Building A Case For Database Migration
Building a Case for Database Migration
Contents
Section Title Page
1.0 Purpose 3
2.0 Why Do Companies Migrate? 3
3.0 What Inhibits a Decision to Migrate? 4
4.0 The Migration Process 5
5.0 Competitive Overview 6
6.0 Summary and Conclusion 6
1.0 Purpose
This document provides a supporting framework for enterprise IT departments to make business decisions on how best to migrate from one database system to another. It is written as a guide to structure a business case for presentation to upper level management.
2.0 Why Do Companies Migrate?
Given the critical nature of database applications in the life of a business, it is often hard to believe that a company would choose to jeopardize its operations by moving to another vendor's database system. Indeed the fact that some business applications were written many years ago and were modified over the years by personnel who may no longer be in the company, it is understandable that there is not only trepidation about making a move to a new database system, but also there may be a high cost associated with the mechanics of the migration. But the fact is that companies vehemently oppose being trapped on one vendor's products because there can be serious consequences such as higher total cost of ownership (TCO), less scalable solutions, a lack of developers, and more. But there are also issues about the flexibility of the business and how it can be negatively affected by the inability to move quickly because of being trapped on a single database platform. The key reasons why companies migrate are:
a) Expensive maintenance contract renewals from a vendor that force a decision to pay or migrate to a less expensive platform.
b) Expensive upgrades by the vendor forcing you to...
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