Monday February 09 2004

FreeEmailMigrations.com

WHAT'S NEW

ABOUT

• Purpose & Concept
• History
• Why?
• Disclaimer

SOFTWARE

• Rocket
• Spark
• GroupWise Bulk Migration Tool
• Tools

DOCUMENTATION

• The Basics
• THE ULTIMATE ROCKET GUIDE!
• Rocket Configuration Guide
• Rocket End User Guide
• Rocket Sales Kit
• Rocket SOW
• Rocket Project Plan

KNOWLEDGE

A MIGRATION PRIMER
• A Migration Primer
• Messaging System Deployment Guide
• Migration Strategy Guide
• Coexistence Strategy Guide
• Migration Process Guide
• Migration Issues Guide


MIGRATION STUFF
• Example Migration Checklist
• Example Migration Jumpstart Guide
• Example Migration Roadmap
• Example Best Practices

RESOURCES

• Open Cranium
• IT Ethics Newsletter
• infonition

History

The history of freeemailmigrations.com is really a history of myself. In 2004, I decided to pursue a new career focused on business process and business process automation. However, I realized that while I was moving on with my career and personal development I was leaving behind nearly a decade of expertise on email and email migrations. In my new career, I really had no need for the vast bulk of this knowledge and it seemed like an awful waste to not share that hard won knowledge with someone, anyone. Thus freeemailmigrations.com was born.

The tools and knowledge contained within freeemailmigrations.com are world-class and as good or better than anything you can purchase commercially. No, the tools are not particularly pretty, tidy or polished because my primary objective was that they WORKED, not that they looked good. I made a great living for nearly a decade using these tools and knowledge and now they are free for you to use as you see fit.

The history of these tools dates back to 1994 when I worked on a couple of email migration projects at Owens Corning in Toledo, OH. While working as a consultant at Owens Corning, I oversaw the world-wide migration of Owens Corning's email systems from cc:Mail, PROFS and MS Mail to Microsoft Exchange 4.0. This Exchange 4.0 environment included over 80 servers in over a dozen countries.

After successfully completing the migration of Owens Corning to Microsoft Exchange 4.0, I spent the next two years or so traveling around the country living out of a suitcase performing email migrations and providing email migration consulting expertise for such companies as Yellow Freight (Microsoft Exchange), Hilton Hotels (Lotus Notes) and Disney (Microsoft Exchange) among others.

Eventually, I decided to start my own business, infonition, with two other partners. Around this same time, I was working for Marathon Oil/Ashland Petroleum on their early adoption of Microsoft Exchange 2000. This migration was part of a larger, world-wide adoption of Microsoft's technologies and is where these migration tools first underwent significant modification and improvement in order to withstand the demands of Marathon's very agressive migration schedule. This project was a resounding success and infonition's migration tools were featured in Microsoft's premier case-study of Marathon Oil. It's a great case study. The part that you are looking for is "Consultants Design Cost-Efficient Production Rollout Plan". In there, when it mentions "CompuCom" and "infonition", that's me and the team that I put together to coordinate their email migration processes.

These tools continued to be improved and enhanced over the coming years during email migration projects for such organizations as American Financial Group, Yum! Brands, Inc. and others. As the tools were improved, I was able to complete entire email migrations in shorter and shorter amounts of time. A project for Colonial Schools took only five days from inception to completion and resulted in over 700 mailboxes being migrated from GroupWise 6 to Microsoft Exchange 2000. Another, similar project for the City of Glendale, AZ resulted in over 1,400 mailboxes being migrated in the span of just a couple days. This project also added Spark, an address book migration tool.

Finally, after a long and distinguished career as an email migration expert, I have chosen to move on and leave behind my tools, knowledge and expertise to anyone who might find them useful. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Contact:  Gregory J. Deckler