SMART Migration Assessment for Domino - binarytree.com

Confidential and Proprietary Binary Tree, Inc.

SMART Migration Assessment for Domino

Conducted for Company Name

Month date, Year

SMART MIGRATION ASSESSMENT FOR DOMINO 2

Executive Overview

Description of Business Needs

Company Name is planning to migrate its current IBM Notes/Domino mail platform to a Microsoft Exchange platform. An assessment of the current Domino platform has been completed to ensure that your company plans to maximize the cost savings and efficiencies that can be realized during your upcoming migration. Binary Tree’s SMART Migration Assessment for Domino has saved Company Name x-x times the cost of performing a similar assessment, as well as preventing cost overruns and extended timelines for your migration project. Company Name has engaged Binary Tree to perform an analysis of its current IBM Domino environment and make recommendations on how best to prepare for the mail migration project.

The SMART Migration Assessment for Domino solution has been implemented within Company Name’s environment to identify potential consequences surrounding the migration to Exchange/Office 365. This assessment has identified several anomalies which can impede the migration if not properly remediated prior to executing the migration. These anomalies include encrypted emails, synchronization of personal contacts and personal journal entries, large attachments, and identified SMTP mail address issues that will affect coexistence and migration.

This document will identify those aspects of Company Name’s unique IBM Domino environment that are specific to migrations to Microsoft Exchange and also provide remediation recommendations based upon best industry practices.

Approach

Binary Tree conducted discovery, data collection and analysis of Company Name’s Domino mail servers, databases and Domino directory using Binary Tree’s proprietary SMART Migration Assessment for IBM Notes tool. A detailed review of the findings is presented within this document.

In order to realize savings and cost efficiencies, the migration will be performed using Binary Tree’s CMT for Exchange product and will be complemented by the use of Binary Tree’s product CMT for Coexistence.


Business Value Delivered

Binary Tree is delivering an in-depth understanding of Company Name’s existing Domino messaging environment as well as providing information that will be extremely valuable for Company Name’s future architecture and migration planning. The results of this analysis will assist in the coexistence and migration of the Domino messaging environment over to Microsoft Exchange. It will be a determining factor in making a recommendation regarding what should be migrated and how.

The SMART Migration Assessment for Domino is an opportunity to identify, isolate, and rectify potential issues before an organization’s user base is migrated to help ensure the overall migration is successful. Conducting this assessment provides Company Name the option to proactively address known migration issues prior to the migration project versus reactively remediating during the migration. A customer of your size typically sees a reactive remediation effort taking about an hour of effort on a per user basis during the migration.

By addressing these items proactively (i.e., before the migration) typically saves the customer about 60% of that time investment. Using a “batch method,” this alternate process will inevitably result in higher end user satisfaction, less calls to the Support Desk, lower risk and greater cost savings.

The following chart outlines areas that are identified as savings:

Areas of Savings Timed Saved

Estimated value

Support Calls (Cost @ $50 an hour for Support Desk staff) Missing Contacts Encrypted Items Missing application messages Missing data

265 Hours $13,875

Migration Activities (Cost @ $75 an hour for Project Team) Remigration of missing contacts Remediating Encrypted items Directory sync Remediation

Remediation of mail files that are too large

530 Hours $39,750

Note: Typically we see 1 call for every three users for item identified in this report if not proactively addressed


Additional areas of savings, if a reactionary approach is used, for the project will be:

Time that is spent by Company Name executives on issues that they experience. Companies typically see about .5 hours per executive on issues, while executive admins spend twice that amount of time in support of an executive.

Project issues cost the management of IT (4) hours a week during migrations gathering statistics and reporting to senior management the progress of problems and resolutions within the project.

Project team and support staff will spend about 25% of their week collecting data and remediating issues during the migration phase of the project.

When reactively performing the remediation of issues, issues can arise with

applications and how they will work within the Exchange environment. This will

require urgent remediation from the application development team to reduce the

loss of productivity of the user base.

Users will have issues either with applications that are no longer working as they did

prior to being migrated, or will have issues with other data conversion items like

missing contacts which will cause them to lose productivity.

