Dustin:

I've done it a number of times.  The challenges have been:

1) Vendors are notoriously reticent about providing tools to extract records
and metadata from their systems

2) No two products seem to have identical features or security models, so
you need to  transform the information before loading it up. Metadata,
hierarchies, file formats.

3) It takes forever to move your information over.

4) You need to develop tools to validate the process, and identify documents
(or parts) that did not transfer.

We built a map of the transform from old to new and got high level agreement
on it.  Forced folks to be realistic about how much could be converted in a
certain time period, and how long the whole conversion job would take.  As
each reasonably sized group of records was moved, we validated that they
were as readable on the new system as the old, and identified any dropped
stuff.

At the end we got high level sign off from the owners about getting rid of
the "originals" including those records not converted (due to retention
schedule, etc.)

Bernard Chester
Principal
IMERGE Consulting

-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of McLemore, Dustin
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 2:58 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [RM] Merging Electronic Data Storage Software

Hi everyone,

I'm curious as to what your experiences have been transitioning from one
electronic document management system to another; both in the disaster
recovery and archival experiences.  Has anyone had any major problems
migrating from one platform to another - along the lines of data loss,
invalid directories, etc?  If so, how did your organization address
those problems (in brief)?

Thanks,

Dustin McLemore

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dustin McLemore
Records Manager
Austin Energy
721 Barton Springs Rd Rm 107
Austin, Texas 78704
 
Office:     512.505.3777
Pager:     512.802.2297
Mobille:   512.670.6256
Fax:        512.322.6519
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