According to a recent survey by analyst firm Osterman Research, nearly 65 percent of IT decision makers are likely to consider deploying Exchange 2010 within the next six months.
But for most IT professionals, going from 'determining a need' to 'implementing something' on any IT project usually has the same sticking point: migration.
For many, according to a recent white paper from Intermedia (
News -
Alert) -- which specializes in
hosted Exchange, migrations are daunting processes that require long nights and weekends at the office and endless hours of testing and validating data: 'IT professionals know that email systems are complex, layered applications and users' important data can easily be altered, tangled or completely left behind in a migration.'
Performing complex migrations efficiently and effectively with little-to-no end-user impact requires experience, the paper noted: 'Many professionals question how they will migrate their company's entire environment -- without hassles, failures, lost data or anxious end-users.'
Plus, on top of this major concern, IT professionals want to learn what they gain with respect to return on investment, SLAs, architecture and experience.
To that end, then, Intermedia gives some questions to ask a hosting provider to ensure as smooth a migration as possible:
- 'How much experience do you have with migrations?' A good yardstick is the number of accounts and mailboxes the company migrates on a monthly basis.
- 'How will my historical e-mail data and files be transferred?' Historical e-mail data can be exported in several ways. One preferred method is what we refer to as an ROH export where we use provided credentials to connect to a client's existing Exchange server and export the data remotely.
- 'What will the impact be to my end users?' You'll want to assure the cut-over is essentially 'hidden' to them and by setting the correct expectations the process should be painless.
- 'Who do I call when there are issues and how long would they take to help me in an emergency?' With how important migration is, look for 24x7.'
Microsoft (News - Alert) (News - Alert) certified support. Intermedia's average telephone hold time is less than 60 seconds -- a KPI unmatched in the industry.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David's articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.
Edited by Alice Straight
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