Partner Solution Case Study

Software Company Creates Tools to Help Customers Capitalize on Collaboration

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Professional services—Software engineering

Partner ProfileBased in Washington, D.C., with offices worldwide, Metalogix helps customers manage, migrate, store, archive, and protect Microsoft SharePoint Server content throughout its life cycle.

Business SituationMetalogix wanted to help customers migrate to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Online to benefit from collaboration and IT administrative advantages.

SolutionMetalogix created tools that help customers move content from older systems to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Online as well as synchronize data.

Benefits Lowers total cost of ownership Enables customers to take

advantage of collaboration 90 percent faster

Helps companies reap cloud benefits

“We see many organizations taking advantage of SharePoint Server 2010 because it brings about a significant reduction to the TCO for collaboration systems.”

Stephen Cawood, Director of Product Marketing, Metalogix

Metalogix helps organizations benefit from the collaboration and content management features of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. The company developed a portfolio of tools that customers use to manage and migrate from previous versions of SharePoint Server and third-party systems to SharePoint Server 2010. Metalogix also supports cloud migrations, helping customers flexibly adopt fully hosted and hybrid scenarios. Metalogix customers experience fast, easy, and cost-efficient migrations and on average, they report a lower total cost of ownership with SharePoint Server 2010 than competing solutions, experience cost savings from SharePoint Online, and achieve these gains faster by using Metalogix.

SituationSince 2001, Metalogix has helped companies plan for and complete their transitions to Microsoft content management systems as quickly and cost-efficiently as possible. After acquiring two leading solution providers, Metalogix has expanded its product line to include binary large object (BLOB) storage/externalization, management, and archiving and technologies, and it has served more than 5,000 customers across the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Middle East. Metalogix is a member of the Microsoft Partner Network with a Gold Independent Software Vendor/Software competency.

With the release of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Metalogix sees a significant number of organizations that want to take advantage of a unified environment for collaboration and content management. Metalogix customers are eager to embrace advancements to workflow, business intelligence, and content editing with the familiar Ribbon feature, part of the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface. “Customers are also attracted to the capabilities in SharePoint Server 2010 for connecting to external data,” says Stephen Cawood, Director of Product Marketing at Metalogix. Microsoft Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint Server 2010 enables organizations to easily connect their SharePoint Server 2010 intranets, extranets, and websites to line-of-business systems, databases, and other external systems. “The overarching theme of SharePoint Server 2010 for all customers is flexibility,” says Cawood.

Metalogix offers tools to help customers migrate to SharePoint Server 2010 from more than a dozen different environments—such as local and networked file shares, EMC Documentum eRoom, Google Apps for Business, websites, public folders, and Oracle Content Server and Stellent. Many Metalogix customers also use the company’s tools to transition to SharePoint Server 2010 from Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

Metalogix also wanted to help companies take advantage of Microsoft SharePoint Online, which is delivered online as part of the Microsoft Office 365 subscription service. Microsoft Office 365 is a set of cloud-based email, calendaring, collaboration, and conferencing services combined with web-based versions of the popular Microsoft Office programs. “More and more customers are recognizing the cost savings and administrative efficiency gains of SharePoint Online,” says Cawood.

Many organizations want to take advantage of a hybrid cloud solution that uses both on-premises servers and cloud-based servers. “They need a way to easily move information to a hosted, cloud-based environment, as well as synchronize data and information between the two environments,” says Cawood.

SolutionIn 2001, Metalogix began to develop solutions to help customers transition to

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“The overarching theme of SharePoint Server 2010 for all customers is flexibility.”

Stephen Cawood, Director of Product Marketing, Metalogix

SharePoint Server. The company now markets a complete portfolio of downloadable software tools that enhance migration to SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Online, as well as provide additional management, archiving, and storage capabilities.

Migrating to an On-Premises Solution In a typical on-premises migration scenario, a Metalogix customer establishes a new hardware infrastructure and implements SharePoint Server 2010. If migrating from an older version of SharePoint Server, the customer installs Metalogix Migration Manager for SharePoint on a local computer that can access the organization’s servers. Migration Manager for SharePoint is based on the Microsoft .NET Framework and is available as a download from the Metalogix website. Through the solution’s graphical user interface, a customer can transfer SharePoint sites, libraries, lists, web parts, and user permissions from the older environment to SharePoint Server 2010.

A healthcare company with more than 120,000 customers used the Metalogix solution to move extensive document libraries, lists, and permissions from its Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 environment to SharePoint Server 2010, automating a highly structured process. The company quickly consolidated all of its SharePoint sites, libraries, lists, web parts, and permissions from multiple servers to the new environment while maintaining critical information, such as descriptive metadata and version histories of each document.

During the migration process, Metalogix customers also have the option to reorganize the structure of their SharePoint sites, transfer only designated content, or migrate content incrementally in an effort to run pilots or test aspects of the new environment before moving all data over. Administrators can schedule migrations to occur after office hours to ensure that work is not interrupted, and employees can continue to operate in the old environment until the migration is complete and the new environment is ready for production. The Metalogix-enabled connection is supported through the flexible SharePoint Server 2010 application programming interface (API) and can also be controlled by IT departments through the Windows PowerShell command-line and scripting environment.

Customers who migrate to SharePoint Server 2010 from other collaboration and content management environments can choose from a number of different tools—including Metalogix Migration Manager Edition for eRoom, Google Apps, Oracle Content Server (Stellant), and File Shares—to optimize their SharePoint Server 2010 sites architecture and transfer content to the new environment in a nondisruptive fashion.

