A new Transporter Suite will help customers move off of IBM's Lotus Domino to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, and Windows SharePoint Services. The .NET application has both command-line and graphical interfaces and could be extended by partners or customers to be used as a general purpose extract, transform, and load (ETL) platform.

Competing with Lotus

Lotus Domino is a complex database/workflow server product that performs multiple roles, including serving as a database for structured and unstructured data (such as e-mail or documents), a messaging hub for connecting people or applications, and a development environment. It combines capabilities that can be found in various Microsoft products, including SQL Server, Exchange, and SharePoint Server. Lotus Notes is the desktop client for Domino, which is used to access e-mail, Domino applications, discussions, and workflow processes.

Although Domino's predecessor, Notes Server, offered enterprise collaboration and e-mail before Microsoft did, Domino has fallen behind Exchange in the e-mail market, although both products continue to grow. Their competition is intense: in 2006, IBM introduced a program giving partners up to US$20,000 to migrate customers to Lotus from Microsoft, while Microsoft updated tools for migrating Domino/Notes applications the other way.

Both companies are upgrading their products for 2007, and Microsoft's new Transporter Suite combines the capabilities of several discrete tools that were previously used for moving Domino/Notes installations to Microsoft products and managing coexistence between the two systems.

Migration and Coexistence

Previous migration tools were typically point-to-point solutions, but Microsoft bills the Transporter Suite as a flexible, general-purpose ETL platform.

Major migration and coexistence capabilities enabled by the Transporter Suite include the following:

• Migrate Notes users and mail to Exchange
• Connect Notes mail and Exchange so they can coexist (e.g., Exchange can handle incoming e-mail and transfer it to Domino for Notes users), using the Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) for mail and the iCalendar standard for calendar data
• Synchronize the Domino directory and Active Directory
• Look up free/busy calendar information
• Analyze and move Domino applications to SharePoint (although business logic, workflow, and user interfaces are not migrated).

The Transporter Suite, which is currently in beta, is designed for migrating or connecting Lotus Domino 5, 6, or 7 to Exchange Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0, and Windows Server 2003 Active Directory. Organizations without Exchange 2007 can still use the Transporter Suite to move Domino data and applications to SharePoint Server or WSS.

Tools used for migration and connectivity between Notes and earlier Exchange and SharePoint products will continue to be available. These tools, which separately supplied the services that have been rolled into the Transporter Suite, include Application Analyzer 2006 for Lotus Domino, Data Migrator 2006 for Lotus Domino, Exchange Server 2003 Connector, and Exchange Server 2003 Calendar Connector.

Transporter Suite Architecture

As a platform that can be customized for a variety of tasks, the Transporter Suite is likely to prove more flexible and adaptable than the tools it replaces. It could be used for a variety of ETL solutions as an alternative to the ETL services provided by SQL Server's Integration Services or by other ETL applications.

The core engine, written in C#, can be connected to a data source with either structured or unstructured data. It can read and display objects or data from a foreign data source, and can transform, add, or delete objects before "injecting" them (Microsoft's term) into a target environment, such as an Exchange e-mail store or Active Directory.

The primary interface for working with the Transporter Suite is PowerShell, a shell scripting engine introduced with Exchange Server 2007. PowerShell can be used to access Transporter Suite functions that open Domino objects and data and move them to the Exchange environment. While administrators can work with PowerShell from the command line, a graphical user interface is also available, and organizations could even develop Web interfaces. This would allow users to click on a Web link and view a page where they could initiate migration of their own Domino mailbox to Exchange.

Resources

Resources for interoperability and migration from Lotus Domino, including links to the Transporter Suite beta, can be found at www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/collaboration/default.mspx.

A video that demonstrates some of the features and reviews the design of the Transporter Suite can be viewed at channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=274644.

Migration and interoperability tools for earlier Exchange versions were described in "Renewed Push to Lure Notes/Domino Customers" on page 8 of the Feb. 2006 Update.

PowerShell is described in "Release Candidate for Scripting Engine" on page 21 of the June 2006 Update and in "Exchange 2007 a Boon to IT" on page 3 of the Feb. 2007 Update.

SQL Server's ETL capabilities are described in "Data Integration Improved in SQL Server 2005" on page 13 of the Dec. 2004 Update.