Metalogix Updates SharePoint Strategy, UI for Axceler Tools By Anthony Myers

Metalogix Updates SharePoint Strategy, UI for Axceler Tools

By Anthony Myers  |  Nov 5, 2013  

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Metalogix Updates SharePoint Strategy, UI for Axceler ToolsMetalogix, a provider of content infrastructure software, updated the interface for its ControlPoint SharePoint administration tool from its Axcelor acquisition. It's also giving us a clearer view of its overall strategy on the shifting SharePoint landscape.

Murky SharePoint Strategy

Customers use Metalogix products to upgrade, migrate, organize, store, archive and replicate content on Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange and Cloud platforms. And any company operating in the vast ecosystem of SharePoint tools has to contend with one messy reality.

Microsoft simply isn't saying as much as it could about its plans for maintaining what are virtually two different products: SharePoint Server and SharePoint Online.

Microsoft is investing heavily in SharePoint Online. While SharePoint Server will continue to get regular upgrades, it seems likely the focus on the cloud will affect on premises products, said Jeffrey Mann, Gartner's research vice president, said during a recent Gartner Symposium.

"We wish there was more detail with the SharePoint road map," Jignesh Shah, chief strategy and marketing officer at Metalogix, said in an interview. "You could argue SharePoint Online and SharePoint Server are not the same product today. But Microsoft is committed to on premises customers. It's just that some areas of the cloud will be updated faster and will integrate more with other Microsoft products."

The Metalogix team recently met with Microsoft. Shah said his company tries to align with Microsoft's vision. He also clued us into what customers are working on with their SharePoint Online migrations. Moving email to the cloud is one of the most popular. Social sync and share are other popular cloud migrations, he added, and customers are increasingly looking to host their SharePoint deployments on AWS, Azure or Rackspace.

This allows them to do more customization, Jignesh said, noting that Office 365 simply isn't enough for those customers. Hosting and managing SharePoint servers in those environments allows companies to have more control and be more elastic like when they need to scale workloads up or down.

The app model is a move in the right direction as well, Shah added, and Microsoft clearly sees companies want to extend SharePoint.  "The app model also helps with discoverability and it seems Microsoft got it right."

ControlPoint 5.2 Rolls Out

Metalogix has rolled out ControlPoint 5.2. Besides adding its own logo to the product, user controls are meant to be more accessible to business users, Gail Shlansky, an Axceler senior director of product management (now with Metalogix, of course) said in an interview.

"In a SharePoint deployment, IT wants control, but they like to give responsibility to others for day to day managing," she said. "With this update, IT can be comfortable knowing nobody has access to things they aren't allowed to." 

Business users and non technical staff can be inside SharePoint working on their projects, while IT maintains a high level of control over who does what. Shah and Shlansky said Metalogix customers should feel like they have access to the best of breed in SharePoint tools, and future updates like mobile friendly tools that are now in the works.

The mobile update will arrive in 2014, but Shah could not be more specific about a release date than that, he said. Metalogix competes most often with companies like AvePoint. Shah claims his company's focus on a best of breed approach is what differentiates it.

Soarsoft Africa announces Metalogix acquisition of Idera’s SharePoint Business including market-leading SharePoint Backup and Diagnostic Manager

Soarsoft Africa, a specialist of archive, migration, messaging and collaboration solutions and distributor of Metalogix solutions in southern Africa, has announced Metalogix’s acquisition of Idera’s highly successful and profitable SharePoint business, including the market-leading backup and monitoring products, SharePoint Backup and SharePoint Diagnostic Manager. The acquisition of Idera’s SharePoint products, customer base, brands and all related assets expands Metalogix’s suite of best-of-breed content infrastructure management software and strengthens the company’s position as the fastest-growing SharePoint Independent Software Vendor (ISV).

“Metalogix’s expansion and growth as the most complete specialist software vendor for SharePoint solutions has been phenomenal and has allowed us to quickly expand our offerings to new and existing clients. In each case, Metalogix’s acquisitions have been ’best of breed’ with leading solutions that have been quickly integrated into the existing capabilities. As a result, it has been relatively easy for Soarsoft to expand local implementation, training and support facilities to local partners and customers. Soarsoft is excited by the acquisition and looks forward to assisting local organisations with any requirements or queries they may have in understanding all the new features and benefits available,” says Chris Hathaway, Director at Soarsoft Africa.

Metalogix suite of best-in-class SharePoint products now includes Idera’s SharePoint Backup product, the industry’s fastest SharePoint backup technology, which delivers instant deployments and full farm protection of business critical content. Metalogix will integrate SharePoint Backup with Metalogix StoragePoint, the industry-leading storage optimisation technology, to provide lightning-fast speeds for the backup and recovery of Terabytes (TB) of content in just minutes, instead of hours or days. SharePoint Backup also features easy, granular document recovery capabilities and powerful backup file compression that saves storage space, which is essential as organisations work to manage a rapidly expanding volume of SharePoint content for today’s increasingly collaborative, global and mobile workforce. Metalogix will also expand the proactive real-time visibility and control capabilities of its best-in-class software suite with the addition of Idera’s monitoring product, SharePoint Diagnostic Manager. Additionally, SharePoint Enterprise Manager and Audit products will be upgraded and swiftly integrated into the recently-launched Metalogix ControlPoint for SharePoint Governance and Administration technology.

“Today Metalogix is once again improving the use and performance of the Microsoft SharePoint content management platform with the industry’s most innovative and fastest backup and recovery software, which enables enterprise SharePoint administrators, IT executives and now business line professionals to quickly and easily backup and restore TB of content in minutes, with a few clicks, instead of taking hours or days,” says Steven Murphy, CEO of Metalogix. “The powerful combination of Metalogix and Idera’s industry-leading SharePoint products squarely delivers on our mission to provide customers with the industry’s best-in-class portfolio of content infrastructure management software to deploy, operate and protect Microsoft SharePoint platforms on-premises and in the cloud.”