Company Name’s Current Environment The current environment at Company Name utilizes Domino for daily messaging tasks including email, calendaring, and scheduling. The environment consists of 2900 users located in an office in New York, referred to as the Northeast Region, and a second office in Texas, referred to as the South Region. While there are Domino applications in the environment hosted on the same servers as the users’ mail files, Domino is (or isn’t) heavily used from an application standpoint. The section will address the environment that is being utilized for this pre-migration assessment.

The Company Name’s environment consists of x Domino servers. The servers can be categorized as follows:

Server 1/Company Name – Mail Server

Server 2/Company Name – SMTP Gateway

Server 3/Company Name – Mail Server

Server 4/Company Name – Application Server

Server 5/Company Name – Application Server


Messaging Server Audit There are x mail servers in the Company Name’s messaging environment:

Server Name IP Address Software Version

OS Data Center

Users Mail Routing

Notes Named Network

Server 1/Org Name 192.168.100.1 Release 8.5.3FP6

Windows X

North East DC

1800 Mail TCPIP


Windows X

South DC

1100 Mail TCPIP

Server3/Org Name 192.168.100.2 Release 8.5.3FP6

Windows X

North East DC

0 SMTP TCPIP

The pre-migration assessment did not include the servers in the following table. These servers were deemed out of scope based on project requirements.

Server Name IP Address Software Version

OS Data Center

Users Mail Routing

Notes Named Network


Windows X

North East

Region

0 Mail TCPIP


Windows X

South Region

0 Mail TCPIP

The reports and charts that follow summarize the key data gathered as part of this analysis.


Key Environment Settings The following table(s) summarizes key environment information, per Domain, gathered during the analysis.

Item Description Data

Domain #1

Number of mail files inspected Count of mail files inspected 2900

Date Range of Mail Review Period of days analyzed 90

Date Range of Calendar Review Period of days analyzed 90

Minimum size of mail file Minimum size of mail file in MB 17 MB

Maximum size of mail file Maximum size of mail file in MB 15 GB

Average mail file size Average size of mail file 780 MB

Number of IBM Notes users Count of IBM Notes users 2900

Number of persons in domain

Count of persons per Domino Domain 3100

Mail Template Version Mail Template Version 8.5

Notes Client Build Primary Lotus IBM Notes client release 8.5.3

Client OS Platform Primary Lotus IBM Notes client platform Win 8.1

Note: A small number of users were identified as running on Macintosh. These users

might require additional special handling.


Summary of Analysis The table below is a summary of each finding that follows in detail. Each of the areas analyzed has been given a level of risk that indicates an opportunity for improvement and remediation prior to a migration from Domino to Exchange.

Areas Analyzed Analysis Risk Summary

Messaging

Encrypted Items

Attachment Size

Contacts

Mail Rules

Journals

Stored Forms

Stationery

Non-Routed Items

Application-Coded Emails

Directory

SMTP Formatting

Missing SMTP Addresses

Non-Supported Character Sets

Formatting Issues

Short Name Errors

Duplicate Addresses

Certifier Analysis

Domains


Mail File Audit Company Name utilizes Domino for its messaging tasks including email, calendaring, and scheduling. As part of the messaging audit, Binary Tree analyzed the mail files located on all mail servers.

A total of 2,900 active users mail files were analyzed. Of these, x were under x MB in size and x files were in excess of x MB. A detailed listing of mail files and the associated information are found on the last tab of the attached spreadsheet.

Mailbox Sizes 2900

< 250 MB 87

251 – 500 MB 1523

501 – 1,000 MB 986

1,001 – 5,000 MB 190

>5,000 MB 114

Understanding the limitations of mail migrations due to the size of mail files and attachments is critical to success in both hosted and on-premises mail solution migrations. The Binary Tree SMART Remediation for Domino Migration offering will provide you with an understanding of both the technical and practical mail file and attachment restrictions associated with Company Name’s migration.

3%

52%34%

7%4%

Mail File Ranges

<250Mb

251-500Mb

501-1,000Mb

1001-5,000Mb

>5,000Mb


Encrypted Items in the User Mailboxes

Assessing of Encrypted Items

One of the common challenges encountered during a mail migration is the handling of encrypted mail. During a Domino-to-Exchange migration process, encrypted items can only be migrated as an encapsulated item within a Domino database unless some pre-processing of the encrypted mail takes place.

