This is a live blogging post from the International SharePoint Conference London 2012. So don’t expect well-written proza here.
Session by Kimmo Forss
Content Assessment
- What do I really need in the new environment?
- Don’t postpone a cleanup, because you will never come to do it
- Identify what content exists on premises (where, who, relevancy)
- Size of the content source (files not suited for sp, duplicates)
- Assess metadata, type, size and age – not the contents to avoid “I might need that”
- Archive or delete? < the big question
Application Assessment
- Much harder than content assessment
- Data (lists, tables, forms) vs Process (integrations, workflows, custom code)
- Custom vs OOB
- Cleanup project should be business driven, not IT driven
Migration Planning
From SP2003
- Minor effort: OOB lists & libraries
- Medium effort: simple customizations, list templates to content types, url’s
- Sizeable effort: changing site definitions (create new ones), re-arranging info architecture structures, co-existence
From SP2007/SP2010
- Minor effort: OOB lists & libraries
- Medium effort: simple customizations, url’s
- Sizeable effort: changing site definitions, re-arranging info architecture structures, co-existence
Moving SharePoint Content
- multiple ways possible
- between webapps / between site collections
- caveats: url’s change, quota templates, dependencies on deployed solutions
Database detach/attach
- most efficient & preferred way there is
- caveats: item id’s retained, dependencies on solutions deployed in the farm
Export/Import
- cannot be used between product versions
- more granularity possible however
- caveats: does not retain ids, alerts, audit trails, workflow state, recycle bin
- export is typically much faster than import
Backup/Restore
- retains everything
- similar to export/import but using different api’s
- version dependent like export/import
- caveats: long running, risks for corruption if changes are made whilst backuping, use for sites < 15GB
Moving Non SharePoint content
- plenty of tools
- things to plan for: security & permissions, data hierarchies (attachments etc)
- links to internal or external
- metadata: external repositories & hierarchies
Migration from file shares
- minor: just files, no links
- medium: blocked file types, large files
- sizeable: acls, inheritance, deep hierarchies
Migration from Public Folders
- minor: oob forms, no links between docs
- medium effort: acls, inheritance
- sizeable effort: analysis, deep hierarchies, embedded objects, compound docs
Kimmo mentioned Lotus Domino too, but by now my fingers are getting sore 
Choosing an approach
- self service (manually)
- tools (manually)
- custom code for complex migrations (experts required)
Tools
- no tool to rule them all
- Look at feature set, supportability, footprint, licensing, consulting effort needed
- www.codeplex.com/SPMigration
Recap
- planning is key
- don’t move data unless you need it
