Lotus Notes Transition

White Paper

February 2008

Contents
Executive Summary .......................................................................................................................... 3
Case Study 1: Fast ............................................................................................................................. 5
Migration Phases ............................................................................................................................................................. 5
Detailed Tasks and Roles ............................................................................................................................................. 8
Costs ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 9
Summary.......................................................................................................................................................................... 11
Case Study 2: Steady....................................................................................................................... 12
Migration Phases .......................................................................................................................................................... 12
Detailed Tasks and Roles .......................................................................................................................................... 14
Costs .................................................................................................................................................................................. 16
Summary.......................................................................................................................................................................... 18
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 20
Binary Tree ....................................................................................................................................... 21
Appendix A: Methodologies Reference ....................................................................................... 22
Transition Cost Estimator .......................................................................................................................................... 22
Application Analysis Envisioning Process ........................................................................................................... 22

Executive Summary
This white paper is intended primarily for current IBM Lotus Notes and Domino customers who
want to know the process steps and associated costs involved in transitioning their current
communication and collaboration infrastructure to the Microsoft platform. In this white paper,
we have outlined two disparate case studies from customers who have made this transition in the
past two years. These organizations present very different transition approaches that showcase
how the steps and costs involved in a Lotus Notes migration project can vary based on correlated
criteria.
The first case study presents the experiences of a services company, Company A, which had
technologically-savvy users and a well-managed IT environment that provided for a very rapid
transition. After several weeks of planning, Company A migrated their 5,000 users e-mail
accounts and data during a single weekend. On Friday afternoon, users were sending e-mail with
Lotus Notes; by Monday morning, they were using Microsoft Office Outlook and Microsoft
Exchange Server.
In the second case study, Company B, a retail and wholesale company, had 10,000 users and a
more complex IT environment. Due to corporate acquisition, they had a heterogeneous
infrastructure that included Lotus Notes and Domino as well as Exchange seats, and they had
multiple Active Directory services with overlapping domain names. Additionally, their users skills
were very diverse. To ease the transition, Company B decided to include a year of coexistence
while gradually migrating users in work groups and training them to maintain productivity. Table
1 shows the time and cost for both migrations.
Table 1 Overview of Timeline and Costs for Company A and Company B Migrations

Company A: Fast Migration

Duration
13 weeks

Total Cost*
$228,171

Number of Users
5,000

Cost per User

$46

Company B: Steady Migration

Duration
15 months

Total Cost*
$1,458,088

Number of Users
10,000

Cost per User

$146

*Note: Both customers outlined in this document had previously purchased Microsoft Office, so the software pricing above
includes only Exchange Server licenses and Binary Tree migration and coexistence products.

Both customers experienced very positive transitions to the Microsoft platform. However, the
duration of their migration projects and the level of effort needed by their teams were extremely
different based on their transition criteria. This white paper describes the different approaches in
detail to assist current IBM Lotus Notes and Domino customers in planning for migration.
For confidentiality, we have used fictitious company names. However, the timelines, costs, and
results presented in this white paper are from real transitions from IBM Lotus Notes and Domino
to the Microsoft platform. When calculating software costs, we included only Binary Tree products
and Exchange Server licenses, as both companies had already purchased Microsoft Office 2003
licenses. Rather than reiterate existing methodologies, this paper focuses on actual decisions,
tasks, timing, and results. For applicable transition methodologies, see Appendix A: Methodology
References.

Case Study 1: Fast

Company A is a professional services company with over 5,000 employees in more than 500
offices worldwide. They used Lotus Notes and Domino for e-mail, including local replicas, but they
had no Web access to e-mail. Company A also used Lotus Notes for basic discussion applications.
Company As aging Lotus Notes e-mail solution no longer met the needs of their growing mobile
workforce; 85% of Company As employees are mobile most of the time, and they needed a more
seamless solution for e-mail and calendaring with the parent company and subsidiaries. Company
A also wanted to move their applications to more flexible and user-friendly Web-based interfaces
and to enable anytime/anywhere access to e-mail. Additionally, new employees were more
familiar with Microsoft products, which integrate with third-party products more easily.
Company As IT department evaluated alternate solutions and determined that maintaining Lotus
Notes and Domino would become increasingly more complex. Lotus Notes developers were
becoming more scarce and expensive, and they determined that Lotus Notes was not scalable or
flexible enough for their current needs. Company A had simply outgrown their existing Lotus
Notes platform capabilities.

