11 Strategic Considerations for SharePoint Migrations #SPSVB

11 Strategic Considerationsfor SharePoint MigrationsChristian Buckleycbuck@axceler.com@buckleyPLANET SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach January 8th, 2011

My Background Christian Buckley, Director of Product Evangelism at Axceler Most recently at Microsoft Microsoft Managed Services (now BPOS-Dedicated) Advertising Operations, ad platform API program Prior to Microsoft, was a senior consultant, working in the software, supply chain, and grid technology spaces focusing on collaboration Co-founded and sold a collaboration software company to Rational Software. Also co-authored 3 books on software configuration management and defect tracking for Rational and IBM At another startup (E2open), helped design, build, and deploy a SharePoint-like collaboration platform (Collaboration Manager), managing deployment teams to onboard numerous high-tech manufacturing companies, including Hitachi, Matsushita, Seagate, Nortel, Sony, and Cisco I live in a small town just east of Seattle, have a daughter in college and 3 boys at home, and I just celebrated my 20th wedding anniversary

Axceler Overview Improving Collaboration for 16+ Years Mission: To enable enterprises to simplify, optimize, and secure their collaborative platforms Delivered award-winning administration and migration software since 1994 Over 2,000 global customers Dramatically improve the management of SharePoint Innovative products that improve security, scalability, reliability, “deployability” Making IT more effective and efficient and lower the total cost of ownership Focus on solving specific SharePoint problems (Administration & Migration) Coach enterprises on SharePoint best practices Give administrators the most innovative tools available Anticipate customers’ needs Deliver best of breed offerings Stay in lock step with SharePoint development and market trends

Why is this presentation important? Most content focused on the technical aspects of migration 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

Why is this presentation important? It’s not about the minutia of scripting methods to execute a hybrid database attach upgrade of your environment We’re here to discuss the sometimes technical, but much more “hip” exercise of proper migration planning This is the Jack Bauer of migration presentations, people My weapon today…….PowerPoint

This is your technical migration, i.e. the physical move of content and “bits”

This is the bulk of your migration – the planning, reorganization, and transformation of your legacy SharePoint environment

What is migration? Microsoft defines migration as three separate activities: The reality is that a single migration may include all three concepts

Moving to the latest, greatest platform What is migration? Transforming what you did with 2003/2007 to meet your organizational vision

Why migrations are difficult:

What are the Microsoft options?

11 strategies you should consider as part of your migration planning Understand the as-is and to-be environments Conduct proper capacity planning Understand the customizations on your source system Understand the migration schedule Plan for the right kind of migration Plan for file shares Plan for tagging, metadata, and taxonomy Understand centrally managed and decentralized environments Stage your platform for migration Decide where and when to involve the users Determine that your migration is successful

Strategy #1: Understand as-is and to-be environments A migration is an extensive business analyst activity Prior to any system redesign, understand your environment goals and purpose: Based on these requirements, you need to model out the “to be” environment What works What doesn’t work What are the organizational “must have” requirements What are the “nice to have” features

Strategy #1: Understand as-is and to-be environments What is your goal? What is your mission statement (Just kidding) What are you key use cases? What are your priorities?

Strategy #1: Understand as-is and to-be environments Migration is about transforming your existing system to meet operational needs. It’s as much about retooling current sites and content as it is about deploying new technology Don’t just tear down and rebuild if there’s something to be saved. Understand what you have to work with, have a vision for what it should look like, and move the pieces that should be moved

Strategy #2: Conduct proper capacity planning Understand your current environment: Number of users Number of sites Number of site collections Database size Geographical needs of your organization (how many sites, what are their usage patterns) Line of business application integration

Strategy #2: Conduct proper capacity planning Think about your future needs: User growth Estimates on site creation Estimates on database growth Security and Search needs

Strategy #2: Conduct proper capacity planning Map out your: Hardware Topology Performance requirements Security requirements Scalability Disaster recovery Business continuity

Strategy #3: Understand the customizations on your source system Pre-Upgrade Check provides some of the analysis: Searches content sources and start addresses Outlines Office Server topology Identifies servers in the current farm Lists SharePoint version and list of components running in the farm Outlines supported upgrade types Provides Site Definition and Feature information Details language pack information Identifies Alternate Access Mappings that will need to be recreated Outlines Customized List Views (these will not be upgraded) Outlines Customized Field Types (these will not be upgraded) Identifies WSS Search topology Provides list of Content Databases and SQL server location Joel Oleson, SharePoint 2010: Best Practices to Upgrade and Migrate

Strategy #3: Understand the customizations on your source system What kinds of customizations are on your source system? UI design Web parts Workflows Line of business applications 3rd party tools Custom features Site definitions Field types Custom SharePoint solutions Any changes to the file system on your SharePoint servers Pre-Upgrade Check provides some of the analysis How many of those customizations are outside of the SharePoint framework? Are there any customizations which can be replaced by out-of-the-box functionality?

Strategy #4:Understand the migration schedule What are the business drivers, not just the technology drivers? Cost Time Resources/People Do you have a defined project methodology? How long per phase, what is moved, what are the priorities? The schedule should be defined only after you understand the future state, set priorities, and get management buy-in. In short, what is the scope?

