How to migrate from Notes to Exchange?

What is Lotus Notes and Exchange server?

Lotus Notes: The IBM Lotus notes client application provides features for integrating messaging, business applications and social collaboration. Notes also provides features for information management, you can easily access the data such as: email, calendars, contacts, activities, instant messaging, collaboration tools, and business applications.

Exchange server:  Exchange Server application has been launched by Microsoft. It provides capabilities for calendaring, E-mailing and contact management.

What makes a user to migrate from Notes to Exchange?

We cannot exactly conclude which one of the two is best either Notes to Exchange. The choice and strategy about these two varies from user to user. So, what I am discussing here is the basic philosophy of the users planning to migrate from Notes to Exchange or those who have already migrated from Notes to Exchange.
 

As compared to Lotus Notes the cost of ownership is lower in Exchange server. It let you easily add-up the server and sites with lower use of manpower and cost factors. Besides that it provides you interactive and useful features like integrated functionality for Mobile apps, leveraged third party solutions and more flexible messaging features. A lot more you can experience with the exchange server: its ease of use & maintenance, lesser learning curves, low costs for current and future collaboration solutions and increased throughput etc.
 

Well, user’s personal choice is always not the leading factor for migrating from one Email platform to another platform. Suppose if the organization is shifting the current Email platform to a new platform then, willingly or unwillingly users have to migrate. They will have to get familiar with the new application and learn about it. Or if a person changes job/ job location and there a different mail application is being used then also he is forced to work with the new app. There are other secondary reasons for migration such as: any new update, technology changes, organization structure changes, changes in business needs, coast and maintenance factors etc. 

How to perform efficient Notes to Exchange migration?

Migrating from one platform to another platform is too costly and time consuming process for an organization, especially in case of large organizations. The cost of hardware, installation, software purchase, licenses required, pre installation and post installation training to the employees, risk mitigation costs that can occur while migration and later on maintenance & other related costs etc.
 

So, for an efficient Notes to Exchange migration the organization must first do and efficient planning. You must significantly check for the system requirements and other pre-migration & post migration needs.
 

The most important thing comes when the organization has to decide which tool to use for “Notes to Exchange migration”?
 

Accuracy, perfection, speed, and risk-free migration these are the prior features that a “Notes to Exchange migrator” should contain. The tool must be efficient enough to perform migration from Notes to Exchange easily and safely. The tool must be reliable and risk free, no loss to the data can be bearable. Other factor that comes next is time. The tool must be able to perform the migration in lesser time as much as possible. Because consuming a long time and lot of resources in the migration would adversely affect the business.

The most significant features that “Notes to Exchange migrator” software must have are:

• The tool allows you to efficiently migrate from the Lotus Notes mailbox to MS Exchange mailboxes
• The tool allows you to migrate from all your Notes mailboxes (email messages, sent items, attachments, notes, reminders, calendars etc.) to Exchange without any data loss or loss of formatting. 
• The tool provides you an easy to use and interactive interface that let you perform the migration without requiring any extra assistance. 
• The tool doesn’t make any changes to the mailbox and its items. The mailbox and Meta data integrity is kept intact after migration. 
• The tool allows you to perform selective migration of the mailbox items. You can choose which mailboxes are to be migrated. The tool also facilitates to extract particular folders and items within the folders. 
• Besides migration of the converted Notes items to Exchange, The tool also allows you to save them to multiple file formats such as .pst files, .msg files, and .eml files.
• The tool allows you to migrate from all versions of Lotus Notes to Exchange server.
• The tool allows you to perform multiple mailbox conversion simultaneously. 
• The tool allows you to preview the scanned mailbox/mailboxes   . Preview indicates that user is all set for migration. Once user is connected to Domino Server, the software displays the list of items so that user could select the desired folders or items that have to be migrated.
• The software must provide wide compatibility and support. It should be compatible with various Exchange, Notes and Outlook versions.  

So, for a smooth migration from Notes to Exchange, choose the Notes to Exchange migrator wisely. Thoroughly go through the information given at the product page.  Checkout the product features to ensure that the software possess all the functionalities what you desired. 

You can find many software that will promise an efficient Notes to Exchange migration but instead of finalizing the one, try out the demo versions of few software. You can easily compare and evaluate the interface, functionalities and output of all the tested software. Among the tested one choose the one that seems best. 

Also check if the company provides some additional services like remote support, help manuals, special offers or discounts, money back guarantee and technical assistance etc. Once you are done with this primarily exploration, you can opt for the software that seems to suit best to you.