It is important that customers analyze the amount of encrypted mail items that exist prior to a migration so that a determination can be made as to how to properly plan for them during the migration.

Assessment of Encrypted Items

Total User Mailboxes 2900

Users with <10 Encrypted Items 2436

Users with 10+ Encrypted Items 464

Remediation Warning Mail messages, attachments and calendar items cannot be fully migrated if they are encrypted. Domino utilizes a Public/Private Key infrastructure to encrypt messages. Items that are encrypted can only be read by the intended recipient. Encrypted items must be identified and remediated before they can be migrated from Domino to Exchange. A failure to properly remediate these messages will result in the message content being migrated as an encapsulated item in a Domino database or blank body and increase end user dissatisfaction.

84% with <10

16% with 10+

16% of the 2900 User Mailboxes Have 10 or More Encrypted Items


Any migrated encapsulated item will require the IBM Notes client to be retained on the user’s workstation in order to be read.

Binary Tree offers several different type of remediation services that will address encrypted items; these include:

An end user decryption process sent via an end user migration communication

Encapsulating the encrypted message into the body of the migrated message

Binary Tree recommends (indicate which from above) for Company Name’s environment.

Personal Address Book and Personal Journal Data Another common challenge encountered during Domino-to-Exchange mail migrations is the migration of personal address books and journal data, which are generally stored on the user’s local workstation in a file called names.nsf. While this is generally the case for most IBM Notes implementations, there are some exceptions. An example of this is support for mobile devices.

The key requirement for Personal Address Book and Personal Journal data to be migrated is a synchronization with the IBM Domino server mail file.

Assessment of User Contacts Contacts are important to an organization’s Sales and Operations teams. Binary Tree’s experience indicates that most users maintain personal contacts, especially company executives and account managers. All users desire a seamless migration of contacts during a Domino-to-Exchange migration. Unless an organizational policy was implemented and maintained to synchronize contacts from the personal address books to the user’s mail file, the contacts will not migrate unless a required remediation action is completed.

Total Users 2900

Users with <25 Contacts 2081

Users with 25-50 Contacts 396



Users with >500 Contacts 45


Remediation Warning Personal Address Book (Contacts) that are to be migrated must be present in the server mail file.

Users with local contacts must be identified and their local contacts must be synchronized to the server mail file before they can be migrated from Domino to Exchange. This synchronization can be carried through a number of different approaches. Failing to integrate the contacts will result in the objects not being migrated, which will lead to end user dissatisfaction and additional support calls.

Binary Tree’s SMART Remediation for Domino Migration offering will help Company’s Name in configuring policies in IBM Notes to enable contacts synchronization.

Assessment of User Journal Use

In Company Name’s Domino environment we have found 10% of users have Journal entries within the mail files on the servers. After interviewing representatives of Company Name’s technical staff, it has been determined that only a small subset of users use Journals.

While a small percentage of users utilize Journal entries in Domino, these users utilize this capability extensively.

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

<25 Contacts 25 - 50Contacts

51 - 100Contacts

101 - 500Contacts

>500Contacts

Contact and User Count


Assessment of User Journal Use (continued)

Total Users 2900

Users with < 10 Journal Entries 2623

Users with > 10 Journal Entries 277

Remediation Warning If Company Name has users who have local Journal Databases, these Journal Entries must be present in the server mail file in advance of a migration.

Company Name may decide to forego the migration of Journal Entries due to low usage. However, if the choice is made to migrate these Journal Entries, users must be identified and the Journal entries must be synchronized to the server mail file before they can be migrated from Domino to Exchange. For those users who do utilize this function, these documents may be important documents that are required for the execution of their duties.

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

<10 Journals>10 Journals

2623

277

Users with Journals


Mail Rules

Assessment of User-Created Mail Rules

Users create mail rules to automatically handle mail in a variety of situations. By configuring a set of conditions and actions, rules can be customized to block spam or automatically send specific messages to a folder based on user-determined criteria.

10% of users have created more than 25 mail rules.

Total Users 2900

Users with < 25 Mail Rules 2623

Users with > 25 Mail Rules 277

Remediation Warning User Mail Rules that have been set up in Domino will not be migrated during the migration from Domino to Exchange. This is a limitation of the environments, due to how each platform formulates rule application.

