Editor’s Note: Manage the Migration

Any migration is a process that must be well-planned and well-managed in order to ensure a smooth transition.

Lafe Low

migration (noun)

1. the process or act of migrating.
2. a migratory movement: preparations for the migration.
3. a number or body of persons or animals migrating together.

Funny, when you look up migration in the dictionary, none of the expressed definitions seem to capture the process of moving data, applications or users from one system to another. With all the words added to the lexicon every year, perhaps next year’s Oxford will have a fourth definition that states, “the process or act of moving computer users and their data to another system.”

Your forthcoming migration is a major paradigm shift, like moving your data storage to the cloud under the auspices of something such as SQL Azure. You might be gaining greater control of your infrastructure, bringing everything under the System Center family. Whatever your migration path, preparation and planning are equally as important as the actual migration itself. Migration has to start with a solid plan, a thorough assessment of the technology and the supporting processes, and solid execution. Just check that second definition: “preparations for the migration.”

Fortunately, migrating users, their settings and their data and applications has been going on since there was a second version of any OS or application to which users had to move. Microsoft has a handful of tools, processes and steps to ease the process.

SharePoint Security

Just because you’re using Microsoft SharePoint to collaborate and share content doesn’t mean you can abandon sane security procedures. According to a recently released survey conducted by IT security consultancy Cryptzone, most SharePoint users realize the risks that exposing sensitive data can cause to their organizations, yet continue to use SharePoint without adopting more stringent security practices.

The study found that a mind-boggling 92 percent of the respondents understood the security implications of taking data out of SharePoint. Yet 30 percent were OK with the risk because they had to “get their job done.” Another 45 percent regularly disregard security best practices by copying sensitive information from SharePoint to their local drives, USB devices or even e-mailing data to an outside party.

Keep an eye on your SharePoint users. Perhaps it’s time to reinforce the “safe SharePointing” message. Using a collaboration platform like SharePoint is a boon to productivity, but its interconnected nature requires a policy alignment.

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Lafe Low is the editor in chief of TechNet Magazine*. A veteran technology journalist, he’s also the former executive editor of 1105 Media’s* Redmond magazine. Contact him at llow@1105media.com.