Google Apps cloud migration released

You can now migrate your Exchange or Office 365 email to Google Apps from the Google Apps Control Panel. Cloud based migration is here.

Until now Google Apps administrators wanting to migrate email accounts from Exchange to Gmail had to use a locally installed application called GAMME to transfer their user’s data. The GAMME migration tool works fine, but is entirely reliant on local processing power and network speed to work efficiently.

In an attempt to improve this process, Google has released a cloud based Google Apps migration tool to allow administrators to move their data fromwithin the Google Apps Control Panel. Data migration is now as simple as entering a few settings and Google does the rest. As long as Google can access your Exchange server, the new tool will pull across your data using Google’s powerful cloud infrastructure.

The new system, which will be available to all Google Apps administrators within the next two weeks, works with any Microsoft Exchange server that supports Exchange Web Services (EWS), specifically Office 365 and Exchange Server 2007 SP1 or higher, and IMAP servers, including Gmail, Exchange 2003 or lower, and ISPs like GoDaddy.

Migration is done within Google’s cloud, moving all of the grunt work from your local PC to Google’s infrastructure. The only limit is the speed of the connection between your Exchange server and Google’s cloud.

There are a few things to note about Google Apps cloud migration:

The service only migrates email to the Gmail accounts of existing Google Apps users. It will not create Google Apps accounts for you.
Currently, only email messages, labels, and folders are migrated, you’ll still need to use GAMME to migrate calendar and contact information.

In the next few weeks I will be migrating my Exchange server to Gmail, so this release has come at just the right time. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Check out the new features by signing up for a free Google Apps trial.

Source: Google Apps update blog