“The integration of Idera’s SharePoint business with Metalogix portfolio of premier products for the management of the entire SharePoint lifecycle will exponentially increase efficiencies and value for our customers managing enterprise SharePoint environments. These customers will also benefit from Metalogix’s larger, global, 24 by 7 customer support. This transaction accelerates our focus on a suite of Application Performance Monitoring (APM) solutions that drive exceptional customer value,” says Randy Jacops, Idera’s CEO.

With over 14,000 customers, in 86 countries on 7 continents, Metalogix is the fastest growing SharePoint-focused Independent Software Vendor (ISV) in the world. Metalogix is committed to integrating and enhancing the combined product portfolios to help customers enhance the use and performance of SharePoint. New and existing customers will benefit from Metalogix expanded reach, scale and resources, including its industry-leading LIVE 24 by 7 telephone and online support program, which helps our customers maintain the highest level of availability to support the demands of always-on content sharing and collaboration.

With over 12,000 customers, Idera will continue operating multiple, profitable product solutions, including Idera’s award-winning SQL database monitoring and server backup products, as well as the recently acquired CopperEgg and Precise Software business units.
To learn more about Metalogix products visit: http://www.metalogix.com/Products.aspx
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About Metalogix
Metalogix provides content infrastructure software to improve the use and performance of enterprise content. For over a decade, Metalogix has transformed the way commercial and government organisations manage TBs of content to improve knowledge sharing and collaboration. Today, more than 14,000 customers rely on the company’s products to upgrade, migrate, organise, store, archive and replicate content on Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange and Cloud platforms. Metalogix has moved more than 50,000 TBs of content.

Metalogix was named to Inc.’s 500 List of Fastest Growing Private Companies in 2012 and was recognised as the fastest growing software company in the Washington, D.C. area by the Washington Business Journal. Metalogix is a Microsoft Gold Partner, a managed partner in Microsoft’s Public Sector, a member of the Microsoft Partner Advisory Board and a certified GSA provider. Metalogix is a privately held company backed by Insight Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook and contact us at +1 202-690-9100 or www.Metalogix.com for free downloads and success stories.

About Idera
Idera is a leading provider of application and server management solutions. Idera provides a wide variety of application performance management products including solutions for Microsoft SQL Server. Idera also provides award-winning server backup solutions for both managed service providers and enterprise customers. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Idera is a Microsoft Managed Partner and has over 12,000 customers worldwide. Contact Idera at +1-713-523-4433 or visit www.idera.com for free trials, free tools and more information.

About Soarsoft Africa 
Soarsoft Africa focuses on Archive, Migration, Messaging and Collaboration solutions, with a successful track record that spans over a decade. Leveraging the experience gained from some of the largest and most complex information management implementations around the world, we are able to deliver cost effective and successful projects and solutions. Soarsoft only supports and implements what it considers to be trusted and proven solutions to meet our customers’ specific information management requirements. Soarsoft continues to evaluate its offerings to ensure they maintain market and technological leadership positions, so that clients are offered the very best and up-to-date advice when assessing their requirements. Soarsoft Africa operates throughout Africa and parts of the Middle East and has offices in both Johannesburg and Cape Town South Africa.

Editorial Contacts:

Soarsoft Africa: 

Chris Hathaway
Tel: 021 200 2393
Email: chrish@soarsoft.co.za

Evolution PR
Lesley Rencontre 
Tel: 011 462 0679
Email: Lesley@evolutionpr.co.za

Press release: Soarsoft announces Metalogix’ acquisition of Axceler’s SharePoint Business

Fastest growing SharePoint Independent Software Vendor (ISV) expands to offer best-in-class technology across entire SharePoint lifecycle

  

Soarsoft Africa, a specialist of archive, migration, messaging and collaboration solutions and distributor of Metalogix solutions in Southern Africa, has announced Metalogix’ acquisition of Axceler’s highly successful and profitable SharePoint business, including the industry’s most powerful and widely-used governance and administration product, ControlPoint for SharePoint Administration. The acquisition of Axceler’s related products, employees, assets and brands, positions Metalogix as the fastest growing SharePoint-focused Independent Software Vendor (ISV) in the world.  

“As two of the leading global SharePoint vendors, Metalogix and Axceler had highly synergistic product sets, and joining forces will enable them to offer a more complete offering. As local distributors of both product sets prior to the merger, we are well positioned to offer the South African market comprehensive local presence, support and training from a single vendor. We will also be able to offer a single solution with an expanded range of options to our customers, which makes sound financial sense and further assists to simplify the complexity of SharePoint tasks and management,” says Chris Hathaway, Director at Soarsoft Africa.

The addition of ControlPoint for SharePoint Administration, to Metalogix market-leading portfolio of content infrastructure software establishes the company as a single source supplier of premier products for the management of the entire SharePoint lifecycle.  The expanded Metalogix product portfolio delivers expanded visibility and proactive control over enterprise SharePoint environments. 

It also enables customers to effectively manage the increasing scale of SharePoint deployments, explosive growth in business content and the need to mitigate security risks. ControlPoint for SharePoint Administration enables organizations to easily manage their SharePoint platform and enforce governance strategies that protect business assets while driving employee adoption and productivity. The ControlPoint family of offerings, which have won more than a dozen awards, are used by over 3,000 organisations worldwide to manage more than 14 million SharePoint users. 

