A while back I wrote a post about migrating from Companyweb (SharePoint on SBS) to Office 365. You can review that post at:
Migrating from Companyweb to Office 365 SharePoint
which concluded that using third party tools to do the migration to SharePoint Online is a much easier process that any other option. The drawback with most third party tools is that they are quite expensive, especially for smaller businesses (generally talking thousands).
I have always been on the hunt for a suitably priced SMB SharePoint migration tool and recently was contacted by Ajit from Lepide who kindly provided me with a copy of the LepideMigrator for documents software.
You basically set up your source locations.
Then your SharePoint destinations, which can include SharePoint Online.
You can then migrate or copy from source to destination. What you might also notice here is that there is a Migration Analyser option.
SharePoint does have some limitations around certain file names, file lengths, etc. This can prove frustrating if you are trying to a bulk move of files and one of these conditions causes your traditional file copy via a mapped drive to bomb.
The built in migration analyser will test your source for all these known condition and alter you if problems exist. That way you can identify and take action on problem files BEFORE you migrate.
If you need to do SharePoint to SharePoint migrations, say from previous versions of SharePoint to SharePoint Online it will do this as well. It can also read and display things like the permissions of your destination as well as match securities during SharePoint to SharePoint migrations which is really handy.
Now for the best part. The cost of this tool is only USD $349 for a one year subscription of a single seat license. You can add additional seats for USD $175 and each subscription includes free support and maintenance. That is outstanding value for what the tool does, especially when compared to other offerings.
I think the LepideMigrator for documents software is an excellent choice for small and more cost conscious businesses looking to move data into SharePoint online, whether from a file system or from something like Companyweb. They also have a reseller program that provides further benefits.
With the LepideMigrator for documents software I successfully migrated files from a local hard disk to a SharePoint Online Document Library, a complete site from a SharePoint 2010 hosted environment to SharePoint Online and finally across different SharePoint Online tenants. That probably covers the majority of what most smaller business need when they move their files to Office 365.
Lepide also have a number of other products that, based on what I have seen with the SharePoint tool, I also suggest you go and check out.
Once again, thanks to Ajit from Lepide for reaching out and letting me test a full version of their software so I could report to you.
So, if you have a need to migrate information to SharePoint Online I really suggest you check out the LepideMigrator for documents. It is the most cost effective tool I have currently found, especially for smaller, and more budget constrained, businesses.
CIAOPS 