Migration Phases
Company As migration was completed in the following phases:

Analysis

Planning

Pilot

Execution

Analysis (3 weeks)
Company As IT department started the transition process by analyzing their migration approach.
To create a complete team that would manage the migration, they enlisted outside resources,
including a migration architect, a migration engineer, and a migration project manager from
Binary Tree. The migration architect had an in-depth understanding of the migration process,
alternatives, and source and target environments. The migration engineer had a good
understanding of these as well, plus the migration technology and tools that would be needed for
a successful project. The project manager pulled all parties and documentation together, while
Company A managed all purchasing, facilities, and end-user communication.

First, the migration team examined Company As users, messaging, and application usage. They
decided that they wanted to migrate the user community very quickly for the following reasons:

Avoid coexistence1

Avoid managing two different messaging environments

Save software licensing costs

Use Microsoft Office Outlook that was already licensed and installed on desktops or
could be easily pre-installed

Accommodate the majority of power users who could handle a rapid migration

Company A and the migration team elected to transition all 5,000 e-mail users during a single
weekend and wait to rebuild or migrate applications. Eventually, they would migrate applications
to the Microsoft platform using Microsoft Office SharePoint and Microsoft .NET.
A key component to Company As migration approach was selecting the right tool to facilitate the
actual migration. Their key considerations were achieving the highest degree of data fidelity,
migration throughput, and migration workstation management. Since the migration would
require a large migration environment (30 machines) and take place over a single weekend,
Company A needed to select a tool that would migrate messaging and calendaring data quickly
while providing the highest level of data fidelity to ensure positive experiences for end users.
The migration process also needed to be easy to manage. Managing 30 independent
workstations processing user data would require multiple migration administrators, while having a
central migration console would allow greater control and oversight of the environment and
would require only two administrators. Customer A evaluated the free tools available from
Microsoft as well as the three leading vendor migration solutions. Company A selected Binary
Tree's CMT Universal (now named CMT for Exchange) because the workload distribution
facilitated by CMT Universal outperformed the multi-threading capabilities of other tools, and
CMT Universal achieved better fidelity and overall throughput.

Coexistence solutions at the time were not as good as they are today.

Planning (3 weeks)
The migration team started planning the transition by determining the migration lab
requirements. Migration throughput can vary from 1.5GB/hour to 10GB/hour depending on
numerous variables, including the following:

Availability and performance of source servers

Availability and performance of target servers

Network speeds to source and target servers

Contents of source mail files (number of messages tends to have a greater impact
than message size, and calendar entries tend to take longer to migrate than mail)

Workstation parameters, such as memory and CPU

The team decided to use 30 workstations: 25 for true data migration, two to manage the process,
and three hot spares. For workstations, the team chose mid-range laptops less than five years old.
Although higher-end workstations can increase throughput and lower-end PCs would be cheaper,
Company A needed to balance costs and logistics, particularly physical space to house
workstations. The team used two management workstations due to availability of staff.
Designing and building the Exchange environment normally requires two to three weeks. To
facilitate Company As rapid transition, the Exchange environment was fully created and hardened
before the migration.
Pilot (1 week)
During the pilot, the team analyzed specific throughput. In the pilot phase, the team used actual
data, unlike a proof of concept (POC), which tests feasibility (including data fidelity) and can
include data copies and VPCs. In the pilot, the team migrated 20 representative users. Migrating
only the IT users is not representative of the actual transition; therefore, Company A selected a
range of users, including business, mobile, management, and executive users from different
offices.
The team conducted the pilot during one week and completed it six weeks before the actual
migration weekend. They used Binary Trees CMT Universal (also known as CMT for Exchange) to
migrate messaging and calendaring data. The team discovered that they could not migrate all
data with their 30 workstations in one pass, and they could not use additional workstations due to
logistics constraints. To provide the most seamless transition possible for users, Company A and
the migration team decided to schedule two stages for the actual migration. In the first stage, the
team would migrate data older than one month; in the second stage, they would migrate all
remaining data.
Company As users are primarily power users, so extensive training materials were not necessary.
Instead, the team used the communications module of Enterprise Migration Manager, a

