Why Consolidate?
Corporate IT organizations are all about using technology to enable the business to run more efficiently. What's less obvious is that this applies directly to IT as well; these organizations are tasked and mandated to implement technology as cost-effectively as possible, that is, spend the least amount of money to provide the automation and productivity gains the business requires to maintain its competitive edge.

It's important to consider this as we look over the landscape of the numerous platforms that now exist to share documents and data and enable employees to collaborate. A wide variety of networkedbased technologies, such as e-mail, file shares, FTP sites, Exchange Public Folders, Lotus Notes, simple Web servers - evolved to serve a specific need, and served that need well at the time, even though their capabilities overlap and collide at various points.

Now, next-generation Web-based platforms like SharePoint have evolved to the point where they are able to provide the same capabilities as these older platforms, and in fact enhance them at many points from a single interface. This is key, not for users, but for IT organizations. If they can replace all the crusty Exchange Public Folders, insecure File Shares, ancient Notes systems, and old-school document management systems with one platform, this enables a significant savings in maintenance, operations, training and management while enhancing the end-user interface.

Let's take a few moments to look briefly at migration from different data sources to get a sense of where the challenges lie and the issues therein.

Migrating from SharePoint 2003
For many organizations, SharePoint 2003 was the first version adopted and deployed in the company, either by IT or by rogue users and teams. While some custom applications were created on SharePoint 2003, most sites were simply repositories for documents and data.

As you might imagine, migrating from here is pretty straightforward. There are a couple of items to consider when migrating from WSS 2.0/SharePoint 2003. Is the SharePoint 2003 hardware adequately designed to handle all of the new options and features in SharePoint 2007? If not, how do you properly architect the environment to ensure future plans and design are taken into account? Another important item to consider is where did the design or implementation fall in regards to the business needs and goals, was there a shortfall or was the design adequate to meet the changing needs.

Migrating from Exchange Public Folders
The Public Folders functionality in Microsoft Exchange was one of the first collaboration technologies many companies deployed widely. It was one of the first applications to take advantage of Active Directory, store any type of document, utilize forms and other types of collaborative data, and generally work well within the boundaries it was designed for.

But with Microsoft planning to de-emphasize the use and support of Public Folders, organizations need to consider how to move content out of them, and where SharePoint can meet the needs as a destination. Migrating from Public Folders to SharePoint 2007 is fairly straightforward technically. The content doesn't need to be altered or translated, just understood where the components will match in functionality and allow for enhancements where possible.

The time-consuming piece when migrating Public Folders is finding and defining the content across scattered and often numerous Public Folder hierarchies and migrating it to the appropriate SharePoint libraries, lists, and site structures. Tools exist that can automate and simplify this process. Any investment in external tools will ensure data fidelity and reduction in migration labor.

Migrating from File Shares
File shares are probably the original way most companies enabled document sharing between employees. Ad-hoc file shares will never go away, so we're not talking about those, we're talking about sites that have institutionalized file shares. Many organizations have set up Windows servers with large disks specifically to provide file shares to departments and business units for storing and distributing institutional data.

SharePoint is a logical location to move these documents and information because it provides enhanced functionality. With its version control, check-in/check-out, workflow, security, and other document management features, organizations will gain a level of control previously only dreamed about in file shares.

Share Management
While the enterprising organization can take a file migration on as an ad-hoc experience this will likely result in decreased satisfaction. A number of third-party tools are available that will allow for metadata management, project-based migrations, and referential integrity.

Migrating from Lotus Notes
Lotus Notes was one of the biggest enterprise collaboration platforms in its day, but it has fallen out of favor in recent years. IBM hasn't improved the platform until very recently (to which the market seems to have said, "Too little, too late"). Notes has just been left to idle and become dormant, and is even considered legacy, in many organizations today. But there is still an enormous amount of valuable content and applications sitting on Notes servers that companies cannot afford to lose. So this has created a compelling case to migrate to SharePoint 2007, reducing the reliance on this legacy platform, but with a significant amount of intellectual property maintained.

As a true enterprise collaboration platform, Notes has created a challenging even seemingly insurmountable migration path to SharePoint 2007. We're not just talking about transferring documents or e-mail here but true application-level re-platforming. Administrators need a migration path to move their critical application content from the Lotus platform (not just Notes, also QuickPlace and Domino.doc) in a cost-effective way that has minimal impact on end users. Additionally important are the tools available to re-platform or migrate these custom Notes-based applications to the SharePoint Framework.

Conclusion
At long last the drought of information at your fingertips has ended; IT organizations can standardize on a collaboration platform that will truly meet the needs of users today, tomorrow, and the foreseeable future. Consolidating and migrating content from the myriad legacy collaborative-style platforms can be hugely cost-effective. But like any IT project, it requires careful planning, justification, and executive sponsorship. Do small and simple migrations first, refining the process and delivering value for investment in the near term. Build upon the simple wins, and create the strategy and goals for retiring from yesterday's quagmire of collaboration.