“Today’s announcement is truly a game-changer in the SharePoint industry. The addition of the leading SharePoint Governance and Administration management product to Metalogix offering extends our range, reach and leadership in the strategic SharePoint governance market segment.  This investment is another milestone in our strategy to provide customers the best-of-breed content infrastructure software to deploy, operate and protect their Microsoft SharePoint platform, on-premise or in the cloud,” says Steven Murphy, CEO of Metalogix. “SharePoint customers can now buy the premier migration, administration, storage optimisation, and replication technology from a single source – Metalogix.”

“Over the past four years SharePoint adoption has grown tremendously across enterprises of all sizes. As the market has matured, SharePoint has increasingly become a vital and complex asset for tens of thousands of operations,” says Michael Alden, CEO of Axceler. “SharePoint administrators are increasingly seeking single-source technology providers who can provide exceptional technology and offer comprehensive, global 24x7 support. The integration of Axceler’s SharePoint business with Metalogix is a natural evolution of the market and will drive significant value for those managing contemporary SharePoint environments.”

With over 10,000 customers, in 86 countries on 7 continents, Metalogix is the fastest growing SharePoint-focused Independent Software Vendor (ISV) in the world. Metalogix is committed to integrating and enhancing the combined product portfolios to help customers enhance the use and performance of SharePoint.  New and existing customers will benefit from the expanded reach, scale and resources of the new Metalogix, including its industry-leading live 24x7 support program, which manages the most complex global issues.

Axceler’s non-SharePoint business will continue to operate independently supporting solutions for Lotus Notes, Yammer and other collaboration platforms.

About Metalogix

 Metalogix provides content infrastructure software to improve the use and performance of enterprise content. For over a decade, Metalogix has transformed the way commercial and government organisations manage terabytes of content to improve knowledge sharing and collaboration. Today, over 10 000 customers rely on the company’s products to upgrade, migrate, organise, store, archive and replicate content on Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange and Cloud platforms. Metalogix has moved more than 50,000 terabytes of content.

Metalogix is recognized as the fastest growing software company in the Washington D.C.-area by the Washington Business Journal and was named to the 2012 Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies. Metalogix is a Microsoft Gold Partner, a managed partner in Microsoft’s High Potential ISV Group and GSA provider. Metalogix is a privately held company backed by Insight Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

To learn more about Metalogix products, please visit: http://www.metalogix.com/powerful.aspx.

About Soarsoft Africa

Soarsoft Africa focuses on Archive, Migration, Messaging and Collaboration solutions, with a successful track record that spans over a decade.  Leveraging the experience gained from some of the largest and most complex information management implementations around the world, we are able to deliver cost effective and successful projects and solutions.  Soarsoft only supports and implements what it considers to be trusted and proven solutions to meet our customers’ specific information management requirements. Soarsoft continues to evaluate its offerings to ensure they maintain market and technological leadership positions, so that clients are offered the very best and up-to-date advice when assessing their requirements.  Soarsoft Africa operates throughout Africa and parts of the Middle East and has offices in both Johannesburg and Cape Town South Africa.

Editorial Contacts:

Soarsoft Africa

Chris Hathaway

Tel: 021 200 2393

Email: chrish@soarsoft.co.za

Evolution PR

Lesley Rencontre

Tel: 011 462 0679

Email: Lesley@evolutionpr.co.za

Press Release: Soarsoft Africa announces the first fully integrated SharePoint storage, backup and recovery solution - Metalogix StoragePoint

Soarsoft Africa, a specialist of archive, migration, messaging and collaboration solutions, has announced the release of Metalogix StoragePoint 4.2, the industry’s first and only fully integrated SharePoint storage, backup and recovery solution. Established as SharePoint’s top-selling storage optimisation product, the new release expands StoragePoint’s range of capabilities to include automated backup, either on-premises or in the cloud, and the ability to granularly restore lost content all the way down to the document level.

Says Chris Hathaway, Director of Soarsoft Africa: “It is essential for organisations of all sizes to ensure that a SharePoint backup and recovery strategy is in place. This becomes even more critical as the amount of data and importance of the content increases with the wider adoption of SharePoint as a Document Management and Collaboration solution for the enterprise.  StoragePoint is often already required or in place to archive and off-load content from the database and by automating your backup and recovery in the same platform, there are significant gains in efficiency and over all simplification of the platform. Furthermore, it caters to those organisations that leverage Cloud Storage and Backup Infrastructure, ensuring the solution is aligned with these cloud strategies.”

Organisations must now manage an average of 1 Terabyte (TB) of content within SharePoint environments and that content is nearly doubling every year. Due to this dramatic growth and SharePoint’s ascension as a mission-critical content management and collaboration platform, there is increasing pressure on organisations to develop a cohesive strategy for storing terabytes of content and achieving fast backup and recovery. Organisations have realised that existing storage and backup methods can no longer meet the stricter Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) requirements for data loss and recovery. For example, without StoragePoint, it can take up to eight hours to backup 1TB of content. With StoragePoint, it can be accomplished in minutes.

StoragePoint 4.2 provides a new, comprehensive approach for Binary Large Object (BLOB) storage, SharePoint backup and recovery, all of which can be accessed directly within a single user interface in the SharePoint central administration. StoragePoint uses Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) technology to offload the unstructured content such as Office documents and rich media files – known as BLOBs – from SQL Server to more appropriate and cheaper storage tiers. Externalising BLOBs shrinks content databases by up to 95% and allows databases to be automatically and continuously backed up in mere minutes. The product also provides granular, item-level restore capabilities for lost, deleted or corrupted content. StoragePoint enables these breakthrough capabilities for any version of SharePoint and is the first to do so for SharePoint 2013.

“Our customers have routinely inquired about improving their lengthy backup times and reducing the time it takes to respond to a user losing a document or folder,” says Steven Murphy, CEO, Metalogix. “We developed StoragePoint 4.2 to provide customers a simple way to address their SharePoint storage, backup and recovery needs. Within one familiar user interface, SharePoint administrators and IT professionals can quickly and easily backup and restore content in a matter of minutes as opposed to hours or days. StoragePoint 4.2 is a game-changer for SharePoint backup and recovery that will streamline these processes and improve productivity throughout an organisation.”