component of CMT Universal, to create documentation during the pilot and distribute quick
reference cards and links to Web-based training modules weeks before the actual migration.
To prepare for the execution phase, the migration team tested pre-configured, user-triggered
scripts available in CMT Universal to prepare user mail files. They also tested existing mail-enabled
applications.
Execution (1 month)
During the first two weeks of the migration execution phase, the migration team prepared for and
migrated data older than one month. In the third week, the team prepared users by asking them
to initiate scripts that would do the following:

Decrypt encrypted e-mail

Merge Personal Address Book into a mail file, which allows the migration engine to
access and migrate this data centrally and eliminates the need to distribute an enduser migration tool to access local data

For the final stage of the transition, two migration engineers and the project manager performed
the remaining e-mail migration over a weekend with no serious data fidelity issues. On Monday,
users were accessing their migrated e-mail, calendar, contacts, tasks, folders, and attachments
within Outlook. The project team resolved all migration issues over the next week, so the
transition was considered successfully completed one week after the second stage of the
migration execution phase.
For a month after migration, approximately 3% of users required additional support from
Company As help desk. Company As applications were migrated separately. Most of these
applications were rudimentary discussion databases, which were easily migrated to Microsoft
Office SharePoint.

Detailed Tasks and Roles

Company As migration required 1,083 hours over three months and involved the following roles,
as shown in Figure 1:

Internal project manager

Two mid-level IT managers

Exchange administrator

External project manager

Senior technical architect

Two migration engineers

Figure 1 Hours per Phase by Role, Company A Migration

350

333

300
250

267

250

200

Execution
133

150

Pilot
Planning

83

100
50

Analysis

17

0
Internal Project Mid-level IT
Manager
Managers

Exchange
Administrator

External
Project
Manager

Senior
Technical
Architect

Migration
Engineers

Costs
The total cost of Company As migration was $228,171. That amount includes costs for internal
and external support, training, software, and hardware, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2 Migration Costs by Category for Company A Migration

Internal IT
External Professional Services
End User Training
Hardware/Infrastructure Costs
Software Costs

Table 2 shows a more detailed breakdown of the migration costs by phase.

Table 2 Detailed Costs per Phase for Company A Migration

Internal IT Costs
Analysis
Project Manager
Mid-level IT

Planning

Pilot

Execution

Total Hours

Total Cost

$6,250

$6,250

$6,250

$6,250

333

$25,000

$10,000

$10,000

$5,000

$5,000

500

$30,000

$416

$417

$0

$0

17

$833

Total

$55,833

Managers (2)
Exchange Admin

External IT Costs
Analysis

Planning

Pilot

Execution

Total Hours

Total Cost

Project Manager

$0

$0

$7291

$7291

83

$14,582

Senior Technical

$0

$0

$26,666

$26,667

267

$53,333

$0

$0

$10,000

$10,000

133

$20,000

Total

$87,917

Architect
Migration Engineers
(2)

End User Training Costs

Duration
Administrators

Total Cost

3 days

$3,000

Executives & Assistants

93 hours

$11,625

Other Users (Web-based Training)

2 hours

$3,000

Total

$17,625

Software Costs*
Cost per License
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003

$3,974

Binary Tree CMT Universal, 5,000 User License

Total Cost
$15,896
$40,000

Total

$55,896

Hardware Costs
Quantity

Total Cost

Mail Servers

$4,000

Client Access and Microsoft Outlook Web Access Servers

$4,000

SMTP Gateway

$2,000

Disk Space

2TB

$900
Total

$10,900

*Note: Both customers outlined in this document had previously purchased Microsoft Office programs, so the software
pricing includes only Exchange Server licenses and Binary Tree transition tool products.

Summary
Company As transition from Lotus Notes and Domino is a great example of a very rapid
transition. Although this approach is not usually recommended, Company A wanted to avoid
coexistence, and their unique environment and the high percentage of power users enabled a fast
transition. By preparing well for their migration, Company A demonstrated that a large transition
can be done quickly and smoothly.

