4 Reasons Why Content Migration to SharePoint is Superior to an Upgrade

In the past few years, content migration to SharePoint has exponentially increased in importance. In that time, there have been furious debates over whether it’s best to actually perform a migration or just do an upgrade.

Content Migration IconBefore we dive into that argument, let’s quickly discus what an upgrade actually entails: It means moving from one version of SharePoint (e.g. SharePoint Server 2010) to another version of SharePoint (e.g. SharePoint Server 2013). The upgrade is really focused on the Database Schema. Upgrading the Database in this manner is quick, but there are many reasons to perform a SharePoint migration instead. In this article, I’m going to give you four reasons.

One: Migrations Truly Allow You to Start Fresh

Upgrades just take your past and move it into a shiny new environment. For many organizations, their old SharePoint environment was deployed without a true plan. Perhaps an IT administrator found out about SharePoint and installed a free version of the software, started playing with it, and suddenly his colleagues began to use it as well. This grassroots adoption can quickly spiral out of control when an entire department – or even company – is using SharePoint. Structure, metadata, customizations, solutions, configurations … could all be made by anyone in the organization at any time without any oversight or control.

When a new version of SharePoint is released, you may want to get rid of the problems and issues of the current SharePoint environment. Now is the best time to establish a clear governance plan for proper adoption and use of SharePoint so that it truly helps enable productivity instead of act as a roadblock. If you just perform an upgrade of SharePoint, however, it is nearly impossible to get rid of your current configurations and customizations. Upgrades just literally move your content databases and information to the latest version of SharePoint. All of those issues we’ve mentioned – mismatched structure, unorganized metadata, rogue customizations and configurations still remain in your SharePoint environment.

Two: Keep the Content You Want, Remove What You Don’t Need Anymore

You have the flexibility in a migration to only move content that you want to keep. Before performing the migration, you can granularly select the elements or containers you want to move to SharePoint. This granular approach also allows you to change data type or even filter specific content out. Imagine how much storage you may save by filtering out versions!

To give you an example for the potential, one of my migration customers had document library for collecting log files. The average file size of such a log file was 25MB. The customer accidently enabled versioning for the document library, so every single day a new version of those 25MB log files was automatically created. During a pre-scan phase prior to performing the migration, we found out that the customer already had 280 versions of this log file in the document library. The wasted storage was approximately 6.5GB! There are opportunities to free up storage space in any environment – not only can you save money on storage, you can also improve the overall performance of your SharePoint environment.

Three: You Can Only Salvage Custom Templates When You Perform a Migration

Remember the Fabulous 40 templates for SharePoint 2007? Remember the pain you might have felt when you realized they weren’t available for SharePoint 2010 or SharePoint 2013? If you used one of the Fabulous 40 templates in your source environment, you couldn’t bring it to SharePoint 2010 or SharePoint 2013 if you performed an upgrade. If you performed a migration, however, you could. Upgrading a content database will break when templates are referenced, but not available. In doing this, you’ll prolong the time necessary to complete your move to the latest version of SharePoint, causing unnecessary business disruption. You can avoid this issue by performing a migration instead.

Four: Make Sure Information Is Available To Users Who Actually Need It

Another typical reason for bad experience with upgrades is when you are using different types of authentication or Active Directories in your source and destination SharePoint environments. Remember that upgrades are only updating the Database Schema – it will not change the users referenced inside the database. The result is that the data is unavailable for the users, because you can’t authenticate old users against a new authentication method. Again, this can cause unnecessary business disruption as you try to untangle the complicated authentication web – instead, a migration can take these methods into account and ensure the right users have access to information in your destination SharePoint environment.

Still not sure if an upgrade or migration is right for you? Before you make a final decision, I urge you to run an analysis of your source and destination SharePoint environments. The more differences you discover, the greater the probability that a migration is the better strategy for moving to your destination SharePoint environment.

AvePoint offers a free SharePoint discovery analysis tool that helps lighten the load of the initial discovery phase of your migration and ensures that you are more knowledgeable about the customizations, workflows, information architecture, and amount of content your source environment contains. In this way, you can ensure whether your current migration project goals are achievable or if they need to be adjusted before you begin the migration process.

While in our experience migrations are superior to upgrades, for the reasons I’ve just shared with you, it doesn’t mean that migrations are easy. Migrations can be complex projects which require solid project management and clear expectations. It’s extremely important to understand that fact, and to subsequently perform your due diligence before making any final decision.

For more educational content on migratio, check out Christian Buckleys conference presentation on’11 Strategic Considerations for SharePoint Migration’ Download Now>>

Michael _1About the Author: Michael Denzler, Management Consultant , CGI. Michael Denzler worked for AvePoint, helping enterprise customers throughout EMEA implement cost-effective, successful management, protection, and optimization solutions for their SharePoint deployments. Prior to joining AvePoint, Michael assisted organizations in their deployment of disk imaging solutions – including content migration, backup and recovery, and security. With more than 20 years of experience in the information technology sector, Michael is regularly invited to speak at technical conferences, symposiums, and user groups worldwide.

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