12 Aug 2020
Proventeq's Migration Accelerator vs Microsoft's SharePoint Migration Tool
When migrating content to SharePoint it’s essential to get it right the first time, and there are fundamentally three approaches: lift-and-shift, clean-and-shift, or lift-and-shift then clean.
29 Mar 2021
6 min
Rakesh Chenchery
Chief Technology Officer
Choosing to ignore the cleaning process should never be an option, particularly given that Analysts state that on average data becomes Redundant, Obsolete, and/or Trivial (ROT) at a rate of 2.1% a month, meaning a third of data is outdated within a year.
Given the cleaning process is fundamental to good data hygiene management, the question, therefore, is whether it should be carried out before or post-migration. Leaving it to post-migration can be likened to kicking the can down the road and often results in the task not being undertaken effectively. A better approach is to conduct before the migration as this is the only way of ensuring outdated content does not clog up the new environment and consume budget and time excessively or unnecessarily.
Given this best-practice approach, the question, therefore, is, which migration tool is best for your migration?
Free tools vs paid tools
Microsoft’s native SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) is always a contender as it is free for Microsoft 365 users. However free is not always best as Microsoft’s SharePoint Migration Tool has its limitations. The complexity of your content estate and your desired migration destination will determine whether SharePoint’s Migration Tool will deliver the outcomes you need.
For simple SharePoint to SharePoint migrations, SharePoint’s Migration Tool, in most cases, will be sufficient but in many cases, such as those projects that involve high-volume, complex migrations where integrity, continuity, and enrichment are a priority, you will need a more intelligent tool. This is where Proventeq’s SharePoint Content Migration Tool, Migration Accelerator, is better suited.
Complex environments
Unlike SharePoint’s Migration Tool, Migration Accelerator supports a wide range of source systems. For example, in addition to the various Microsoft systems, such as SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange, Migration Accelerator supports Citrix ShareFile, Documentum, OpenText, FileNet, iManage, M-Files, Oracle, and Meridio migrations, to name but a few.
Optimizing and enriching business-critical content
Regardless of the source system, Migration Accelerator can clean and prepare your business-critical content, so it is optimized for the migration process. This preparation includes the capability to update links inside documents with the source link in your new system to keep them active post-migration.
It also enables metadata to be enriched by easily configuring rules that allow values to be set in your new target system either informed by your source system or computed as part of the rules.
On-going cleaning
In addition to the in-flight migration-related benefits, there are other post-migration benefits that SharePoint’s Migration Tool falls short of, for example, the ability for documents to be intelligently classified as they are created. The AI engine that powers Migration Accelerator intelligently recognizes and classifies unstructured data that is created by your business every day.
Another is the ability of Migration Accelerator to integrate a complete content portfolio by consolidating content from multiple source systems and repositories simply and quickly.
At-a-Glance Comparison Chart: Proventeq’s SharePoint Migration Tool (Migration Accelerator) vs Microsoft’s SharePoint Migration Tool
Feature’s comparison |
Proventeq’s Migration Accelerator |
Microsoft SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) |
|
Professional Edition |
Enterprise Edition |
||
Supports migration to SharePoint and OneDrive |
ü |
ü |
ü |
Supports migration from SharePoint Server 2010, 2013, 2016 |
ü |
ü |
ü |
Supports migration from 16 legacy ECM connectors (view full list here) |
ü |
ü |
û |
Simple setup with no installation on the SharePoint server |
ü |
ü |
ü |
Migration Workspace management |
ü |
ü |
û |
Reusable migration tasks |
ü |
ü |
û |
Intuitive drag-and-drop UI for migration task creation |
ü |
ü |
û |
Content type mapping |
ü |
ü |
û |
Enhanced source classification using Powershell Scripts |
û |
ü |
ü |
Simple metadata mappings |
ü |
ü |
ü |
Complex metadata mappings using Powershell Scripts |
û |
ü |
ü |
Content transformation |
ü |
ü |
û |
Automatic user mapping |
ü |
ü |
ü |
Content structure (site/sub-sites) mapping |
ü |
ü |
ü |
Contribution folders migration (document migration) |
ü |
ü |
ü |
Website migration including navigation |
ü |
ü |
ü |
Automatic document links resolution |
ü |
ü |
û |
Incremental migration |
û |
ü |
û |
Migration engine extensions |
û |
ü |
û |
ETL-based migration task execution pipeline |
ü |
ü |
û |
Parallel processing of tasks |
û |
ü |
û |
To learn more about how Migration Accelerator and our SharePoint migration tool can make your content migration an opportunity, not a challenge, contact us today.