Binary Tree’s SMART Remediation for Domino Migration offering will report the rules in IBM Notes that a user has created so a similar type rule can be created once the user has been migrated to Outlook.

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

<25 Rules>25 Rules

2623

277

Users with Mail Rule Counts


Stored Forms

Assessment of Users with Stored Forms and Non-Routed Messages

There are times when application data is sent to a user’s mail file but is essentially a stand-alone document. These messages can have the following attributes presented to the user:

An embedded design referred to as a stored form.

A non-declared form name in the message attributes that relies on the default form in a Domino mail template to render the message.

A non-standard form that utilizes a custom change to the default IBM mail template.

For example, a user might request a vacation day using a Domino-based vacation application. The approval form is sent from the vacation database to the user’s manager. The form may contain buttons that give the manager the right to approve or disapprove. The process can only be performed if the application is sent to the user in a stored form; the functionality is not contained within the standard mail database. Another example of these types of messages is a change control process that uses a custom form that has been added to the default IBM mail template. The change control application deposits a message into the approver’s mailbox, bypassing the IBM Domino router. When the approver opens the message, the custom form is used to render the message to the approver to process. Since these types of application messages and custom changes to the design of the standard IBM Domino mail template are outside of the normal design of IBM Domino, the migration of these messages to Exchange is not possible. Applications that send these messages must be identified and a short term remediation or workaround determined; this will facilitate the support of the application with Exchange until a long-term decision can be made.

Total Users 2900

Users with < 25 Stored Forms 2433

Users with > 25 Stored Forms 467

Total Users 2900


Users with < 25 Non-routed messages 2433

Users with > 25 Non-routed messages 467

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

<25 Forms>25 Forms

2433

467

94% of Users receive Non-routed items

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

<25 Forms>25 Forms

2433

467

Stored Forms Count by All users


Remediation Warning

During the migration process, all documents in the user’s IBM Notes mail file must be associated with a standard mail template form type in order to match the appropriate messaging type in Exchange. By identifying the number of stored forms in each user’s mail, we can better predict the quality and impact of the migration. These stored forms cannot be migrated to Exchange. Knowing this prior to executing the migration will help to prepare the user community and subsequent work to minimize end user impact. When messages without form field values are found, the standard message fields will be migrated to Exchange as a standard email. Any other aspects of the stored form, including other fields or specific feature functionality, will not be migrated. This also applies to customizations of the standard mail template forms. Any additional fields used for internal purposes will not exist in Exchange and subsequently cannot be migrated.

The Binary Tree’s SMART Remediation for Domino Migration offering will assist you in identifying the applications that are actively sending messages to your user base and formulate a process to minimize user impact during and after the migration. This will not include recoding of any application.

Binary Tree’s CMT for Coexistence product with ZApp will identify and address these messages during and post-migration as the applications continue to interact with the user, until the direction of these applications that generate these messages has been determined. An IBM Notes client will be required on the user’s workstation to read these message from the ZApp database in its original intended format.

Stationery

Count of Mail Users with Stationery Stationery is unique to Domino. A user can create Stationery that is used each time a user creates a message. Stationery can include recipient names, subject and message text, delivery options and more.

Total Users 2900

Without Domino Stationery 2404

With Domino Stationery 496


Remediation Warning While the majority of users do not use Domino Stationery, Stationery does not have an Outlook equivalent within Exchange, and therefore will not be migrated during a Domino-to-Exchange migration.

Binary Tree’s SMART Remediation for Domino Migration offering will assist in generating a remediation method for these items.

Directory Analysis

Mail-In Databases for Shared Mailboxes Directory remediation is a very time-consuming and complex endeavor. Making sure every object in the Domino Directory is correctly formatted and ready to be synced to Active Directory can be a formidable project. Objects such as users, groups, mail-in databases and rooms must be properly formatted. If an object does not have a SMTP address or the SMTP address is not properly formatted, it will not sync to Active Directory nor be reflected in Exchange. Object names that are not properly formatted must be identified and remediated before they can be synced to Active Directory and Exchange.

