Anyone ever migrate Lotus Notes to Exchange/Outlook?

pwjohnston

I might be getting a job where this might be a project. Personally I’d like to be prepared. I’m currently taking my 70-284(next week hopefully) and I am more familiar with general Exchange Administration than design and I am digging though whitepapers and guides on the net on the subject of coexistence and / or migration. After an interview I had today, it seems migration might be a lot higher on the agenda than I thought. I think they are running Notes 6 or 6.5 and I don’t know if they would want to move to Exchange 2003 or 2007(probably). They are a SMB, less than 100 users, but they have about 20 to 40 servers in the NOC.

This is primarily for the mail, they said they do have some Database applications they use with Notes, but that only accounts for about 10% of the Notes functions. Primary focus would be on mail first.

Just wondering if anyone has had any experience, opinions, or just general thoughts they would like to share.

Can outlook 2007 interface with a Notes server (or would it be a Domino server)?

blargoe

No experience at all first hand, but I do know for a fact that Exchange 2007 (and 2003) has an MS supported migration path from Lotus Notes, we just went over it in class yesterday.

Also my company's parent company has mandated that all of us upgrade to 2007... we were already there but everyone else was on Notes. From what I hear their migrations are going fine.

Turgon

pwjohnston wrote:

I might be getting a job where this might be a project. Personally I’d like to be prepared. I’m currently taking my 70-284(next week hopefully) and I am more familiar with general Exchange Administration than design and I am digging though whitepapers and guides on the net on the subject of coexistence and / or migration. After an interview I had today, it seems migration might be a lot higher on the agenda than I thought. I think they are running Notes 6 or 6.5 and I don’t know if they would want to move to Exchange 2003 or 2007(probably). They are a SMB, less than 100 users, but they have about 20 to 40 servers in the NOC.

This is primarily for the mail, they said they do have some Database applications they use with Notes, but that only accounts for about 10% of the Notes functions. Primary focus would be on mail first.

Just wondering if anyone has had any experience, opinions, or just general thoughts they would like to share.

Can outlook 2007 interface with a Notes server (or would it be a Domino server)?

Sounds like a great project for you there. Certainly you want to be pouring over any documented migration path on Technet etc. There may also be some books on the subject on Amazon. I don't support Exchange these days, but when I did I found there were very few good books on the subject but this may have changed now. Certainly get yourself on some newsgroups and get some insights on what will be involved. I guess aside from this the best advice I can give you is play for some time. This is a significant change for this company and it has to go well. You will be looking for some external help with this. If you are going to be solely responsible for it you will need time to research the necessary and put together a detailed migration plan with contingency in there. Make sure you can rollback. Arrange some kind of testing environment if at all possible and find someone reliable from outside the business who can advise you on all the technical issues. A good consultant or some support you can buy from Microsoft direct. You don't want to be doing this completely on your own.

Good luck.