New Features

• Support for Postgres 9
• Ability to specify folders to exclude from migrations (all platforms)
• Re-architected Email message saving and retrieval
• Added OK button to configuration dialog

Fixes

• Apply incoming shared folder settings to GroupWise calendar migrations (fixes duplicate appointments with shared calendars)
• Better reporting if a process fails

Notes

As usual, if you have any queries about the tool, usage, pricing or anything else contact us.

The latest version of the tool can always be downloaded from our migration tool download page.

Composites One is the leading distributor of composite materials in North America.  The organization’s products include fibers, resins, and a wide range of chemicals and accessories used in manufacturing.  Its 32 distribution centers serve over 8,000 customers across North America and Asia, and the company prides itself in providing the best quality materials, exceptional local service, and personalized support.

Business Need

As the organization continued its growth, Composite One’s personnel had expanded to approximately 400 employees in over 30 locations.  Regarding its IT email and messaging platform, the company had been a Novell GroupWise user for over 15 years.  However, continuing down the GroupWise path seemed like an increasingly costly obstacle.  In almost all the organization’s separate locations, there were separate file servers; this was valuable to the extent that mail was regulated locally instead of having to travel through the home hub network.  All in all, Composites One utilized a highly decentralized mail system, and keeping up-to-date with GroupWise required imminent, major upgrades to all servers in all locations, license renewals, and significant time and effort by the IT department.  Furthermore, users were not even satisfied with the functionality of the GroupWise platform and a large-scale change in IT started to seem like the best course of action.

With all these factors in mind, Director of IT, Hal Greene, began seeking a solution that would meet 3 criteria: a wide range of improved functionality, mobility capacities and major cost savings.  A number of employees within Composite One’s IT group had had some personal experience with Google Apps and recommended the platform as a possible alternative.  Hal then attended the 2009 Enterprise Summit and found that many IT executives had very positive things to say about Google Apps.  For the remainder of 2009, Composite One’s IT team began discussing with Google and Cloud Sherpas the possible migration to Google Apps, and eventually pitched the idea to the Composite One executive team.

“Cloud Sherpas are one of the best Google Enterprise partners in the world.  We are proud of the relationship we have with Cloud Sherpas and of the success the Cloud Google Migrator from Cloud Technology Solutions has given them.” Steve Kaye: CEO, Cloud Technology Solutions

Solution

A few months later, Composite One began a pilot phase with Cloud Sherpas by taking a group of 32 users (which encompassed the entire IT team) and having these key users experience Google Apps first.  Cloud Sherpas also conducted admin and end-user training to accelerate the learning process of migrating to a new IT platform.

However, perhaps the most integral assistance that Cloud Sherpas provided was in the application of the Cloud Google Migrator from Cloud Technology Solutions, the only tool to-date that can be widely-used to migrate organizations to Google Apps from Novell GroupWise.  Cloud Sherpas seamlessly transferred all of Composite One’s data to the cloud, and Hal Greene had this to say about the process:

“When it comes to this data, it’s so important to people; this is their work and what they’ve been doing for years, so it would’ve been unacceptable for them to no longer have access to this data.  So it was very helpful to have Cloud Sherpas be there and help us through the migration process.”

Benefits

The pilot phase was successfully completed within 2 months, and while Cloud Sherpas maintained a co-existence system that allowed users to function from both Google Apps and Novell GroupWise.  Composite One went on to migrate users in increments and aims to have all users on Google Apps within half a year.

As Cloud Sherpas additionally provided mobile access to Google Apps, Composite One’s goals of moving to a platform with greater functionality, mobility capacities, and major cost savings seemed to be fulfilled.  As Director of IT Hal Greene concluded:

“We’re really glad to be on Google Apps now, and to the extent that we ran into any confusion, the Cloud Sherpas team was very knowledgeable and very helpful.  I did think that their role throughout the project was quite impressive.”

To learn more about how we can help your organisation Go Google, please contact us now.

Macquarie University, is home to approximately 35,000 students and 5,500 members of staff. The beautiful 126 hectare of park-like campus is an ideal setting for discovery and learning. Located within the high-technology corridor of Sydney’s north-west, Macquarie University graduates are highly sought-after. Macquarie University is one of Australia’s leading research universities, it is a dynamic, flexible and engaged university committed to excellence in research, teaching and global citizenship. Formed in 1964, the University prides itself on being enquiring, open to new ideas, new ways of thinking and new ways of ensuring a sustainable institution.

Business Need

Macquarie University have been providing a number of email systems for staff with the main system being a Novell GroupWise system. The GroupWise setup catered for approximately 80% of staff with the remaining 20% on a variety of other systems and provided email service to staff since 2005. With approximately 5,500 users, the Novell GroupWise system spanned over 29 GroupWise Post Offices. Beneath this impressive email infrastructure ran a well managed 8 Node Novell NetWare cluster.

In 2007 Macquarie University migrated the entire student body over to Google Apps for Education. With staff and lectures on GroupWise and students using Google Apps, managing multiple systems became a very costly undertaking.

“The main issue for Macquarie University was to remove the costs and complexity of managing multiple email systems and to consolidate on one system” – Norbert Attard, Technology Project Leader at Macquarie University

Solution

With a large student user base already happy on Google Apps, the choice was obvious. Macquarie University decided to migrate away from Novell GroupWise to Google Apps for it’s staff users.

