GroupWise to Office 365 Migration
Novell / Micro Focus / OpenText GroupWise → Microsoft 365. One of the last legacy-platform migrations still running in government, education, and long-established firms — and one that punishes inexperience. Specialist tooling, staged extraction, verified fidelity.
BitTitan Certified · Zero Data Loss Record · DNS Handled
Every mailbox. Every folder. Verified.
What staying actually costs.
GroupWise admins are retiring and OpenText’s roadmap is maintenance-mode. Every year of delay makes the eventual migration harder and rarer-skilled.
GroupWise proxy rights and shared folders have no direct Exchange equivalent — they map to delegation and shared mailboxes by explicit policy, documented per user.
Personal .arc archives on workstations are GroupWise’s version of PST sprawl. A collection pass gathers them so history isn’t abandoned.
Post offices on NetWare-era systems migrate via a staged extraction server we stand up — production GroupWise is never the bottleneck.
Everything handled. Nothing assumed.
Direct post-office extraction
Quest-class connectors read the GroupWise post office directly and write to Exchange Online — mail, calendars, contacts, frequent-contact lists.
Recurring-item verification
GroupWise recurring items and busy searches map imperfectly — every recurring meeting is explicitly verified after migration.
Proxy rights → delegation
A mapping sheet built during discovery converts GroupWise proxy rights to Exchange full-access/send-on-behalf — nothing is guessed.
Archive (.arc) collection
Workstation archives collected, converted, and imported — into mailboxes or Online Archives per policy.
Directory workstream
eDirectory → Entra ID mapping planned as its own workstream: identities, groups, and routing reconciled before data moves.
Staged extraction server
For legacy infrastructure we stand up a dedicated extraction host, so production GroupWise performance is never the constraint.
Assess. Plan. Migrate. Cutover.
Assess
1-2 days · Source audit, mailbox inventory, domain list. Fixed per-user quote in 24-48 hours.
Plan
1-2 days · Microsoft 365 tenant provisioned, domains verified, MFA + security baseline deployed.
Migrate
Background · Server-side pre-stage sync runs invisibly. Users keep working on the old system until cutover.
Cutover
2-4 hrs off-hours · MX/SPF/DKIM flip, final delta sync, Autodiscover repoint. 30 days hypercare.
The engineers on your project.
No outsourced ticket triage. The same three engineers handle source assessment, tenant provisioning, cutover night, and post-migration support on every GroupWise engagement.
Sreenivasa Reddy
Founder & Principal Migration Engineer
MCSE Messaging · 25 yrs · 500+ migrations led
Owns the discovery call and migration architecture: source assessment, licensing right-size, and the compliance/security mapping that decides which M365 SKU mix you actually need.
Roshan Pujari
Senior Migration Engineer · Source Systems Lead
Microsoft Certified · M365 Administrator
Runs source-side assessment and extraction: credentials, throttling strategy, batch design, and the pre-stage sync that makes cutover weekends boring.
Bhargav
Senior Migration Engineer · Mail Flow + Cutover
Microsoft Certified · Exchange + M365 Messaging
MX/SPF/DKIM/DMARC cutover and Autodiscover repoint. Owns the 2-4 hour cutover window plus post-cutover Outlook profile and mobile device resync.
The GroupWise-specific realities.
Generic migration guides skip these. They are the operational details that decide whether your cutover weekend is boring — which is the goal.
GroupWise shared folders and proxy rights have no 1:1 Exchange equivalent — mapped to shared mailboxes and delegation by documented policy
Personal .arc archives on workstations need a collection pass — they’re the GroupWise version of PST sprawl and are always forgotten
Old post offices on NetWare-era infrastructure migrate via a staged extraction server we stand up — production is never the bottleneck
Frequently Asked Questions
Which GroupWise versions can you migrate?+
How are GroupWise proxy rights handled in Office 365?+
How long does a GroupWise to Office 365 migration take?+
What is the downtime during a GroupWise to Microsoft 365 migration?+
Is there any risk of data loss?+
What does the migration include for $15/user?+
GroupWise: honored. Retired.
$15/user flat. Pre-staged sync, off-hours cutover, DNS handled, 30-day hypercare. Zero data loss record across 1.4M users.
Microsoft Solutions Partner · BitTitan certified · Fixed-fee · 500+ migrations
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