Case Study 2: Steady

Company B is a large retailer with over 50,000 employees across the United States. Company B
had 10,000 Lotus Notes and Domino users, and they added 40,000 Microsoft Exchange users
through acquisition. This merger was the driving force to transition Lotus Notes users to the
Microsoft platform.
Company Bs users included standard office workers and mobile workers who split their time
between 10 and 20 stores. These groups of users were less technically-savvy and not readily
adaptive to new software products. However, Company Bs IT department knew that all of their
users took e-mail very seriously. Some users were not going to easily accept changes to their email, and Company Bs mobile Blackberry users were particularly sensitive to modifications and
service disruptions.
Company Bs acquisition also presented complex environment challenges. The two merging
companies had two network domains of the same name (CORP and RETAIL), which created Active
Directory merging complications. Despite the IT departments recommendation to merge Active
Directory environments first, political pressures prevailed; as a result, the Lotus Notes migration
was scheduled prior to the Active Directory migration.

Migration Phases
Company Bs migration was completed in the following phases:

Planning and design

Testing and pilots

Production deployment

Planning and Design (3 months)

Company Bs IT department led their transition. Microsoft provided some assistance in building
their new Exchange infrastructure, and Binary Tree had one migration engineer onsite full-time for
a year. Because their internal IT groups, including Domino, Exchange, Active Directory,
Networking, Support, and Application Development, needed to work together for a successful
transition, Company B informed them of the transition and let them determine if they should be
excluded. Then, all departments were informed of progress throughout the planning process.
Company Bs complex Active Directory environment, and the decision to migrate e-mail before
effectively merging Active Directory, presented a major challenge. Company B had to plan for a
seamless integration of Exchange and three separate Active Directory forests at the same time.

To mitigate user reaction to the transition, Company B created a strong, layered communication
plan. They knew that many users would not read every document they received, so Company B
provided information about the migration through e-mail, portals, newsletters, and physical signs
at building sites.
Company B associated ancillary servers, such as BlackBerry Enterprise Servers and Audio and
Video/Content servers, with Exchange. Additionally, Company B needed to plan for long-term
coexistence between all Domino and Exchange environments for e-mail and calendaring. To
ensure seamless interoperability between Lotus Notes/Domino users and Exchange users,
Company B implemented CMT for Coexistence from Binary Tree.
To minimize user impact, Company B selected several pilot groups to represent different user
types and prepared for questions and issues from each group. Company B also prepared pilot
users to provide feedback on the process, documentation, and data integrity and to test the
coexistence functionality.
When Company B was choosing migration tools, they considered two factors: migration process
management capabilities and customer support throughout the project. Because Company B
estimated that their migration would last longer than a year, they needed to ensure that they
could access support immediately if they needed it. Company B chose Binary Tree's CMT
Universal (now named CMT for Exchange) because it exceeded their requirements for features
and functions. Additionally, Company Bs previous experiences with Binary Trees support assured
them that any issues would be resolved without disrupting the migration schedule.
Testing and Pilot (2 months)
Using multiple pilot groups for the migration was critical to streamlining the migration process
and mitigating end-user issues. For two months, Company B conducted twelve pilots. They tested
their processes and documentation, and they discovered that 50% of their users did not read their
notifications about preparing for the migration. Company B sent e-mail messages to users that
contained buttons to initiate automated tasks; however, many users did not click the buttons, so
Company B modified the scripts to launch automatically when users opened the e-mail message.
Even then, Company B had to send the e-mail message three times to launch all migration scripts.
During the pilots, Company B tested their High Availability and Disaster Recovery plans when they
would have little to no impact on users. Then, Company B worked with their pilot users to identify
questions and issues and address them proactively.
While a seamless integration was critical for Company B, their environment was extremely
complex and would require several layers of coexistence. As a result, they consulted coexistence
experts to explain their coexistence options and help set user expectations.