By using StoragePoint 4.2, organisations will no longer have to rely on time-consuming backup processes with SQL Backup or a central backup and recovery team to handle lost item requests. Additionally, the product introduces support for backup to the cloud, which will help further drive down storage costs. There are also new features that address event-based retention support for EMC Centera and synchronisation between SharePoint information management and external storage retention policies.

As part of the product release, Metalogix has introduced StoragePoint Express, which gives organisations the chance to use the product at no cost for up to 200 Gigabytes (GB) of content. StoragePoint Express features the RBS capabilities that have established StoragePoint as the market-leader for SharePoint storage optimisation and the new automated backup features.

“StoragePoint has a rich history of setting trends within the SharePoint industry and the introduction of StoragePoint Express continues this tradition,” says Jignesh Shah, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer, Metalogix. “By offering up to 200GB for free, we are providing a unique opportunity to use our product risk-free and experience its breakthrough ability to improve SharePoint performance, slash SharePoint storage costs and reduce the time it takes to backup and recover SharePoint content.”

About Metalogix

Metalogix provides content infrastructure software to improve the use and performance of enterprise content. For over a decade, Metalogix has transformed the way commercial and government organisations manage terabytes of content to improve knowledge sharing and collaboration. Today, more than 7,500 customers rely on the company’s products to upgrade, migrate, organise, store, archive and replicate content on Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange and Cloud platforms. Metalogix has moved more than 50,000 terabytes of content – more than every other ISV in the marketplace combined.

Metalogix is recognised as the fastest growing software company in the Washington D.C.-area by the Washington Business Journal and was named to the 2012 Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies. Metalogix is a Microsoft Gold Partner, a managed partner in Microsoft’s High Potential ISV Group and GSA provider. Metalogix is a privately held company backed by Insight Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

About Soarsoft Africa

Soarsoft Africa focuses on Archive, Migration, Messaging and Collaboration solutions, with a successful track record that spans over a decade.  Leveraging the experience gained from some of the largest and most complex information management implementations around the world, we are able to deliver cost effective and successful projects and solutions.  Soarsoft only supports and implements what it considers to be trusted and proven solutions to meet our customers’ specific information management requirements. Soarsoft continues to evaluate its offerings to ensure they maintain market and technological leadership positions, so that clients are offered the very best and up-to-date advice when assessing their requirements.  Soarsoft Africa operates throughout Africa and parts of the Middle East and has offices in both Johannesburg and Cape Town South Africa.

Editorial Contacts:

Soarsoft Africa

Chris Hathaway

Tel: 021 200 2393

Email: chrish@soarsoft.co.za

Evolution PR

Lesley Rencontre

Tel: 011 462 0679

Email: Lesley@evolutionpr.co.za

Opinion Piece: Moving to SharePoint 2013? Migrate, don’t upgrade, and take advantage of new enhanced features By Chris Hathaway, Director at Soarsoft Africa

SharePoint 2013 is one of the most anticipated software upgrades of the year, and many IT professionals are looking at implementing the solution for its enhanced features and particularly, its ability to support mobile devices. However, a large number of organisations are still using older versions of SharePoint, which can pose something of a challenge. According to official upgrade documentation, there is no way to upgrade directly from, for example, SharePoint 2007, to SharePoint 2013, short of first upgrading to SharePoint 2010, with all of the expenses and time that comes with this.

Moving to SharePoint 2013 offers organisations access to many new features, and one of the biggest developments is the ability to support mobile devices. In an increasingly mobile world, this is becoming critical to enable knowledge sharing and collaboration across an organisation, including to users on smartphones and tablets. In addition, SharePoint 2013 enables access to new MySites and new Community Sites, which are increasingly important given the rate of content generation and growth. Other features include managed navigation based on metadata, microblogging and activity feeds, e-Discovery integration with Exchange, and SEO-friendly URLs, all of which are highly beneficial for the modern organisation.

However, while many enterprises are highly interested in adopting SharePoint 2013, there is concern and budget constraint around the upgrade path as the versions cannot be ‘leapfrogged’. The upgrade is defined as a complete point-to-point transfer of the SharePoint databases from one version to another, and Microsoft does not support this path from older versions. However this is not the only solution.

While upgrading may not be possible, migrating is. Migration involves copying and moving items from a database, but not moving the database itself. All of the data within a SharePoint database can be read and copied, and then reproduced in a different database on a new SharePoint farm. Using advanced SharePoint migration tools, organisations can move from SharePoint 2007, or even earlier versions, directly to SharePoint 2013, and take advantage of the benefits. Content, site structures and permissions that support the content and workflows that use the content, can all be migrated.  New SharePoint templates can also be applied to the structure as part of the migration process. The right product will also ensure that no dependencies or limitations are created related to the SharePoint data in either the old or new database, ensuring full functionality.

A SharePoint migration also allows for items to be moved in a more granular fashion. In other words, it is not necessary for items to be moved to the exact equivalent location in the new SharePoint database and a "Big Bang" approach is avoided. This means that a new structure can be created to more closely match the way users utilise SharePoint and more effectively solve business problems using the tool. It is also possible to keep SharePoint more organised and aligned with business needs, as SharePoint migration tools also include content organisation capabilities. This makes it easier to split or merge sites as and when necessary, inject metadata or to reorganise the structure of a SharePoint farm in line with changing business requirements. 

Put simply, a SharePoint migration leaves the database in place, but allows for everything else to be copied and moved. This means that upgrading first to SharePoint 2010 is completely unnecessary for organisations wishing to move from 2007 to 2013. Irrespective of your current version of SharePoint, it is now possible, using advanced SharePoint migration tools, to move to SharePoint 2013 in a single, cost-effective step.

