Options for Oracle Calendar to Exchange Migration

There are three good options for administrators looking to solve the problem of moving Oracle Calendars to Exchange. We are restricting this to methods that can be accomplished mainly server-side.

1. Use Oracle Connector for Outlook, save the data to a PST and then Exmerge into Exchange. This is simple, inexpensive, and off-the-shelf, but OCFO is slow (excuse me, performance impaired) and this method does not preserve state information (i.e., guest lists and responses)
2. Middle path: Oracle Calendar tools allow server-side export of calendar information (unicpoutu.exe). It is a fairly straight-forward format to read and with some programming can readily be inserted into Exchange for the appropriate user (Sumatra has tools which do this at about 600 calendar objects per minute). This does not preserve recurrence patterns, but can preserve guest lists. Guest responses are not preserved with this method.
3. Optimum fidelity: This also requires exporting using the existing Oracle Calendar tools. What it further involves is some proprietary technology which goes through the calendars and re-creates the recurrence patterns of meetings and appointments. This gets done in Sumatra's labs and then is turned into a database that can be inserted into Exchange with our tools. This method is more involved, but it maps all former OCS users tinto Exchange users and preserves all guest responses.

Big Bang vs. Phased Migrations:

Need for an OCS-Exchange Free Busy Connector?

Most calendar migrations we see have been "Big Bang" (i.e., all users at once -- which makes it really easy to preserve all the guest lists and responses). Since December 2006, we've had several inquiries from users about connectors for Exchange calendaring and OCS, specifically for Free Busy queries. We put some brainpower on this and think we have a solution. Come back in a bit for more info.