11 Strategic Considerations for SharePoint Migration, presentation given by Christian Buckley at the SharePoint Best Practices Conference in August 2010, Reston VA

1. 11 Strategic Considerations for SharePoint Migration Christian BuckleyDirector, Product EvangelismAxceler (echoTechnology) @buckleyplanet http://buckleyplanet.net

2. Intro & Background

3. Content Why this presentation is important The “standard” answers to upgrade and migration Wit and humor, obscure references to bad 80’s movies 11 strategies you should consider as part of your planning Online and offline resources

4. Why is this presentation important? Most content focused on the technical aspects of migration Migrations are not so much about the technical act of moving the data (although very important), but more about the planning that goes into preparing for the migration

5. Why is this presentation important? It’s not about the minutia of scripting methods to execute a hybrid database attach upgrade of your environment We’re here to discuss the sometimes technical, but much more “hip” exercise of proper migration planning. This is the Jack Bauer of migration presentations, people. My weapon today: PowerPoint

6. What is migration? Microsoft defines migration as three separate activities: The reality is that a single migration may include all three concepts

7. What is migration? Moving to the latest, greatest platform Transforming what you did with 2003/2007 to meet your organizational vision

8. Why migrations are difficult: Dammit Jim! I’m only a doctor!

9. What are the Microsoft options?

14. 11 strategies you should consider as part of your migration planning Understand the as-is and to-be environments Conduct proper capacity planning Understand the customizations on your source system Understand the migration schedule Plan for the right kind of migration Plan for file shares Plan for tagging, metadata, and taxonomy Understand centrally managed and decentralized environments Stage your platform for migration Decide where and when to involve the users Determine that your migration is successful

15. Strategy #1:Understand as-is and to-be environments

17. Based on these requirements, you need to model out the “to be” environment

18. What works

19. What doesn’t work

20. What are the organizational “must have” requirements

22. Strategy #1:Understand as-is and to-be environments What is your goal? What is your mission statement (Just kidding) What are you key use cases? What are your priorities?

24. It’s as much about retooling current sites and content as it is about deploying new technology

27. Number of sites

28. Number of site collections

29. Database size

30. Geographical needs of your organization (how many sites, what are their usage patterns)

32. Topology

33. Performance requirements

34. Security requirements

35. Scalability

36. Disaster recovery

38. Estimates on site creation

39. Estimates on database growth

41. Strategy #3:Understand the customizations on your source system Pre-Upgrade Check provides some of the analysis: Searches content sources and start addresses Outlines Office Server topology Identifies servers in the current farm Lists SharePoint version and list of components running in the farm Outlines supported upgrade types Provides Site Definition and Feature information Details language pack information Identifies Alternate Access Mappings that will need to be recreated Outlines Customized List Views (these will not be upgraded) Outlines Customized Field Types (these will not be upgraded) Identifies WSS Search topology Provides list of Content Databases and SQL server location Joel Oleson, SharePoint 2010: Best Practices to Upgrade and Migrate

43. Web parts

44. Workflows

45. Line of business applications

46. 3rd party tools

47. Custom features

48. Site definitions

49. Field types

50. Custom SharePoint solutions

51. Any changes to the file system on your SharePoint serversHow many of those customizations are outside of the SharePoint framework? Are there any customizations which can be replaced by out-of-the-box functionality?

52. Strategy #4:Understand the migration schedule

54. Cost

55. Time

56. Resources/People

57. How long per phase, what is moved, what are the priorities?

58. The schedule should be defined only after you understand the future state, set priorities, and get management buy-in.

60. Time to backup your systems

61. Tasks to update the latest services packs

62. Communication plans for your end users and partners, including what is being migrated, and (hopefully) how long it will take

63. Time for ample testing

65. Strategy #5:Plan for the right kind of migration Does the migration plan include content, sites, metadata, solutions? Each one brings with it a set of requirements and decisions What is the end goal? Is it a straight dump of everything, and you’ll clean up later, or do you need to restructure? Is your strategy the same for various organizations, different site collections, or farms?

66. Strategy #6:Plan for file shares

67. Strategy #6:Plan for file shares Most file shares have become a dumping ground. Is the plan to move as-is and decommission old systems, or is this a clean up process? Are users driving, or is it an administrative effort? Are you planning to apply metadata and taxonomy?

68. Strategy #6:Plan for file shares Understand what is out there Who owns the content? Does it need to be moved? Does it need to be indexed/searchable? Is the folder structure important? Do you need to maintain historic metadata?