Editorial contacts:

Soarsoft Africa

Chris Hathaway

Director

Tel: 011-7812323

Email: chrish@soarsoft.co.za

Evolution PR

Liesl Simpson

Tel: 011-4620628

Soarsoft announces Mailscape named Best Exchange Administration Tool

Soarsoft Africa, a specialist in archive, migration, collaboration and messaging services, has announced that the leading Microsoft Exchange Server resource site, MSExchange.org, has selected ENow’s Mailscape as the winner in the Exchange Server Administration software category of the MSExchange.org Readers’ Choice Awards. The Mailscape solution provides IT support staff with the ability to proactively monitor servers in real time. “Soarsoft Africa proudly distributes ENow Software into Southern Africa and this award further reinforces our commitment to introducing and supporting proven, innovative and internationally recognised solutions into the local market.” says George Amoils, Director at Soarsoft Africa. ENow's Mailscape Exchange Server product features a dashboard with red, yellow, and green lights indicating the health of each monitored server. It also provides mobile device reporting for iPads, iPhones, Androids, Blackberries and other mobile devices. "Mailscape is a must have tool for any organisation and many of our customers purchased this for their migrations from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010. The monitoring and reporting capabilities available out of the box are extensive and simple to deploy and use,” says Deniel Lambrakis, CTO for Soarsoft Africa. MSExchange.org conducts regular polls to discover which product is preferred by Exchange administrators in a particular category of third party solutions for Microsoft Exchange Server. The awards draw a huge response per category and are based entirely on the visitors’ votes. “Our Readers' Choice Awards give visitors to our site the opportunity to vote for the products they view as the very best in their respective category,” says Sean Buttigieg, MSExchange.org manager. “MSExchange.org users are specialists in their field who encounter various solutions for Exchange Server at the workplace. Their vote serves as a solid peer-to-peer recommendation of the winning product.” About Mailscape The award-winning Mailscape solution is a complete systems management tool that combines key elements for Exchange monitoring, reporting and administration into a single solution. Mailscape's innovative reporting module and robust monitoring features, coupled with a personalised dashboard, provide Help Desk and other key personnel with the ability to quickly diagnose a problem and deliver critical information needed to manage Exchange proactively and avoid costly downtime. About ENow ENow is a Microsoft Silver Independent Software Vendor focused on helping companies implement the latest Microsoft technologies and developing software tools to simplify the job of an IT administrator. The ENow Management System (EMS) is an award winning platform that provides a dashboard view of Exchange, BlackBerry, SharePoint and Active Directory servers. For more information, visit http://www.enowsoftware.com. All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. About MSExchange.org MSExchange.org (http://www.msexchange.org) is a Microsoft Exchange Server resource site. It is the leading Exchange site, attracting over 800,000 Exchange administrators and specialists a month. The site provides the latest Microsoft Exchange Server news, articles and tutorials by leading Exchange experts, message boards, software listings, and product reviews and Whitepapers. About Soarsoft Africa Soarsoft Africa has specialised in Archive, Migration and Messaging services for over a decade, leveraging the experience gained from some of the largest and most complex implementations around the world to deliver cost effective and successful projects and solutions. Soarsoft Africa remains product independent, but supports and implements what it considers to be trusted and proven solutions to meet specific customer requirements. Soarsoft Africa continues to evaluate its offerings to ensure they maintain market and technological leadership positions, so that clients are offered the very best advice when assessing products and solutions that will match their requirements. Soarsoft Africa has offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town South Africa. Editorial contacts: George Amoils Director Tel: 011-781 2323 Email: georgea@soarsoft.co.za Evolution PR Lesley Rencontre Tel: 011-462 0679 Email: Lesley@evolutionpr.co.za

Soarsoft Africa announces Metalogix StoragePoint development - shatters the 2Gigabyte barrier for managing extremely large files directly within SharePoint

Soarsoft Africa, a specialist in archiving, migration, collaboration and messaging services,, has announced the release of Metalogix’ latest version of Metalogix StoragePoint that gives organisations the ability to store, access and backup files over 2 Gigabytes (GB) through SharePoint. This breakthrough capability is fully integrated directly within SharePoint 2010 and 2013 and works seamlessly with SharePoint features such as metadata management and workflows.

“File volumes and sizes are increasing as the adoption of SharePoint becomes more widely spread within organisations. A key element to keeping costs in check while ensuring performance and subsequent user adoption of the expanding platform is how these large objects are offloaded and managed within SharePoint. This is especially true when we consider the proliferation of digital content such as images, videos and graphic rich presentations that are so much a part of marketing and other productive departments within the organisation. The Metalogix StoragePoint management of large objects and volumes creates almost limitless scalability and efficiency in one easy step,” says Chris Hathaway, Director at Soarsoft Africa and distributor of Metalogix.

The recent SharePoint content survey revealed that enterprise content is growing 75 percent annually. For many organisations, this growth is often driven by the requirement to collaborate on large files. SharePoint struggles with large objects such as 3D and CAD drawing, software builds and high definition media files. For organisations that work with these large files, specifically construction, engineering and software development companies, it was previously impractical or even impossible to store these files in SharePoint due to the file size limitations and performance issues. These limitations forced business users to store and access files outside SharePoint in content silos that resulted in process errors, productivity loss, security risks and complicated backup procedures. With the breakthrough feature now available in StoragePoint, organisations can rely solely on SharePoint for managing files of any size, thus improving collaboration, productivity and content governance.

