Best Practices for Successful Migration to SharePoint 2013

Each organization selects the best file sharing software to make its communication system more efficient and powerful. Based on its needs and budget, a company has options to choose from a variety of proprietary and open source content management systems. But many companies prefer using the comprehensive solutions provided by Microsoft SharePoint to transform its operations and operations. SharePoint further enables businesses to preserve and enjoy the benefits offered by their existing IT infrastructure, compliance and structured process.

The latest version of SharePoint offers a set of innovative features like easy to design and brand a website; improved business connectivity services; option to perform eDiscovery queries; and customized identity management. SharePoint 2013 further makes it easier for businesses to optimizing the viewing experience of users regardless of their choice of mobile device and operating system. Similar to other smart users, you must be thinking of migrating to the new version to avail a number of advantages. This makes the search for “Top companies in Sharepoint” who can help in migration torise to gigantic global numbers.

However, many experts have highlighted the risks associated with SharePoint 2013 migration without proper planning. The lack of proper planning will further make your IT professionals to spend a huge amount of time and effort. Therefore, it is becomes essential for a user to explore options to make the project successful without increasing stress. It is also important to understand and implement some best practices to migrate to SharePoint 2013 easily.

5 Best Practices to Make a Successful SharePoint 2013 Migration Plan

1. Address Your Business Needs: When you are migrating to SharePoint 2013, you must use the transitional phase as an opportunity to thoroughly assess your business needs and governance. You can even make a comprehensive plan, and decide how to use the upgraded version, and what type of content you want to store in the new system. At the same time, you must review you existing content management system, and decide the files that must be retained or can be discarded. Reviewing your business needs and information infrastructure from the scratch will surely need some amount of time and efforts. But the investment will make your content management system more efficient and relevant.

2. Organize and Externalize Business Data: Often a huge amount of unused data may affect the performance of your content management adversely. So you must make a cleanup strategy by using the data externalization feature provided by SharePoint 2013. The feature enables you to move a huge amount of unused and old data from your main server to secondary and inexpensive data repositories. For instance, you can use a special tool like Storage Maximizer to easily transfer these data from your SQL server databases to other open source databases. The data externalization will increase your server space, while reducing the time required to access relevant information.

3. Make and Implement an Effective Communication Plan: When you are migrating to an advanced content management system, it is important to communicate the changes to all stakeholders. Often the files are accessed by your employees, clients, vendors and website administrators. So these people must be communicated about how to access the data in a faster and convenient way. It is also a good idea to call all stakeholders, and ensure that they clearly understand how to use SharePoint 2013. At the same time, you can also consider sharing a change management system to make the migration easier without disrupting day to day communication. However, you must set a deadline so that the users can understand how to access files through the hefty GUI provided by SharePoint 2013.

4. Evaluate Your Business Environment Thoroughly: Each business has to store and share a wide range of documents, solutions and data. The files will be stored in SharePoint 2013, but these will be accessed by different users, stakeholders and website administrator. So you must gather their suggestion and feedback to optimize your governance plan. Similar to other organization, you may be storing all your data on network file servers and other collaborative systems. When you are making the migration plan, some or most of these documents can be moved into SharePoint. At the same time, you can also consider using SharePoint 2013 as a comprehensive record management system to manage your existing as wells a future data in a more efficient and organized way.

5. Choose the Best Migration Approach: When a business decides to migrate to SharePoint 2013, it can choose from several data migration approaches. However, you must evaluate each approach based on specific criterions like your business needs and potential trouble spots. As the latest SharePoint version does not allow users to directly upgrade their existing data farm, you have to upgrade by attaching a database, or by using third-party tools. However, you have options to run two data farms at a time by using any one of, or combining the two approaches. It is also important to evaluate the pros and cons of each migration approach to decide the best option to suit your business requirements.

We provide sharepoint development services. If you would like to know what makes us expert sharepoint developers, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

SharePoint Development and File Sharing - Understanding the Alternatives

Most professionals, nowadays, have to work in a hugely distributed professional environment. With companies outsourcing the projects partially, each project manager have to constantly communicate and coordinate with vendors, clients, partners and distributed team members. The files sharing software has made it easier for professionals to easily collaborate, communicate and exchange information with people associated with the project regardless of their current location. In comparison to other online file sharing tools, Microsoft SharePoint is hugely popular due to its efficiency in facilitating enterprise collaboration. This makes the search for “Top companies in Sharepoint” rise to gigantic global numbers.

However, the small and medium businesses often consider SharePoint to be expensive. Along with paying high license fees, a company also has to invest in hardware, maintenance and data security. Further, a business has to deploy a team of trained and experienced professionals to implement, manage and support the SharePoint. Many companies have launched SharePoint alternatives to make it easier for SMEs to share their files without spending a lot of money. You can even consider using a number of open source enterprise content management systems to avail the features and functionality offered by Microsoft SharePoint.

6 Open Source Alternatives to Microsoft SharePoint

1. Alfresco: Alfresco is hugely popular as an open source enterprise content management system that allows users to easily maintain and organize their files. The file sharing tools comes with a number of handy features like desktop file access, advanced search, editable content and web content management. As the system maintains all your files in a scalable and centralized repository, you can easily maintain it without putting any extra effort. Also, the system offers searching capabilities and efficient browsing, along with wizard based configuration. You can further avail additional support from the Alfresco team by buying the paid edition.

2. MindTouch: Many reports have cited MindTouch as the best file sharing alternative to IBM Lotus and Microsoft SharePoint. The open source enterprise collaborative system further supports the most advanced knowledge bases, intranets and extranets. You can use MindTouch to share the files across the extranet and intranet of your company, along with web dashboards, product documentation and knowledge bases. 
    
3. Liferay: As a social collaboration solution for your business, Liferay enables you to streamline the entire communication at your workspace without putting any extra time. You can use the system for building group cohesion and raising productivity levels. Based on your convenience, you can use the community edition for free without availing any support, or avail additional support by buying the paid enterprise edition. Each edition of Liferay enables you to enjoy features like enterprise collaboration; web publishing and shared workspaces; social networking; identity management; and content and document management with Microsoft Office integration.
   
   
4. Plone: Plone is popular among users due to its easy to install and use features. The users without having technical skills can also use the flexible content management system to create, maintain and share information through a web browser. So the small companies can use Plone to manage their files without deploying a team of trained technicians. Along with offering easy to use and extend features, Plone also uses advanced security techniques to keep your files safe, secure and inaccessible.
   
   
5. Magnolia: As a content management system, Magnolia is popular among users residing in various parts of the world. Despite being available under an open source license, Magnolia offers a number of easy-to-use features to empower a variety of enterprise websites. You can use the page editing interface provided by Magnolia to design the content layout as it will be displayed to your website visitors. While using Magnolia, you also have options to get services and supports from partners and vendors from different countries.
   
   
6. Sensenet: Many large and renowned companies use Sensenet as an open source alternative to Microsoft SharePoint. Along with managing your documents, web content, and business processes, you can also use Sensenet to easily collaborate with your distributed team members, peers and clients in a friendly online workspace. Based on your needs, you can use the Sensenet community edition for free under the GPL license, or buy the commercial enterprise edition with additional support and services.

In addition to these six open source alternatives to Microsoft PowerPoint, you also have options to choose from several other content management systems including WebGUI, Mambo, KnowledgeTree, and Callanos. However, you can also consider several proprietary file management systems that enable you to manage your content without investing a lot of money.

We provide sharepoint development services. If you would like to know what makes us expert sharepoint developers, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.