Marc Bailey CIO at Macquarie University says:

“Success at cloud-sourcing email depends entirely on two factors beyond feature/benefits, namely out-of-box experience and consumer confidence. Cloud Technology Solutions delivered Macquarie University the best possible impression of our new system from the very first customer click. Combined with a great project team, some intense planning, training and communication, we were able to engender the confidence needed to rapidly reach an adoption tipping point, then smoothly proceed to completion”

Migrating staff would have been an extremely complex process as the users all took advantage of calendars and scheduling, along with maintaining contact information within the GroupWise address book. The University did not have the option to simply move to a different email system, as it did with students, it needed to migrate everything, email, calendar, chat and contacts.

Cloud Technology Solutions

Cloud Technology Solutions were the migration partner of choice to provide assistance and support with the Cloud Google Migrator, the market-leading migration tool widely used to migrate organisations to Google Apps from Novell GroupWise. The tool allows entire organisations of any size to migrate to Google Apps efficiently and with no downtime. As the Cloud Google Migrator had proven ability to migrate to Google Apps and supported email, calendar and contacts, it was a perfect match for the Universities requirements.

The migration was smooth and efficient. Simultaneously running the migration tool on 8 Dual Core 4GB workstations, Macquarie University seamlessly migrated all 5,500 users from Novell GroupWise to Google Apps for Education over the course of a few weeks and with no data loss.

“Cloud Technology Solutions were invaluable in helping us migrate our staff to Google Apps. The migration tool itself was excellent and meant we reduced our migration time by about 30%. Where any problems did arise the support response was first class”

Benefits

Currently 8 million students, faculty and staff at educational institutions around the world are using Google Apps, so Macquarie University are not alone.

Google Apps for Education now provides the entire campus community, including students, faculty, staff and alumni all the tools they need to communicate and collaborate more effectively. Providing over 7GB of email storage per student, Google Apps for Education delivers all the email and collaboration needs of Macquarie University.

“Cloud Technology Solutions Google Migrator allows organisations to seamlessly and easily migrate legacy email platforms to Google Apps significantly reducing the cost of running an IT department” – Steve Kaye, CEO, Cloud Technology Solutions

To learn more about how we can help your organisation Go Google, please contact us now.

For a PDF version of this document please complete your details below.

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The Cloud Google Migrator can migrate your organisations Novell GroupWise or Microsoft Exchange system to Google Apps.

This latest release of the Cloud Google Migrator is a bug fix release and fixes the following issues.

• Fixed an issue with configuration saving, importing and exporting users
• Fixed a rare issue with skipping migration of some system address book contacts
• Fixed an issue where a malformed message would result in a spurious warning

Download a trial of the tool now from our download area.

For more information about the migration tool or if you have an support queries, please contact us.

The Cloud Google Migrator can migrate your organisations Novell GroupWise or Microsoft Exchange system to Google Apps.

This latest release of the Cloud Google Migrator brings the following new features and fixes:

• Full support for Exchange 2000
• Made GroupWise Archive label name configurable
• Fixed an issue with resolving Exchange 2000 user URLs

Exchange 2000 is now also fully supported by the migration tool. That brings the list of supported systems to:

• Novell GroupWise 6.5 to 8
• Microsoft Exchange 2000, 2003 and 2007

Download a trial of the tool now from our download area.

For more information about the migration tool or if you have an support queries, please contact us.

• Check installation integrity on application startup
• Fallback on alternate message export if normal GroupWise message export fails
• Fixed an issue with removal of attachments on oversized messages
• Made maximum permitted message size configurable
• Fixed a problem with some Exchange 2000 installations with invalid XML characters

Download a trial of the tool now from our download area.

For more information about the migration tool or if you have an support queries, please contact us.

• Support for Microsoft Exchange 2000 migrations
• More flexible licensing scheme

BETA support for Microsoft Exchange 2000 has now just been added to the tool. The same technologies used for Exchange 2003 and 2007 are used with Microsoft Exchange, but if you do run into any problems with Exchange 2000, please let us know.

For more information about the migration tool or if you have an support queries, please contact us.

• Enabled better select/deselect functionality on user list tab
• Improved trace logging to allow for better sorting
• Skip GroupWise folders when GroupWise API fails on corrupted accounts
• Skip attached GroupWise messages when attached message is corrupt and cannot be accessed via the API
• Enabled use on systems with non-English number formats

For more information about the migration tool or if you have an support queries, please contact us.

• Updated to latest release of Google libraries
• Force users to change password on next login
• Changed file extension of exported user information to .csv

The new option to force users to change password on login is a useful addition for any migration, bringing yet more flexibility and options to how you can migrate an organisation to Google Apps.

The Cloud Google Migrator remains the only commercial product that can move your organisations Novell GroupWise infrastructure to Google Apps (we also migrate Microsoft Exchange, all in the same tool).

For more information about the migration tool or if you have an support queries, please contact us.

To download a trial of the tool see here.

The Cloud Google Migrator remains the only commercial product that can move your organisations Novell GroupWise infrastructure to Google Apps. For more information about the migration tool, please contact us.

To download a trial of the tool see here.