Transend Corp. is mining the e-mail migration niche, partnering with MSPs and VARs. About two thirds of its migration business comes through that channel. Here are the details.

Based in Palo Alto, Calif., Transend’s e-mail history includes developing Lotus cc:Mail e-mail driver that Microsoft licensed and distributed in Outlook. These days, the company’s Transend Migrator e-mail migration and conversion utility is in the spotlight. The product handles e-mail data types including messages, attachments, calendars, and address books.

A key focus of late: working with MSPs who have customers moving from in-house e-mail servers to cloud-based messaging.

“We are seeing a lot of requests to migrate data to the cloud,” said Joshua Krefetz, Transend’s vice president of business development.

MSPs, he said, may have customers with legacy e-mail systems — Novell’s GroupWise, Lotus Notes, IMAP systems, or older, on-premise versions of Exchange. Transend Migrator supports data conversion from all of those systems, he added.

At the moment, Krefetz said the company is seeing a mass exodus from GroupWise to the Exchange cloud space. In Europe, migration to IBM’s LotusLive iNotes is gaining traction, he said. IBM selected Transend as its partner to migrate customers to LotusLive iNotes.

Channel Growth

Krefetz estimated that about 65 percent of the company’s e-mail migration business flows through channel partners. He said Transend in the last 18 months has invested more resources in growing its channel partner network. In one collaboration, Transend is teaming with Cable & Wireless on an Exchange migration project with the UK’s National Health Service. Krefetz said that project has been going on for about two years.

Transend follows a per-mailbox pricing model. As volume increases, the price per mailbox drops. The company keeps a running total of the number of mailboxes a partner refers to Transend over the course of a year. When the MSP lands a migration deal, pricing is based on the cumulative number of mailboxes converted to that point.

With more cloud e-mail business likely in store, it’s not a bad move to have a tool vendor in your corner. Other e-mail migration software vendors are active in the channel. Binary Tree, which provides software for migrating messaging systems to Microsoft’s on-premise and cloud-based platforms, runs a business partner program. Just a few of the more prominent MSPs and VARs that Transend has working relationships with include IBM, Dell, Wipro, Fujitsu Services, AXS-One, Altair, Accenture, CooperTeam, Pentos AG and Insight. Also, the company’s partner program Web site lists Azaleos, a managed Exchange provider, as a partner in the Americas region.

Quest Software, meanwhile, offers products for managing Exchange migrations and operates a partner program that includes MSPs.

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