[ngw] Yet another migration to Exchange

Thu Apr 1 15:24:49 UTC 2010

Not sure -as an owner- I can agree with the money being better.  But then I tend to pay out well to those I hire.  I would agree on the traveling though -there was a time when I was 150 nights in hotels and 100k of air miles flown.  I prefer being on site because there is much more that can be accomplished in the 'soft skills' part of consulting.  But I find more customers are happier to have me work remotely. It saves them $$ and with proper tools much training and such can be done.

Take Care.

Gregg A. Hinchman 
Consultant
Gregg at HinchmanConsulting.com 
www.HinchmanConsulting.com
A Novell Consulting Partner
317.329.0288 Office
413.254.2819 eFax

"Courage is doing what is right." 

"Do not be bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology, even Buddhist ones. All systems of thought are guiding means, not absolute truth."  Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese monk.

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>>> 
From: Mary Matthews<mlm23 at calvin.edu>
To:ngw at ngwlist.com
Date: 4/1/2010 9:19 AM
Subject: Re: [ngw] Yet another migration to Exchange
Money for the consultants isn't necessarily better.  My salary went backwards while I was in consulting (even had a 22% pay cut at one place).  The money's good if you're the owner though, and if you don't mind traveling a lot.

>>> "Tom Miller" <TMiller at hnncsb.org> 3/31/2010 9:16 AM >>>
Washington??  Do you life in Forks??!!  Just kidding (my wife is an EdwardBellaJacobblahblahblah fan....)
By the way those consultants don't run cheap.  My brother's company specializes in AD/Exchange and they have done many an Exchange design/build/migration.   I asked him recently what they would charge to migrate an agency of my size:  about $93 which includes design and doing all the work over a few weeks.  I'm in the wrong business.........

>>> "Randy Grein" <RGrein at tpchd.org> 3/30/2010 5:51 PM >>>
Not sure what the limit is - different limits probably apply for different entities. We had to go out to bid for a couple 2 day classes, well under $10k, and I had to show there was only one resource in the state. (Washington, Novell training? Helloooo!) In any case, there may or may not be bidding - I won't know, I'm just the network engineer.

>>> "Tom Miller" <TMiller at hnncsb.org> 3/30/2010 8:50 AM >>>
Randy didn't you mention you work for a public agency?  Unless the consultant work is below $10k (depending on location, rules) that will have to go out to bid.  Favorite contractor or not.  

>>> Randy Grein <randygrein at comcast.net> 3/30/2010 1:46 AM >>>
Thanks as always for the good advice Gregg. I actually have experience with Exchange already - but I'm 3 versions behind, so I have some studying to do. Add that to the latest version of Solar Winds Orion, Windows 2008, VMware, Dell and IBM iSCSI SANs... . You get the idea. Oh, and documenting everything before the boss changes it all again AND training the workstation techs. No, I'm not whining, really. I just wished someone would tie the man up for about 3 years so we could clean up and finish something. The new challenge is to remain calm at work, but having kids is good training for that! 

I'm of the same mind about the MA tool, at least from what I've heard. It makes sense, we NEED an archiving product and it's cost effective. Unfortunately we rarely take the sensible direction. Same thing with consultants. The group he uses is good enough I suppose, but they use ONLY the Quest tool, and he thinks they walk on water. They failed in the migration of our Groupwise from netware to windows, massive assumptions and didn't talk to the ONE person who manages it, me. Underlying damage I hadn't seen dating back 2 years ago, as near as I could figure. We had outstanding moves for POs I'd never heard of, and as I dug into the logs more (verbose mode) I could see things were really borked. Migrating users to a new PO really was the best answer, and (thanks to the group here) I had everyone moved and fixed inside 3 weeks. He'll use them again - it's not even an option. But, if the project goes pear-shaped I'll mention that I know someone who really can fix it.

I thought I was tired of consulting, but administration is beginning to look worse! (grin)

Randy Grein

On Mar 29, 2010, at 7:55 PM, Gregg A. Hinchman wrote:

Randy,

I have been involved, done and researched the GW to Exchange migration including the tools.  My summary is simple.

1. Quest has a great tool, works well, but requires a lot of work to get it to work well and the migration is long and tedious. Their support is not great and the product is expensive.  It will work with GW8 to Exchange 2007 -this I know and 2010 is very close if not already there. I had a project at the end of 2009 into 2010 where conversations with Quest were had.

2. Messaging Architects has what I consider to be the more interesting approach.  Interesting because you get an archive solution and a migration solution wrapped into one that works with both GW and Exchange.  It also allows you do the migration in literally one short weekend -depending upon the size of your organization.

Lastly, protect yourself -get Exchange education.  You will find, while its not GroupWise, its not that bad really.  There are things you will love and their are things you will miss.  Of course, my plug -if you need consulting help -drop me a line- we have a good set of folks that can assist.

Good luck and consider this that new challenge you were looking for at work.  :)

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