Full support for extremely large files is the latest game-changing feature available in StoragePoint for managing Big Content. Other breakthrough features include the ability to continuously and automatically back up files over 2GB and unstructured SharePoint content, known as Binary Large Objects (BLOBs), to remove the need for costly, time-consuming backups. StoragePoint, which fully supports SharePoint 2007, 2010 and 2013, enables organisations to externalise SharePoint content to shrink database sizes, slash storage costs and boost performance by moving BLOBs outside of SQL Servers on to affordable external storage tiers, including SAN, NAS or the Cloud. By externalising BLOBs, StoragePoint dramatically improves SharePoint performance by shrinking databases by up to 95%.

“We have seen the dramatic growth in content being managed through SharePoint, with most companies managing environments that exceed 1 terabyte, and this growth is driven by extremely large file sizes,” says Steven Murphy, CEO, Metalogix. “The ability of StoragePoint to allow management of files over 2GB within SharePoint is a game changer that will revolutionise the way organisations manage content growth and improve the use and performance of their SharePoint environment across the enterprise. The release of SharePoint 2013 will further stimulate content growth and StoragePoint ensures that organisations are prepared for this growth to increase knowledge sharing and collaboration.”

About Metalogix
Metalogix provides content infrastructure software to improve the use and performance of enterprise content. For over a decade, Metalogix has transformed the way commercial and government organisations manage terabytes of content to improve knowledge sharing and collaboration. Today, more than 7,500 customers rely on the company’s products to upgrade, migrate, organise, store, archive and replicate content on Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange and Cloud platforms. Metalogix has moved more than 50,000 terabytes of content – more than every other ISV in the marketplace combined.

Metalogix is recognised as the fastest growing software company in the Washington D.C.-area by the Washington Business Journal and was named to the 2012 Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies. Metalogix is a Microsoft Gold Partner, a managed partner in Microsoft’s High Potential ISV Group and GSA provider. Metalogix is a privately held company backed by Insight Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

About Soarsoft Africa
Soarsoft Africa focuses on Archive, Migration, Messaging and Collaboration solutions, with a successful track record that spans over a decade.  Leveraging the experience gained from some of the largest and most complex implementations around the world to deliver cost effective and successful projects and solutions, Soarsoft remains product independent, but supports and implements what it considers to be trusted and proven solutions to meet specific customer requirements. Soarsoft Africa continues to evaluate its offerings to ensure they maintain market and technological leadership positions, so that clients are offered the very best advice when assessing products and solutions that will match their requirements.

Soarsoft Africa has offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town South Africa.

Editorial contacts:
Chris Hathaway
Director
Tel: 011-7812323
Email: chrish@soarsoft.co.za

Evolution PR
Lesley Rencontre
Tel: 011 462 0679
Email: Lesley@evolutionpr.co.za

Doing it SMARTly! Making sense of your Messaging Platform migration life cycle

Doing it SMARTly – making sense of your Messaging Platform migration lifecycle Opinion Piece by Chris Hathaway, Director at Soarsoft Africa April 2013 The mere thought of a messaging platform migration has sent many operational managers and IT administrators running for the hills. Messaging is the lifeblood of the organisation and in the past, it impacted every corner of the business and was a highly risky and challenging initiative to ensure everyday business operations were unaffected. However, this notion has changed somewhat. With the advent of cloud computing and the regular version refresh cycles for vendors like Microsoft that embrace new collaboration methods and cloud based options, it is gathering a new momentum due to a unique combination of business and technology drivers. In fact, organisations that run leading platforms like Microsoft's Flagship Exchange solution, should no longer see migrations as a once-off event, but rather as a continuous process that is aligned with commercial, organisational and technology business needs. Cloud and hybrid deployments are also driving the need for a shift in how migrations are performed, perceived and managed by organisations which are rethinking how email should be actualised in a public or private cloud. However, it is often only when the process is in motion that they realise that the most efficient or cost effective deployment model could be a "hybrid" cloud deployment. Hybrid deployments enable organisations to optimise where they host their user mailboxes. Often large numbers of users are external or remote "desk-less" resources and their mailboxes are more suitable for a cloud environment, whilst other users are best to be hosted on site. The key to a successful email migration is to manage it as a transformation cycle, applying best practice methodologies and proven technology, combined with a knowledgeable practised advisor. Today, businesses must adopt an approach to email migration that will provide a repeatable formula for success via a single investment rather than viewing the process as a once-off event. With Binary Tree’s experience spanning 20 years, they have developed a SMART Exchange Migration strategy, which combines technology and guidance with the right formula for successfully managing the Microsoft Exchange transformation life cycle. The SMART approach dictates the use of superior, proven technologies and partners to ensure that the migration is started with proper discussion and planning. This is followed by messaging, the most basic and critical component of an organisations' infrastructure and together with a trusted advisor, companies are able to select the most suited platform and benchmarks for what constitutes a successful migration. Therein lies the rub. There must be a thorough analysis of the messaging infrastructure to establish what is the most important to the business. This comprehensive collection will illustrate the complex and unique nature of the messaging environment, consisting of users, servers, policies, workflow and content. The most important phase of Binary Tree's SMART methodology is deciding on what to migrate where, when and how. This rationalisation comes from mapping the results of the comprehensive analysis of the business requirements and promotes the optimisation of the migration process. By employing the SMART methodology, businesses are automatically transforming the way they approach future migrations. As messaging platforms continue to evolve and the technologies supporting them continue to shift, it will become more advantageous for companies to adopt the ability to continuously transform their infrastructures. Maintaining a competitive edge is at the centre of what makes companies leaders, and innovation is traditionally what drives the evolution of messaging platforms to deliver the capabilities that keep users happy, productive and mobile. In closing, many view Exchange and other messaging platforms as a commodity that operate on their own with limited administration and do not need special attention, but this is not the case. The ultimate key to success of an on-going Messaging administration, transformation and evolution is a combination of complementary methodology and technology which enables an organisation to collect, analyse, rationalise and execute. This incorporates the collection of information that must be based on well-defined technical, organisational and financial rules to ensure that the execution is precise, and importantly a success. About Soarsoft Africa Soarsoft Africa focuses on Archive, Migration, Messaging and Collaboration solutions, with a successful track record that spans over a decade. Leveraging the experience gained from some of the largest and most complex implementations around the world to deliver cost effective and successful projects and solutions, Soarsoft remains product independent, but supports and implements what it considers to be trusted and proven solutions to meet specific customer requirements. Soarsoft Africa continues to evaluate its offerings to ensure they maintain market and technological leadership positions, so that clients are offered the very best advice when assessing products and solutions that will match their requirements. Soarsoft Africa has offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town South Africa. Editorial contacts: Soarsoft Africa Chris Hathaway Director Tel: 011-7812323 Email: chrish@soarsoft.co.za Evolution PR Lesley Rencontre  Tel: 011-462 0679 Email: Lesley@evolutionpr.co.za

