CIMTrek offers path to the cloud for Lotus users

CIMTrek, a UK-based startup, has unveiled tools designed to help customers migrate legacy business processes to the cloud, starting with those encapsulated within Lotus Notes/Domino applications.

The CIMTrek suite aims to help companies which find that many of their existing applications cannot easily be migrated from a locally installed client/server configuration.

"Every time something new comes along, the biggest impediment to moving across is what you've already got, and what you would have to throw away or re-engineer," said CIMTrek founder Jon Pyke.

The firm is initially targeting Lotus Notes because there is still a huge installed user base globally. While there are plenty of tools to help migrate Notes email to a hosted Exchange or some other alternative, there is no such support for other Notes applications, many of which are custom-built workflows for expense claims, booking leave or other business processes.

The CIMTrek suite performs three basic functions, according to Pyke: discovery, migration and execution. The first tool discovers and reports all Lotus apps running on the network, along with information on how frequently they are used and whether they are based on a standard template or not.

"What you end up with is a repository where all the Notes applications and forms and the actual documents within them have been reduced to a common format, " he said.

"You can then pick what platform you want to move them to, such as Google Docs or a more sophisticated business process management engine like Tibco, or our own cloud-based workflow engine."

CIMTrek plans to have the software ready for customers in October or November, and expects to charge on a subscription basis for the discovery and migration tools, based on the number of users being moved.

"And if you go with our workflow engine for the back end that will also be charged on a subscription basis," said Pyke. Pricing has yet to be set, however.

CIMTrek aims to expand in future with more products to help organisations migrate workloads to the cloud. Possible targets include Microsoft SharePoint customers, Siebel to Salesforce migrations or SAP customers moving to other platforms.