Data migration is a key process in any system implementation, upgrade, or consolidation. A well-defined and process-oriented data migration strategy is vitally important to the timeliness and ultimate success of the venture. These projects yield high business benefits (such as cost savings, increased productivity, and improved data manageability) but at the same time, they tend to involve a high level of risk due to the volume and criticality/complexity of the data.
One of the major problems with many data migration processes is that the legacy system support team is not aware of the new system and its data structure and the new incoming system vendors are not aware of the data structure of the legacy system. This gap becomes severe if the legacy system is quite old and the support is very minimal. We at Sirma strive to bridge this gap. We work with the legacy system team from inception and learn the legacy system to the extent of an automated process rather than human resources that can be a risk for error and are more cost-effectively deployed elsewhere.
The migration is done by creating a design that maps the data from the old system to the new system in a way that relates the old data formats to the new formats and requirements. Depending on the complexity of the project, few or many phases can be involved, but at a minimum includes