 

Acevedo and Soarsoft Africa announce strategic partnership

Acaveo and Soarsoft Africa Announce Strategic Partnership

Soarsoft Africja to resell Acaveo’s innovative data governance solution in South Africa

July 2013

Acaveo, an innovator of a new category of information governance solutions, and Soarsoft Africa, specialists in archiving, data migration and messaging, have announced a strategic partnership whereby Soarsoft will deliver Acaveo’s next-generation data governance solution to enterprise clients in the South African market.

“We are very excited about Acaveo’s solution because it fills critical gaps in an organisation’s ability to manage and protect their increasing volumes of data,” says Chris Hathaway, Managing Partner, Soarsoft Africa. “By understanding data at its source, Smart Information Server can make things like archiving, data migration and audits and eDiscovery more efficient and cost predictable.”

Soarsoft has offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg and brings together over a decade of experience in the supply, project management and support of enterprise information management solutions for leading organisations in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the USA.

“We are very pleased to partner with the great team at Soarsoft,” says Geoff Bourgeois, CTO, Acaveo. “We recognise that organisations in South Africa are philosophically advanced in their thinking on data retention, security and information governance issues so we anticipate that Smart Information Server will be well received courtesy of the experienced team at Soarsoft.”

With new data privacy laws in South Africa, organisations will be thinking more about how they maintain oversight and control of the information they store that contains private or sensitive data. Smart Information Server specialises in empowering organisations with an actionable understanding to inventory, track, query and govern precise datasets from diverse volumes of data spread across on-premise and cloud-based email, file and collaboration solutions.

A free trial of Smart Information Server is available to qualifying organizations. Requests for a free trail can be completed on acaveo.com.

About Soarsoft Africa 

Soarsoft Africa focuses on Archive, Migration, Messaging and Collaboration solutions, with a successful track record that spans over a decade. Leveraging the experience gained from some of the largest and most complex information management implementations around the world, we are able to deliver cost effective and successful projects and solutions. Soarsoft only supports and implements what it considers to be trusted and proven solutions to meet our customers’ specific information management requirements. Soarsoft Africa continues to evaluate its offerings to ensure they maintain market and technological leadership positions, so that clients are offered the very best and up-to-date advice when assessing their requirements. Soarsoft Africa operates throughout Africa and parts of the Middle East and has offices in both Johannesburg and Cape Town South Africa.

About Acaveo

Acaveo develops transformational information governance software that delivers constant insight and precision controls for large, diverse volumes of live, unstructured data dispersed across servers, data centers and the cloud. Acaveo’s simple yet powerful controls empower IT, legal and security teams to easily analyze their data, defensibly reduce their storage footprint, streamline their litigation response and govern their live data to improve security and compliance.

Acaveo and Smart Information Server are trademarks of Acaveo Inc.

Editorial Contacts:

Soarsoft Africa

Chris Hathaway

Tel: 021 200 2393

Email: chrish@soarsoft.co.za

Acaveo Inc.

Julia Koldachenko

Tel: +1 (613) 237-9633 x3

Email: julia.koldachenko@acaveo.com

Evolution PR

Lesley Rencontre 

Tel: 011 462 0679

Email: Lesley@evolutionpr.co.za

Continuous business message management can bolster agility

By: Schalk Burger

10th May 2013 

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The growth and volume of business messaging data across a variety of different platforms make it difficult for businesses to effectively manage their messaging and communications environments. Businesses should improve their messaging management skills to improve their agility and take advantage of new functionality, says business messaging company Soarsoft Africa director Chris Hathaway.

Migration to new email and messaging platforms from legacy platforms can cause a lot of disruption and can take a while for staff to get used to. However, companies should begin to have a continuous migration mindset, where their systems are set up in anticipation of future migration, he explains.

“The management of customer and staff expectations is the most critical part of email and messaging migration. Developing a solid methodology to manage migrations, including knowing where all your resources are, how messaging systems will work during migrations and the effects on stability of new systems, will mean that future migrations can be done quickly and easily, enabling the business’ communications to meet industry standards, while improving corporate agility.”

Further, it is also important for companies to follow expert advice to manage their migrations. Companies should expect migrations to happen regularly on all messaging platforms, says Microsoft messaging platforms migration software company Binary Tree partner alliance manager Fabrice Barbier.

The migration of business messaging to a new platform is based on a well-defined business case and the aim of the migration must be defined, whether it is a basic need or mission critical, says Barbier.

“The difficulties and complexities that occur during migration compel companies to seek a reliable partner that has proven methods and technologies to help them create a specific methodology for that business, which will enable the business to do future migrations. Often, the aim is to create a methodology for continuous migration, owing to the scope of messaging and varying functions across different parts of the business,” he explains.

