What experience do you have with SharePoint migration tools ? Which ones the best, easiest to use, best value for money ?
Reason for asking is I am considering doing a special newsletter which compares and contrasts them, but don’t have the experience with all of them… So if you have used one, let me know your thoughts and share as much as possible…
UPDATE! Since asking this there are now two articles on here that really help. Here is a fantastic SharePoint Migration Tool Comparison report put together by Alex Dove and this guide helps you select a good SharePoint Migration Tool.
We’ve also created a new category on our directory that lists virtually all of them. Best Office 365 Migration Tools.
Thanks in advance, Mark
Hi,
At NHS IC, we used DocAve to migrate document libraries. Recalling from memory, it gave us extras over same site migration built into SharePoint as well as cross-site migration.
At Research Machines, one of my colleagues, Nick Hobbs (http://nickhobbs.wordpress.com) migrated from SharePoint 2003 to 2007 and then some work on 2010. he has a nice blog, but the complete process of writing migration of everything from users, profiles, groups to lists, web parts, pages and a multitude of other things took over six months. This was more tedious than required as there was way too much customization at each site (and the solution to be migrated was in many school sites) and too much had changed between the versions. Admittedly, this was an extreme case and going through some of what he did and how we achieved it is mind boggling. It is because of similar reasons that Microsoft migration from Live@Edu to Office365 is so strict in ensuring that both environments are controlled before migration.
I guess I am trying to make two points;
Firstly, migration may mean different things to different people. At a couple of Health places, the migration from 2007 to 2010 was simple in-place database migration, or simply migrating a bunch of documents from one SharePoint site to another, whereas for the above mentioned VLE, it was from one VLE to another, both built with SharePoint, but in different product versions and supporting a different set of features. Migration included an element of breaking with the past and adoption of the new! Some people when talking f migrating they simply talk of migrating SharePoint from one version to another, others may have an aspect of migrating from one SharePoint built product to another.
Secondly, certain products may be good at migrating certain aspects of SharePoint; like DocAve for Documents, but may have no products for migrating another area of SharePoint that may be essential to you.
Sorry Mark, while not directly answering your question, I have tried to highlight some other consideration that you may want to add to your list!
