The AvePoint Solution
After evaluating several solutions, Mint ultimately
implemented DocAve Software, AvePoint’s enterprise-class infrastructure
management platform for SharePoint. “Although we tried other solutions,
DocAve had full auditability, the ability to transfer data with full
fidelity, and enterprise-ready capabilities that the others didn’t,”
Pienaar said. “The platform is comprehensive in its ability to manage
and protect SharePoint.”
Mint used DocAve Deployment Manager to deploy all
content types and customizations from its SharePoint 2013 environment to
SharePoint Online as well as understand any incompatibilities between
the two platforms. This helped ensure consistency between its legacy
environment and the destination before moving any content into the
cloud. “We were able to easily deploy our base structure from SharePoint
2013 to Office 365,” Pienaar said. “DocAve allowed us to granularly
select and deploy only the customizations and content types we needed
from our on-premises environment.”
Once the SharePoint Online environment was ready,
Mint ultimately used DocAve Content Manager to easily move its content
directly from SharePoint 2013 to the cloud. With DocAve, Mint was able
to execute test jobs and review audit logs before scheduling migration
jobs. The ability to preview jobs and produce reports on the status of
each migration job allowed Mint’s IT team to keep the business apprised
on the overall progress of the project.
DocAve’s flexibility enabled Mint to restructure its
new SharePoint Online environment to ensure it was optimized for the
business. “With SharePoint Online and Azure’s native capabilities, you
must import and export to restructure content – which is a
time-consuming process,” Pienaar said. “DocAve gives us much more
flexibility in being able to move things around as we go along and
re-use mapping configurations for future jobs. That saved us time, and
we protected the integrity of all of our content in the process.”
Another benefit provided by DocAve was its ability
to selectively move content according to Mint’s specific needs. “With
DocAve, we were able to move only the last three versions of all
documents across the environment and bring storage down to 35 GB from 50
GB,” Pienaar said. “This was important for us in optimizing SharePoint
Online as a central repository for organizational documentation and
reducing the overall amount of content we migrated to the new
environment.”