White Paper: Managing Exchange Migrations with Enterprise Vault

[Michael_Bilsbor]

Introduction
Many organizations are considering replacing their legacy messaging systems with Microsoft Exchange
or upgrading from early versions. Whatever the drivers for these migrations are, all projects will face
major challenges in terms of project timescales and increased business risks. With email being one of
the most critical business applications used within organizations today reducing the risks associated
with the project are of paramount importance.

As a significant portion of the time and effort associated with an email migration project is attributed
to the movement of the various email and documents contained within the messaging system,
reducing this volume of data will help reduce not only the timescales associated with the project but
the risk.

Migrations to Microsoft Exchange are typically handled by either the built in Microsoft migration aid
tools or specialized 3rd party applications, all of which help to manage the actual migration process but
do nothing to reduce the amount of data needing migration. Some migration tools can in fact increase
the storage requirements after a migration event due to each new migrated message becoming unique
and therefore reducing the single instance ratio achieved in the legacy email system.
The bottom line of any migration is therefore to deliver the benefits of the new technology without
introducing undue risk or ongoing costs (both storage and administrative) while delivering a seamless
and transparent experience to the user.