Strategy #5:Plan for the right kind of migration Does the migration plan include content, sites, metadata, and/or solutions? Each one brings with it a set of requirements and decisions What is the end goal? Is it a straight dump of everything, and you’ll clean up later, or do you need to restructure? Is your strategy the same for various organizations, different site collections, or farms?

Strategy #6: Plan for file shares Most file shares have become a dumping ground. Is the plan to move as-is and decommission old systems, or is this a clean up process? Are users driving, or is it an administrative effort? Are you planning to apply metadata and taxonomy?

Strategy #6: Plan for file shares Understand what is out there Who owns the content? Does it need to be moved? Does it need to be indexed/searchable? Is the folder structure important? Do you need to maintain historic metadata?

Strategy #6: Plan for file shares Users generally have three options: Move content, as-is, into SharePoint and clean up there Clean and organize content first, then move to a new structure in SharePoint Migrate content in waves, using the iterations to sort through and organize your content while in transit, moving some content as-is, reorganizing and transforming others To be honest, option 3 is very difficult to manage in SharePoint, but 3rd party tools do a great job here

Strategy #7: Plan for tagging, metadata, and taxonomy In Biology, taxonomy is the science dealing with the description, identification, naming, and classification of organisms. “however, the term is now applied in a wider, more general sense and now may refer to a classification of things, as well as to the principles underlying such a classification.” “Metadata provides context for data. Metadata is used to facilitate the understanding, characteristics, and management usage of data. The metadata required for effective data management varies with the type of data and context of use.”Wikipedia.org

Strategy #7: Plan for tagging, metadata, and taxonomy Common Migraines Ad-hoc content migration leads to junk in portal Legacy content gets migrated slowly, if at all Inconsistent taxonomy across farms and site collections People author locally - multiplies problems globally Authors don’t apply metadata= “shotgun” approach to search OR Authors apply metadata without common classification = better search, but worse authoring experience Portal lacks high fidelity search User can’t find the right content As a result, poor portal adoption and low user satisfaction

Strategy #7: Plan for tagging, metadata, and taxonomy What is your broader strategy for tagging, metadata and taxonomy? Map out your high level taxonomy (web applications and site collections) and schemas (Content Types) Understand the as-is and to-be, and how it relates to your metadata

Strategy #7: Plan for tagging, metadata, and taxonomy Map out your high level taxonomy (web applications and site collections) and schemas (Content Types) Understand the as-is and to-be, and how it relates to your metadata With Managed Metadata Service in 2010, it is critical that you set up a governance model to guide this process, or it will quickly get out of hand

Strategy #8: Understand centrally managed and decentralized environments

Strategy #8: Understand centrally managed and decentralized environments Use of services greatly improves concerns over the decentralized model: Services can be centrally managed Sites and Site Collections can consume these services, within certain boundaries You still need to understand the administrative impacts You need to clearly define roles / service owners Define your governance model / change control board

Strategy #9: Stage your platform for migration Understanding your requirements: Hardware / software Network Virtual environments Hosting / datacenter Downtime / end user impacts Communication Location of your teams Backup/recovery Coordinate your planning with the operations team

Strategy #10: Decide where and when to involve users This is the most fluid of the strategic considerations, as it really just depends At a high-level, end users who participate in the creation of a system are more likely to accept / support that system once deployed

Strategy #10: Decide where and when to involve users Where end users should be involved: Creation of use cases Creation of as-is documentation Prioritization of requirements for to-be environment They know their content – let them drive File share migrations, or organization Taxonomy development Metadata assignment Signoff on overall project plan

Strategy #11: Define what success looks like Possible success metrics: Target number of end users migrated Target number of sites migrated Databases migrated File shares migrated and decommissioned 2010 live, users able to manually migrate their content

Online and offline resources 11 Strategic Considerations for SharePoint Migrations (Buckley), http://slidesha.re/d3RHNH Upgrading SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 (Anders Rask), http://bit.ly/bjWXMS Migrating to SharePoint 2010 (Randy Williams), http://bit.ly/bNgX0U Upgrading to SharePoint 2010 (Microsoft), http://bit.ly/dm2kDO Hardware and software requirements for 2010 (Microsoft), http://bit.ly/bTGe2b SharePoint 2010: Best Practices to Upgrade and Migrate (O’Reilly, Safari), http://oreil.ly/chSHli Migrating to MOSS 2007 (Stephen Cummins), http://bit.ly/9Ismfp Planning to Upgrade to SharePoint 2010 (Joel Oleson), http://slidesha.re/16iiUX What’s New in SharePoint 2010 Capacity Planning (Joel Oleson), http://bit.ly/9cT9aa ReadyPoint migration planning tool for 2007 to 2010 migrations (Axceler), http://bit.ly/9GgDuY PreUpgradeCheck (Microsoft), http://bit.ly/cIHIlA SharePoint 2010 Products Upgrade Approaches (Microsoft), http://bit.ly/dphQ2W

For more information Contact me at Christian Buckley, cbuck@axceler.com, 425-246-2823 On Twitter at @buckleyplanet Additional Resources available White papers The Insider’s Guide to Upgrading to SharePoint 2010 What to Look for in a SharePoint Management Tool The Five Secrets to Controlling Your SharePoint Environment Tools ReadyPoint (free) Davinci Migrator echo for SharePoint 2007

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11 Strategic Considerations for SharePoint Migrations #SPSVB

by Christian Buckley

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11 Strategic Considerations for SharePoint Migrations #SPSVB Presentation Transcript