To fully understand the impact of migration, Company B started slowly and gradually ramped up
migrations every night. They expected the help desk to be overwhelmed during the migration
process, so Company B hired temporary workers who understood e-mail systems and migrations
to take help desk calls and help users in the offices.
Production Deployment (1 year)
Company B employed five full-time people for the production deployment phase, and a
migration expert from Binary Tree performed the migrations overnight. According to a Company
B employee, we could not have done it without Binary Tree.
Follow up and Support (ongoing)
Company Bs users required follow up and support throughout the migration process. For
example, several users did not process local data and called the help desk to ask why their e-mail
contacts were not migrated. To handle these cases, Company B established a process for remigrating contacts. They also provided additional support to executives and their assistants, as
accessing and processing other peoples e-mail and calendar entries in Outlook is very different
than Lotus Notes.

Detailed Tasks and Roles

Company Bs migration required 13,533 hours over 14 months and involved internal and external
roles. Internal roles included the following, as detailed in Figure 3:

Internal project manager

Technical team lead for Domino administration

Training facilitator

Domino administrator

Exchange IT administrator

Active Directory team lead

Eight Exchange technical administrators

Ten helpdesk support roles

Figure 3 Hours per Phase by Internal Role, Company B Migration

7000

6250

6000
5000
4000
3000
2000

2000

2333
817

1000
0

250

200

1333
350

External roles included the following, as detailed in Figure 4:

Senior technical migration architect

Migration engineer

Senior technical infrastructure architect

Senior migration analyst and planner

Production Deployment
Testing and Pilot
Planning and Design

Figure 4 Hours by Phase per Role, Company B Migration

1400

1333

1200
1000

1000

800
Production Deployment

600

Testing and Pilot

Planning and Design

400
200

167

100

0
Senior Technical Migration Engineer Senior Technical
Migration Architect
Infrastructure
Architect

Senior Migration
Analyst and
Planner

Costs
The total cost for Company Bs migration was $1,458,088. That amount included costs for internal
and external IT and professional services, training, software, and hardware, as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5 Migration Costs by Category for Company B Migration

Internal IT
External Professional Services
End User Training
Hardware/Infrastructure Costs
Software Costs

Table 3 shows a more detailed cost breakdown by phase.

Table 3 Cost by Role for Company B Migration

Internal IT Costs

Project Manager
Technical Team Lead

Planning and
Design
$12,500

Testing and
Deployment
$12,500

Production
Deployment
$75,000

Total Hours

Total Cost

2,000

$100,000

$38,889

$38,889

$38,889

2,333

$116,667

for Domino
Administration
Training Facilitator
Domino

$12,500

$0

$0

250

$12,500

$3,333

$3,333

$3,333

200

$10,000

$13,611

$13,611

$13,611

817

$40,833

$8,750

$5,833

$2,917

350

$17,500

$6,666

$13,333

$46,668

1,333

$66,667

$0

$80,000

$232,500

6,250

$312,500

Total

$676,667

Administrator
Exchange
Administrator
Active Directory Team
Lead
Exchange Technical
Administrators (8)
Help Desk Support
(10)

External IT Costs
Senior Technical

Planning and
Design
$72,917

Testing and
Deployment
$29,166

Production
Deployment
$131,250

$43,750

$29,167

$9,250

$33,333

Total Hours

Total Cost

1,333

$233,333

$102,083

1,000

$175,000

$6,167

$3,083

100

$18,500

$0

$0

167

$33,333

Total

$460,167

Migration Architect
Migration
Processing and
Troubleshooting
Senior Technical
Infrastructure
Analyst
Senior Migration
Analyst and Planner

End User Training Costs

Duration

Total Cost

Administrators

5 days

$5,000

Developers, Architects, and Power Users

0 hours

$0

Executives (Office Visits for 50 Executives)

100 hours

$12,500

Administrative Assistants (100)

300 hours

$37,500

2 hours

$3,000

Other Users (Web-based Training)

Total

$58,000

Software Costs*
Cost per License
Exchange Server 2003

$3,974

Binary Tree CMT for Coexistence, Binary Tree CMT Universal

Total Cost
$83,454
$103,965

10,000 User License

Total

$187,419

Hardware Costs
Quantity

Total Cost

Clustered Blades for Mail Servers (with SAN Storage)

17

$68,800

Clustered Client Access Servers

$5,000

Outlook Web Access Servers

$6,000

BES Servers for Blackberry Gateways

$4,000

F5 Data Switches

$66,000

4.9TBs

$30,000

Disk space

Total

$179,800

*Note: Both customers outlined in this document had previously purchased Microsoft Office programs, so the software
pricing includes only Exchange Server licenses and Binary Tree transition tool products.