17% Use Stationery

83% Do Not Use Stationery

17% of Users use Stationery


The following is a summary of all object types contained in the Domino Directory:

With SMTP Without SMTP

Total Address Address

Mail Users 2900 2807 93

Groups 601 476 125

Rooms & Resources 189 161 28

Mail-in Databases 433 48 385

Assessing SMTP Addresses in Domino Directory

Unlike Domino, Exchange routing is based on the SMTP address defined in the AD object. On the other hand, Domino only requires an SMTP address to receive mail from the Internet to a particular mailbox and not for internal routing. In order to synchronize the Directories and then migrate to Exchange from IBM Domino, all objects must contain a valid SMTP address. While the majority of Mail Users, Groups, and Rooms & Resources have SMTP addresses, the majority of Mail-in Databases typically do not have SMTP Addresses.

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

Mail Users Groups Rooms &Resources

Mail-inDatabases

SMTP Addresses in Domino Directory

Total Count With SMTP Addresses Without SMTP Addresses


Remediation Warning If an object does not have an SMTP address, it will not synchronize to Active Directory and will not be reflected in Exchange. Binary Tree’s SMART Directory Sync is a solution which will populate Domino items in Active Directory and Exchange as well as Exchange objects within Domino. This is a key value to be able to send emails to Mail-in-Database objects, groups and rooms and resources. It is also required for identifying target databases to migrate messages too.

Binary Tree’s SMART Remediation for Domino Migration offering will address any missing object SMTP address

SMTP Formatting Errors There are cases where SMTP addresses are present but improperly formatted for directory synchronization. Formatting errors can be caused by the following:

White space in the SMTP address

Unsupported characters

Duplicate email addresses

SMTP Formatting errors 2900

White Space 27

Unsupported Characters 17

Duplicate SMTP Address 94

Remediation Warning If an object has an SMTP address that is not properly formatted, it will not synchronize to Active Directory and will not be reflected in Exchange. This does not mean that the addresses are not working in IBM Domino, but their format is not supported in Active Directory and requires remediation prior to directory synchronization.

Binary Tree’s SMART Remediation for Domino Migration offering will assist in addressing mal-formed SMTP addresses.


Conclusions and Recommendations Mail is an important part of Company Name’s communication. Disruption of information and issues can ultimately cause a disruption of business. Therefore, Binary Tree highly recommends that Company Name utilizes the information available from a pre-migration assessment to design a migration plan that minimizes disruption to the users and maximizes the efficiency of the migration. Binary Tree’s SMART Remediation for Domino Migration offering has been designed to assist in the next step of your migration process.

The end data and analysis have uncovered a number of issues that may create challenges in your upcoming migration. Binary Tree has documented these in an effort to help Company Name understand the current situation, and prepare to help remediate these items to make the migration comprehensive, accurate, simple and successful.

With respect to Company Name’s current Domino implementation, it is recommended that the following suggestions be implemented. Binary Tree is here to assist you in ensuring that the following items are rectified:

Mailbox Sizes: Depending upon Company Name’s plans, it may be necessary to

exercise some policy controls to minimize the size of the current data plans. Archiving

policies can be used to create either server or local archives to remove older data from

production mail files. Best practices suggest to exercise the use of the Compact Server

task with a –B 5 factor This will effectively reduce the size of databases with more than

5% of open white space in them. Binary Tree remediation services are available to assist

in the implementation of best practices in terms of database maintenance if this is not

currently in place within Company Name’s environment. Additional other basic

maintenance tasks such as Fixup Updall will help to maximize throughput from a

migration standpoint.

Oversize Messages: For the messages that are over the maximum message size, and

based on the analysis performed, Binary Tree has determined that these messages are

over the target limit based on attachment size. The remediation action for this issue is

to send a communication to all users containing a list of messages that are not

compliant with the new policy and include instructions as to the handling of these

message. After remediation, the company should re-run the audit to make sure there

are no remaining message that are not compliant.


Personal Contacts: With only a subset of users actively synchronizing their contacts,

contacts will need to be addressed prior to migration. Of the methodologies available,

one is a Desktop Policy Settings Document that will allow all workstations to enable the

background synchronization of the Personal Address Book with the Contacts view of

the user’s mail file. This will not adversely affect existing users but it will allow these to

remain in synchronization prior, during and after the migration. Additionally, during the

span of the migration this will ensure that any end user that should make changes

related to personal contacts; these changes will remain synchronized with the Domino

mail file promoting end user satisfaction with the migration results. In addition, after a

policy is in place, Binary Tree will send all users a message to check the local contact

against what is in the mail file, reporting users that have discrepancies, and those users

will require a manual configuration of their contact synchronization.

