Secondary drivers will also make the project a success. In our project company, two secondary drivers exist, which will further enhance the reasons for users to convert, and ensure a successful rollout:

• The company has chosen Lotus Domino for its web hosting platform for Internet/Intranet development, so users in the line of business areas, HR, and marketing departments will need access to add and update content.
• Some of the larger departments have also chosen Lotus Domino to provide key line of business applications which will require their departments to get online with Notes and Domino for interacting with these data stores.

While it is a good idea to have multiple drivers for a project, it is also possible to have too many drivers. With a key driver and two secondary drivers, it will be hard enough to control the demands for migration from users. A larger number of drivers will make managing requirements and demands for migration unbearable.

Maintaining connectivity
With so many mail systems running concurrently within our project company, the first thing to study is which mail systems are going to be given connectivity and which will be migrated first. The only group in our project that is small enough to be migrated in one shot is the Microsoft Mail group. 36 people can quickly be converted as one bunch over the space of a week, whereas the other groups will take longer and will require a temporary linkage to provide mail flow between the heterogeneous mail systems.

With Lotus Notes as our target mail system, it makes sense to make Domino the central hub mail system for all of these linkages as more and more users will be on the Domino mail system over time.

So, to facilitate the migration of users, a set of temporary links will be established for all LAN based email systems except for MS Mail, which will be our first conversion group. Temporary links to both mainframe mail systems will also be required, and likely the last to go due to the size of their populations. A permanent Internet mail link will also be set up to take over for any other SMTP links that may be in place on other LAN or mainframe mail systems. These links include:

• Email: a look at the email formats supported, attachment support, and various encryption supported by differnent products
• Address book or directory replication: the methods and formats supported, and areas where some linkage products may not support a mainframe directory that has been transferred to Domino, can not be further transported to Exchange, etc.
• Calendar/scheduling transfers: We will look at some of the abilities to share scheduling information between mail systems and some of the challenges.

To push for these links to be funded and put in place, we created a corporate mandate that any newly hired employees would be added to the Domino mail system only, with no exceptions. This was fully supported by senior management and any violations would be reprimanded and users moved immediately when found. It was a harsh stand, but it sends a clear message of direction. Putting the links between mail systems in place assured that communications within departments that had heterogeneous mail systems would not disrupt any work conditions.