Migrating to the Cloud or Hybrid EnvironmentWhen migrating to SharePoint Online, which can be licensed as a standalone product, Metalogix customers use Metalogix Migration Manager for SharePoint. For maximum flexibility, customers can also take advantage of a

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hybrid environment, where they use both SharePoint Online and an on-premises instance of SharePoint Server 2010. For example, a Fortune 500 beverage manufacturer and retailer relies on SharePoint Online to provide a robust extranet to its bottling divisions in many different countries, while also maintaining SharePoint Server 2010 for its corporate headquarters and regional offices. By using Migration Manager for SharePoint, the company automatically synchronizes data between the two environments.

A global IT consulting firm also recently used Migration Manager for SharePoint to migrate more than a terabyte of data from its on-premises environment to SharePoint Online. This company will continue to operate within its on-premises SharePoint Server 2010 environment, but in the unlikely event of an outage, users will also be able to seamlessly access collaboration tools and data through SharePoint Online. The software invokes a custom-developed web service that connects with the SharePoint Server API.

Preserving, Migrating, and Optimizing Business AssetsMetalogix helps organizations preserve valuable business assets, including the descriptive metadata associated with documents and other electronic files. This metadata is particularly valuable in SharePoint Server 2010, as it supports managed metadata that allows an organization to centrally define taxonomies for its intranet or website content to help users find information quickly.

“We want to make sure that customers are getting the most out of the new environment, so we enable a straightforward transfer of the metadata to SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Online,” says Cawood. Metalogix technology allows users to enter metadata into Microsoft Excel, and also gathers metadata from traditional file shares and third-party systems, and then transfer the metadata to the SharePoint Server 2010 term store, a central repository where a customer’s taxonomy is managed. Hierarchical “sets” of terms are managed according to the customer’s corporate taxonomy.

The flexibility of the SharePoint Server 2010 environment, which allows organizations to adapt components of the solution to meet business needs, makes it possible for customers to use Metalogix tools to reorganize their SharePoint sites. “Rather than just moving over what they have in the old environment, we help customers improve their sites as they upgrade,” says Cawood. For instance, a customer can create a new SharePoint site design by using out-of-the-box web content management tools in SharePoint Server 2010, such as master pages and page layouts. With this feature, IT departments create templates that include official logos, navigation, and style guidelines—making it easy for business users to create new intranet, extranet, or public webpages. With Migration Manager for SharePoint, customers can migrate content from the old site templates to the new ones, automatically.

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Expanding Available Storage OptionsMetalogix also provides flexible options for optimizing SharePoint Server 2010 data storage. “Companies rely heavily on their SharePoint Server 2010 environments as the central hub for enterprise content,” says Cawood. “We provide flexible options for migrating data out of SharePoint Server databases and into multi-tiered storage for better performance and higher cost-efficiency.” Using the Metalogix StoragePoint solution, customers can move unstructured data or BLOBs in SharePoint Server 2010 from Microsoft SQL Server data management software to the environment of their choice, including storage area networks, network attached storage, or cloud-based storage, such as the Windows Azure platform—as long as certain requirements are met.BenefitsBy using SharePoint Server 2010 and tools from Metalogix, organizations achieve a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) in their collaboration and content management environments and accomplish streamlined, efficient, effective migrations. They can also quickly take advantage of the cost savings and efficiency gains that SharePoint Online offers.

Lowers Total Cost of Ownership“We see many organizations taking advantage of SharePoint Server 2010 because it brings about a significant reduction to the TCO for collaboration systems,” says Cawood. “Often, customers consolidate from as many as five different systems to SharePoint Server 2010, resulting in dramatic savings

on hardware, software licensing, maintenance, and development costs.” Metalogix tools streamline the migration process, whether from third-party environments, networked file shares, or older SharePoint Server content stores.

Enables Customers to Take Advantage of Collaboration 90 Percent FasterMigration Manager for SharePoint and other Metalogix migration tools are available as a lightweight, web-based download. Once installed on a computer that can access the former content stores and the target SharePoint Server 2010 sites, a user simply copies content from one environment to the new environment. With incremental updating capabilities, migrations are seamless and require no downtime. Administrators can move segments of content over at a time, allowing users to continue to work in the old environment until the new environment is ready for production. All changes made to the old environment while the migration is occurring can also be seamlessly migrated over, to ensure that all data is captured.

The healthcare company reduced its migration time from the four weeks it would have taken without using Metalogix tools to less than two days using Metalogix. This enabled the company to take advantage of SharePoint Server 2010 approximately 90 percent faster. Helps Companies Reap Cloud BenefitsMetalogix helps companies quickly take advantage of cloud services for maximum cost savings and efficiency gains. With SharePoint Online, customers

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“Companies rely heavily on their SharePoint Server 2010 environments as the central hub for enterprise content. We provide flexible options for migrating data out of SharePoint Server databases and into multi-tiered storage for better performance and higher cost-efficiency.”

Stephen Cawood, Director of Product Marketing, Metalogix

enjoy fully hosted collaboration through a collection of web-based tools and technologies, while reducing the time and cost investments associated with a physical server infrastructure. “We see the competitive edge that SharePoint Online can provide to companies, as it allows them to quickly roll out collaboration services that enhance productivity and communication, while keeping IT costs low,” says Cawood.

Also, customers—such as the Fortune 500 beverage company—can deploy a hybrid environment to gain the flexibility of hosting while also taking advantage of dedicated on-premises servers. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is the business collaboration platform for the enterprise and the Web.

For more information about Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, go to:www.microsoft.com/sharepoint

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Metalogix products and services, call (877) 450-8667 or visit the website at: www.metalogix.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published July 2011

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio−Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

Microsoft Office 365−Microsoft SharePoint Online

Third-Party Software Metalogix Migration Manager for

SharePoint