69. Strategy #6:Plan for file shares Users generally have three options: Move content, as-is, into SharePoint and clean up there Clean and organize content first, then move to a new structure in SharePoint Migrate content in waves, using the iterations to sort through and organize your content while in transit, moving some content as-is, reorganizing and transforming others To be honest, option 3 is very difficult to manage in SharePoint, but 3rd party tools do a great job here

70. Strategy #7: Plan for tagging, metadata, and taxonomy

71. Strategy #7: Plan for tagging, metadata, and taxonomy In Biology, taxonomy is the science dealing with the description, identification, naming, and classification of organisms. “however, the term is now applied in a wider, more general sense and now may refer to a classification of things, as well as to the principles underlying such a classification.” “Metadata provides context for data. Metadata is used to facilitate the understanding, characteristics, and management usage of data. The metadata required for effective data management varies with the type of data and context of use.”Wikipedia.org

73. Legacy content gets migrated slowly, if at all

74. Inconsistent taxonomy across farms and site collections

75. People author locally - multiplies problems globally

76. Authors don’t apply metadata= “shotgun” approach to search OR Authors apply metadata without common classification = better search, but worse authoring experience

77. Portal lacks high fidelity search

78. User can’t find the right content

80. Strategy #7: Plan for tagging, metadata, and taxonomy Attend my session on metadata and social media Map out your high level taxonomy (web applications and site collections) and schemas (Content Types) Understand the as-is and to-be, and how it relates to your metadata With Managed Metadata Service in 2010, it is critical that you set up a governance model to guide this process, or it will quickly get out of hand

81. Strategy #8: Understand centrally managed and decentralized environments

82. Strategy #8: Understand centrally managed and decentralized environments Where does innovation come from in your organization? What is the intent of your system? How you architect your solution will impact how you migrate your current environment

83. Strategy #8: Understand centrally managed and decentralized environments

84. Strategy #8: Understand centrally managed and decentralized environments Whether or not to deploy MySites and/or lock down team site creation are common topics in the centralized / decentralized debate

85. Strategy #8: Understand centrally managed and decentralized environments Use of services greatly improves concerns over the decentralized model: Services can be centrally managed Sites and Site Collections can consume these services, within certain boundaries You still need to understand the administrative impacts You need to clearly define roles / service owners Define your governance model / change control board

86. Strategy #9: Stage your platform for migration

87. Strategy #9: Stage your platform for migration Understanding your requirements: Hardware / software Network Virtual environments Hosting / datacenter Downtime / end user impacts Communication Location of your teams Backup/recovery Coordinate your planning with the operations team

88. Strategy #10: Decide where and when to involve users Strategy #10: Decide where and when to involve users

89. Strategy #10: Decide where and when to involve users This is the most fluid of the strategic considerations, as it really just depends At a high-level, end users who participate in the creation of a system are more likely to accept / support that system once deployed

90. Strategy #10: Decide where and when to involve users Where end users should be involved: Creation of use cases Creation of as-is documentation Prioritization of requirements for to-be environment They know their content – let them drive File share migrations, or organization Taxonomy development Metadata assignment Signoff on overall project plan

91. Strategy #11: Define what success looks like (probably not this)

92. Strategy #11: Define what success looks like Fist waving is good Double-fist waving is even better Possible success metrics: Target number of end users migrated Target number of sites migrated Databases migrated File shares migrated and decommissioned Zero bug count 2010 live, users able to manually migrate their content

93. Online and offline resources Upgrading SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010, Anders Raskhttp://andersrask.spoint.me/2010/03/22/whitepaper-on-sharepoint-upgrade/ Migrating to SharePoint 2010, Randy Williamshttp://www.windowsitpro.com/print/sharepoint-server-2010/Migrating-to-SharePoint-2010-104619.aspx Upgrading to SharePoint 2010 (Microsoft)http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc303420.aspx Hardware and software requirements for 2010 (Microsoft)http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485.aspx SharePoint 2010: Best Practices to Upgrade and Migrate (O’Reilly, Safari)http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781449390457/ Migrating to MOSS 2007, Stephen Cummins, www.echoTechnology.com Planning to Upgrade to SharePoint 2010 (Joel Oleson)http://www.slideshare.net/joeloleson/preparing-for-upgrade-to-sharepoint-2010-today What’s New in SharePoint 2010 Capacity Planning (Joel Oleson)http://www.sharepointjoel.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=0cd1a63d%2D183c%2D4fc2%2D8320%2Dba5369008acb&ID=332 ReadyPoint migration planning tool for 2007 to 2010 migrations, Axcelerhttp://www.axceler.com/SharePointMigration/ReadyPoint.aspx Preupgradecheck, Microsofthttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd789638(office.12).aspx Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products Upgrade Approacheshttp://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e8b66eb3-27c7-4a39-a2e1-3e7d18b12ee1&displaylang=en

94. Drop me a line at cbuck@axceler.comVisit my blog http://buckleyplanet.netFollow me @buckleyplanet Please be sure to fill out your session evaluation!