Quest Software Previews Migration Manager for SharePoint 2010

I spoke with Joel Oleson at Quest Software about Quest's recent release of the public preview of Migration Manager for SharePoint 2010. It will enable people to directly migrate from SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to SharePoint 2010. Quest has tested it on Beta 2 and RC builds of SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint Foundation. The solution includes an algorithm that assesses your current SharePoint implementation and gives you an assessment of the time it will take to migrate. The tool gives you "co-existence," Oleson says, "You can get your data across and avoid having systems down." After migration, it lets you make post-sync changes as well. A reorganization wizard organizes data and other features enable SharePoint throttling and health.

Just because SharePoint 2010 is coming out, of course, doesn't mean you have to upgrade, Oleson says. "There's the debate of ‘do I stay or do I go?' [But] even in that [first] camp, it's ‘I need to look at what 2010 means. I can leverage [2010] instead of having to build something in 2007.' Across the board, everyone's basically saying the upgrade is the better experience."

In SharePoint Portal Server 2003, companies were given the basics for dealing with their data: file sharing, portals, and search. In SharePoint 2010, he says, "there are so many new features, it's more like ‘What do you want to do with your data?'"

"People are jumping on the social [networking] bandwagon" with SharePoint 2010's social computing features, for example. "Another major thing is being able to develop out of Visual Studio and the templates. [But] people are kidding themselves if they think that it's going to be easier to manage."

Quest notes that the preview of Migration Manager for SharePoint 2010 is just for evaluation and shouldn't be used in production, nor is support provided for it at this time. To learn more, see Quest's blog. 

Additionally, Quest has introduced freeware for SharePoint:

Drop This for SharePoint is a client Outlook add-on that lets you save attachments to SharePoint and instead send links to SharePoint. This add-on for Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 encourages and enforces the use of SharePoint for email attachments. It keeps attachments out of Exchange, saving space in the message store and making sure that SharePoint grows into the core collaboration system within an organization.

Site Administrator Reports for SharePoint Freeware is a browser-based application that collects and displays key information about your SharePoint sites so that you can manage them effectively. These core storage reports offer SharePoint admins insight into what's on their sites so they can make informed decisions. Reports include: