrating from Domino environment to Exchange is not an easy task to carry out and executing it manually require a lot of time and expertise, minor mistake during migration may lead to bigger fault.


Time Consuming: Migrating is not a quick process; lot of time is needed during migration. During migration both the servers are needed to be active and their directories should be synchronized.
Data integrity: Inmigration from GroupWise to Exchange patternof data in the mailbox could be tampered. You may find that after migration your mail messages, sender details, attachment details are not intact.
Data Loss: It is unreasonable to expect complete hundred percent data to migrate. Some of your crucial mails could get deleted from mailbox after migration.
Importing Attachments: GroupWise to Exchange Migration is not a simple Email migration, rather it is a complex process. All the content in mailbox such as contacts, calendars, events, tasks, notes is migrated after active directories of both the servers are synchronized, so a lot of time is needed.


How to Overcome These Problems
So as to reduce complexities,save time and efforts during manual conversion, alternatively you can use any professional tool . Stellar GroupWise to Exchange Migrator is one of such tool which allows GroupWise to exchange migration in quick time with great expertise without causing any data loss and server downtime.


Features of this tool:

Stellar GroupWise to Exchange Migrator provide you most quick and secure environment to migrate your GroupWise Mailbox to Exchange

·         Migrates GroupWise Mailbox to .pst, .eml and .msg format.
·         Provides preview of the mail  items before migration
·         Migrate multiple mailboxes simultaneously
·         Maintain Data Integrity during migration
·         Allows Selective Migration of mailboxes
·         Supports GroupWise version GW-2012, 8.0, 7.0, 6.5, 6.0


After analyzing complete migration process, it is clear that doing migration manually is very time consuming and insecure. And while going for coexistence of both GroupWise and MS Exchange it becomes very costly. So using third party tools for migration is a best way to migrate from Novell GroupWise to Exchange Server.