Journal Entries: While not a priority across the organization, it has been determined

that a number of users are using this feature and will require the data to be migrated to

Exchange. It is our recommendation that we configure these users following the IBM-

recommended process for configuring IBM Traveler Policy. Once the policy is in place

for the organization, a Binary Tree communication will be sent to validate that the local

Journals are syncing to the user’s mail file, identifying users that need a more

specialized approach to remediate.

Mail Rules: Mail rules are documents within the end user mail files. These allow the

server to determine which folder to apply to these messages to dynamically file them

for the end user. Within Exchange these items are a part of the Outlook client. Due to

the differences in how IBM Domino and Exchange manage rules, the ability to migrate

them and maintain effectiveness is nearly impossible. They can, however, be

documented and delivered to the migrated mail as an additional document, which the

user can use as a basis for re-creation within Outlook. Binary Tree’s SMART

Remediation for Domino Migration offering can help prepare and document each user

rule formula.

Stored Forms/Non-routed items: Stored Forms and Non-routed items are indicative of

an environment that actively uses custom-developed applications. These Stored Form

items are something unique to Domino in that an email may have specific coded

functionality for it to work properly. Often these items are not going to properly

migrate to Exchange. Knowing of their existence in advance of the migration allows for

an opportunity to properly set end user expectations. While the migration of all aspects

of these messages is impossible, the basic elements of these messages -- To:, From:,

CC:, BCC:, Subject, Body and standard metadata -- can be migrated. If the application is


directly depositing the messages in the user’s mail box, the Company Name’s application development group will need to modify how that application works using the IBM Domino Router to deliver the messages going forward. Any other applications that are using a custom form or specific items that may contain Domino-specific elements should be managed by the CMT for Coexistence ZApp application. This process will securely store the item on the Coexistence server and a link will be sent to the migrated user in Exchange. This will ensure that embedded Notes elements remain fully actionable. Binary Tree’s SMART Remediation for Domino Migration offering can help determine how these outlying elements are managed.

Stationery: Similar to mail rules, stationery in Exchange is stored within the Outlook

client. As a result Domino stationery cannot be migrated to Outlook. Binary Tree’s

SMART Remediation for Domino Migration offering can help provide solutions such as

draft versions of Stationery, which can be then migrated as draft messages to

Exchange, helping them to be recreated in Outlook.

Object’s missing SMTP address: Since all objects in Exchange require SMTP addresses,

it is Binary Tree’s recommendation that this be addressed using our Binary Tree SMART

Remediation for Domino Migration offering to generate SMTP address for all Domino

objects that missing them. Once completed we will then revalidate that there are no

duplicate SMTP addresses in preparation for a SMART DirSync deployment.

SMTP Formatting Issues: In all cases of users, databases, groups, and any other objects

that require synchronization to Exchange, the SMTP Address must be a unique value.

This is also true of Domino. Occasionally we do encounter characters in an SMTP

Address that are not valid but will not properly address for SMTP mail routing in

Exchange (although they may work within IBM Domino). The proper remediation of

these is imperative to ensure end users can still address everything while on Exchange

as they did on Domino. For items in the Domino Directory that have been identified as

not compliant within Exchange standards, we recommend using Binary Tree’s SMART

Remediation for Domino Migration offering to remediate these items. Once

remediated the audit will be run again to validate that no other issues have arisen and

that no duplicates exists in the Domino Directory prior to Binary Tree’s SMART DirSync

deployment.


Value of Remediation Customers who thoroughly plan their migration and remediate potential issues prior to a migration have typically been able to increase their weekly user migration number by 50% over the original plan and other similar size companies who do not take this proactive approach.

Our experience has shown that the completion of the Binary Tree assessment and post-assessment remediation services typically result in migration project savings as indicated in the Executive Summary. This is due to the early identification of issues prior to the migration and lower calls to the customer’s Support Desk, reducing the average number of calls per migration from 2 to about 1.5, with the remaining calls related to "how to" type questions.

SMART Migration Assessment for Domino - binarytree.com

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