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July 2013
The Sherpa Approach: Why a Data “Garage Sale” is
Essential to Your Migration
Change is an inevitable fact of life. Businesses across the world deal with change on a
daily basis. No department within an organization might understand this fact better than the
Information Technology (IT) Department, as they face constant change every day in the
rapidly evolving field of IT.
Migration, the process of moving from the use of one operating environment to another, is a
source of constant change within IT departments across the globe. What were once
periodic events, migrations are now becoming an on-going process needing continuous
management. An example of a popular migration that many organizations are planning for
right now is moving from older versions of Microsoft Exchange (2003 or 2007) to a more
current version (2010 and 2013). Although it may seem easy to the untrained eye,
migrating even between Exchange versions can become a pretty complicated process.
Whether the impetus for migrating is a platform conversion (for example, Lotus Notes to
Exchange, or vice versa), a new version release (like Microsoft Exchange 2013) or the
adoption of a cloud-based email solution (such as Office 365), it’s safe to say that
migrations will continue to be one of IT’s hottest growing and ever-evolving topics. They
also remain one of the greatest challenges.
The “Garage
Sale” Mentality
“SMART”
Migration
The majority of companies that undertake a messaging migration today plan to take all of
their information from their current messaging system and transfer it to the target platform.
Often, this is the only option provided by their chosen migration tool or vendor. This may
sound manageable, but there are hidden risks and challenges to this methodology. Take
for example a family moving into a new home. Very rarely would they take everything they
owned in their old house, accumulated over many years, and move it into their new house.
The first thing they would do is have a garage sale. This is their process for getting rid of all
the items they no longer need. This obviously saves time and money when the move finally
occurs. Using this same analogy with regard to migrations, organizations may not need to
take all of their old information and transfer it to their new system. Most organizations can
benefit from a “garage sale” of their own to eliminate email and files they don’t need before
the migration occurs. The problem is that very few migration tools give you an option to
sort out unneeded or unnecessary information. It is an all or nothing approach and it can
cost you dearly when it comes to your budget and timeline.
By combining a suite of powerful tools, Mail Attender (Sherpa Software) and E2E (Binary
Tree), Sherpa is suggesting a different approach to migration, a smarter approach. This
comprehensive solution for analyzing, rationalizing and transforming messaging
environments is called a SMART migration. The big differentiator within a SMART
migration is focusing on migrating relevant content and getting rid of what you don’t need or
want. This is an important differentiation. Streamlining the migration process by minimizing
the volume of content that needs to be moved frees your IT team sooner for other projects,
provides a better experience for the end-user community and ultimately saves the
organization money.

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The SMART methodology is an acronym for five key process areas. They include:
Superior Strategy—Start with proven technology and partners. Armed with the right
technology, a trusted advisor can help ensure that you are heading towards success by
leading the discussions and planning sessions needed to properly evolve your messaging
platform. BinaryTree’s expertise in message conversion, coupled with Sherpa Software’s
expertise in email analytics, can help you gain actionable insight into your message
environment.
Messaging—Messaging is a common, yet mission-critical component of your
infrastructure. Define and establish benchmarks for what you want to achieve by enhancing
your messaging platform and implementing the Exchange Transformation Lifecycle.
Analysis—Collect the most complete and accurate information. Analyze the complex and
unique nature of your messaging environment, consisting of your users, servers, policies,
workflow and content.
Rationalization—Make the right decisions. Map your analysis to your business
requirements in order to develop a decision framework for rationalizing what, when and
how you will migrate. Don’t migrate data that isn’t required and that extends the duration of
the migration process not to mention takes up valuable storage space.
Transformation—Message system evolution is on-going. Adopt the processes, behaviors
and strategy that will enable you to continually monitor your email environment, keeping
your users satisfied, productive and mobile.
Sherpa Software’s Mail Attender product provides unparalleled analytics and complete
content management for any email environment. Mail Attender will allow companies to build
a statistical profile of individual user mailboxes or the entire organization. Then you will be
able to create ad-hoc reports that drill into message detail. From there you can then trim
mailbox content prior to the migration by copying, moving or deleting messages based on
age or other criteria. Lastly, Mail Attender will allow you to eliminate PST files prior to a
migration by ingesting them directly into the Exchange or Office 365 environment.
After trimming down your data using Mail Attender, Binary Tree's E2E Complete software
will simplify and streamline your Exchange migration by migrating users, not just mailbox
data. E2E Complete provides end-users with information, notifications and control over the
date that their mailbox is migrated, equipping project managers and administrators with
complete control over the migration. E2E Complete supports the SMART Exchange
Migration Methodology to automate intra-org, inter-org (cross-forest), cloud and hybrid
Exchange migrations as well as provide organizations with the capability to manage on-
going user migrations as part of the Exchange Transformation Lifecycle.
“We have been using
Mail Attender for
Exchange for the last 9
years and it has been
the most cost-effective
tool for helping us
maintain and manage
our Exchange
environment. I
recommend this tool to
anyone using
Exchange.”
-Anis Kazi, Qatar Steel
Company
Mail Attender
(Sherpa
Software)
E2E (Binary
Tree)

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Migrations of all types challenge the field of IT on a daily basis. They have become an
inevitable, on-going process that need continual oversight and planning. But remember
what Richard Bach said, “A tiny change today brings a dramatically different tomorrow.”
The SMART migration methodology can be the change your organization chooses to
deliver dramatically different results with respect to your migration. SMART is the best-
practice approach that combines technology and processes built from more than 20 years
of messaging transformation experience.
Just like the family we discussed who purchases a new home and kicks off their move with
a garage sale, Sherpa’s Approach to migration is to start with a “garage sale” of your own
and move the SMART way. Find out more by emailing information@sherpasoftware.com,
visiting us at www.sherpasoftware.com, or calling us toll free at 1-800-255-5155.
For over 10 years Sherpa Software has provided IT Professionals with award-winning
information management software specifically designed to address email management,
archiving, e-discovery, PST management and compliance requirements for Lotus Notes
and Microsoft Exchange environments. Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Sherpa’s
solutions are practical, reliable and affordable and have been installed at thousands of
organizations worldwide. Their products offer flexible architectures that streamline
administrative processes without requiring any additional hardware or add-on components.
Sherpa Software is an IBM Premier Business Partner and a Microsoft Certified Partner.
For more information about Sherpa Software, visit www.sherpasoftware.com.
The Solution
About Sherpa
Software
456 Washington Avenue
Bridgeville, PA 15017
www.SherpaSoftware.com
1.800.255.5155