During a tutorial presented by Binary Tree and Soarsoft Africa in April, IT managers were guided in the migration of email and messaging from legacy systems, such as Lotus Notes, to global software company Microsoft Exchange and cloud-service Microsoft Office 365.

Soarsoft Africa registration manager Warren Marks highlights that, at the start of a migration project, companies must analyse their resources, content, user behaviour and business workflows to determine how to migrate what and when to reduce disruption and, if well managed, to elimi- nate disruption.

“Using the methods developed by Binary Tree and Soarsoft Africa, a good migration can even maintain messaging functionality between old and new platforms. Sometimes users will not even know that they had been migrated, but companies must also educate users to gain the full benefit of messaging platforms,” he enthuses.

The two companies foresee continuous demand for migration services and technologies, as there are more than 25-million users still using Microsoft Exchange 2003 that will have to be migrated within the year because the product is at the end of its life cycle and will not receive further updates from Microsoft.

Soarsoft Africa has established itself through 13 years of engaging with customers on email migration and business messaging management.

Edited by: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Press Release: Soarsoft Africa adopts Binary Tree SMART methodology for messaging platform migrations

Soarsoft Africa, exclusive South African distributors of global messaging platform migration specialists Binary Tree, have announced their adoption of Binary Tree’s revolutionary SMART migration methodology. With this move the company becomes one of the first global SMART migration partners, in line with their status as a Preferred Binary Tree distribution partner.

The SMART Partner Program is offered to select partners who have a core focus on complementary lines of business to Binary Tree, and uphold the global organisation’s strict service standards. Preferred distributor designation is offered by invitation only, and was granted to Soarsoft in 2012 based on their continuous commitment to providing superior services and support to end user customers as well as partners.

“As distributors of Binary Tree products for more than two years, we have executed many large and complex migrations across multiple platforms and in complicated environments with vast amounts of legacy data housed in various third party applications. Based on this experience, the move to adopt SMART methodology was a natural fit for our organisation,” explains Chris Hathaway, Director at Soarsoft Africa.

“SMART is a highly refined methodology that Binary Tree has developed over many years as specialist migration vendors, working with the company’s tools to form a seamless framework for migrations. It is based on three pillars: best practice methodology, proven technology, and knowledgeable and practiced advisors, which is where Soarsoft fits into the picture. These three pillars correspond with the well known trifecta of ‘people, process and technology’ and form the cornerstones of successful messaging migrations,” he adds.

To become a SMART partner, Soarsoft Africa has undergone extensive and continuous mandatory training on multiple competencies, as well as product focused education. Binary Tree closely manages the training process, and a curriculum is developed for each partner based on their specific needs and requirements. Soarsoft has committed to not only participating in the training themselves, but also acting as a gateway to training the partner network throughout South Africa.

“SMART Partners are an extension of Binary Tree. Our certification process is broken into multiple levels, including technical, sales and marketing enablement, and we continue to drive the follow-through on education to ensure that our distributors, including Soarsoft, are not only able to lead within their marketplace, but exemplify our commitment to services.  Soarsoft has an extensive Microsoft and services portfolio – one that is unmatched in their region – which made them a logical choice as a preferred distributor,” says Marcella Mazzucca, Worldwide Marketing & Channel Operations at Binary Tree.

“As a SMART Partner, Soarsoft is able to deliver the SMART Methodology by offering a seamless, automated migration process for customers going to new or enhanced versions of Microsoft Exchange or the Cloud. Soarsoft also understands and is able to deliver on the SMART Methodologies principals: Superior, Messaging, Analyse, Rationalise and Transform. This enables them to deliver best practice email migration projects by recommending superior solutions throughout the lifecycle of the Exchange deployment. From coexistence between platforms to content eDiscovery and archiving, Soarsoft has the ability to offer the project scope and ancillary technologies that will truly transform today and tomorrows migration process,” she adds.

By adopting the SMART methodology, Soarsoft is able to harness a refined end-to-end process for migrations, beginning with the correct analysis of the environment and continuing through to project signoff. This migration roadmap benefits organisations by ensuring zero downtime, simplifying complex migration processes through enhanced communication and ensuring reduced project timelines and therefore reduced costs. By leveraging a proven framework, SMART enables better planning and enhanced quality of messaging migrations.

“Soarsoft sources best of breed technologies to meet the needs of our customers, and as such have found a comfortable fit with Binary Tree and the SMART methodology. Messaging platform migrations typically involve multiple complexities, including legacy data in third party archiving solutions, change management, user adoption challenges and more. This goes beyond a single technology of software tool, as it is not only the messaging platform that is affected by the migration. SMART methodology takes all of these aspects into account, and enhances our existing migration route. As messaging, archiving, migration and collaboration specialists, we are continuously seeking to improve our methodology and processes, as this will only be of benefit to both our organisation and our customers’,” Hathaway concludes.

Binary Tree’s SMART messaging migration methodology will be launched at Microsoft TechEd South Africa, held at the ICC in Durban from 16-19 April 2013.

About Soarsoft Africa:

Soarsoft Africa focuses on Archive, Migration, Messaging and Collaboration solutions, with a successful track record that spans over a decade.  Leveraging the experience gained from some of the largest and most complex implementations around the world to deliver cost effective and successful projects and solutions, Soarsoft remains product independent, but supports and implements what it considers to be trusted and proven solutions to meet specific customer requirements. Soarsoft Africa continues to evaluate its offerings to ensure they maintain market and technological leadership positions, so that clients are offered the very best advice when assessing products and solutions that will match their requirements.

Soarsoft Africa has offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town South Africa.

Editorial contacts:

Soarsoft Africa

Chris Hathaway

Director

Tel: 011-7812323

Email: chrish@soarsoft.co.za

Evolution PR

Lesley Rencontre

Tel: 011-462 0679

Email: Lesley@evolutionpr.co.za