Summary
Company B estimated that the migration would last between one and two years. However, their
estimate was not based on appropriate planning; to stay on schedule, they incurred additional,
unexpected costs.
Migration of Company Bs applications was outside the scope of this project. However, during
Company Bs migration, many of their Domino applications broke. SMTP is the protocol used to
transfer outbound messages from Notes to Exchange. When applications or users sent embedded
buttons, embedded forms, or any other Notes elements, those elements were stripped out when
they were received by Outlook users. To prevent broken applications, Binary Tree now offers a
component to CMT for Coexistence called Zero Touch Application Remediation (ZApp). This

optional component allows all mail-enabled applications to function without modification;

however, organizations should always consider the application environment in the planning and
decision phases.

Conclusion
This white paper outlined two different migration approaches. Company A had the
heterogeneous environment and savvy user base required to pursue a fast transition. With
adequate planning and preparation, Company A was able to literally complete their transition
over a single weekend.
In contrast, Company B had a more complex environment and diverse user base. As a result,
Company B chose a more conservative approach to migration with a period of coexistence.
Company Bs experience with broken applications demonstrates that organizations should always
consider applicationseven when transitioning the messaging platform.
As demonstrated by these case studies, successful migrations require organizations to plan for
the transition appropriately. Additionally, they should analyze and understand their environment,
user capabilities, resource constraints, messaging infrastructure, and application inventory.

Binary Tree
Binary Tree is an industry leader in messaging and collaboration analysis, coexistence, and
migration. Founded in 1993 and headquartered in the New York metropolitan area, Binary Tree
has employees and offices across the United States and business partner representation on every
continent. Binary Tree is a Microsoft Gold Partner, an IBM Premier Partner, and a Google
Enterprise Professional Partner with deep skills in Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange Server,
Microsoft Office SharePoint, and Google Apps.
Binary Tree's extensive experience with IBM and Microsoft technologies has made us the go-to
partner for all things Lotus, Exchange, and SharePoint related. From messaging and application
assessments, to complex integration and coexistence, to seamless migration, we have serviced
over 4,000 customers and 10,000,000 users over the last 15 years establishing a stellar track
record for customer satisfaction and solution innovation. Our staff of highly trained, certified, and
knowledgeable field consultants deliver projects on time and on budget continuously exceeding
customer expectations while minimized the business risk and pain associated with large-scale
changes to a corporate messaging and collaboration environment.
Website: www.binarytree.com

Appendix A: Methodologies Reference

Transition Cost Estimator
The Transition Cost Estimator will help you discover accurate costs associated with transitioning
from a current Lotus environment to a Microsoft environment. It consists of a spreadsheet and
guidance document. The tool will provide information accurate enough for initial evaluation, but
should not be substituted for a complete site assessment when the migration process begins. The
tool covers all transition cost components, and it is very powerful in helping understand the cost
breakdown.
Use the Transition Cost Estimator to collect information about transition costs and to provide a
cost estimate for transitioning from Lotus Notes to Microsoft platform. This information can then
feed the Microsoft Business Value Analyzer to provide more accurate transition costs. The
Transition Cost Estimator can also be used as a standalone tool. The Transition Cost Estimator is
not intended to provide a final cost estimate; instead, it will provide approximate estimates during
the initial transition planning processes.

Application Analysis Envisioning Process

The Application Analysis Envisioning Process (AAEP) for Lotus Domino applications provides you
with a process for identifying, classifying, and measuring the complexity of an enterprises Lotus
Notes and Domino applications. This new methodology is part of the Notes Transition Framework
(NTF) that describes the end-to-end process of transitioning investments in Lotus Notes and
Domino to a more Microsoft-centric platform. AAEP helps you better understand your current
application environment. The primary goals of this process are to encourage a standard approach
that you can use to define application migration recommendations, more accurately estimate
migration costs and timelines, and thereby reduce obstacles for platform transition.
To download a copy of AAEP, please reference this link on the Microsoft public website:
Application Analysis Envisioning Process