In our ever changing technology environment, new opportunities are everywhere.  Predictive analytics, big data, mobile, cloud and virtualization are but a few.

These new technologies improve business competitiveness, increase agility, save money and more.

But migrating from existing systems is risk prone.  And efforts often drag out.

Is There a Way to Migrate Successfully, Faster and with Less Risk?
Most people think of data virtualization as a high productivity, low cost way to integrate data for business intelligence and analytics.  However, it is also very effective at legacy migration.

The key to data virtualization's migration success is how it decouples source and consuming applications.  This allows legacy migration to be done in a phased approach within the constraints of existing infrastructure.  Said another way, data virtualization inserts flexible middleware that isolates the rest of the system from "moving parts."

From "As Is" to "Will Be" and Everything "In Between"
First you identify the future "will be" state and all the "transitional" states in between.

Next, you insert data virtualization between the sources and consumers.  This forms a layer of insulation that allows phased changes to legacy sources or consumers without impacting the related sources and consumers.

Then you make the changes is a controlled fashion, validating success at every step.

As a result, you can modernize quickly, with low risk.

Data virtualization includes seven key capabilities you can use to accelerate and derisk legacy migration.

1. Migrate Legacy Data No Matter How Complex, Big or Old
Legacy data with a complex structure or code that is too old and seems difficult to integrate is not an obstacle. Data virtualization excels with complex data, big data and the ability to virtualize a wide range of data, including both structured and unstructured data.

2. Transition Diverse Sources and/or Consumers
Data virtualization non-invasively integrates data from anywhere across the extended enterprise-in a unified, logically virtualized manner-for consumption by nearly any front-end business solution.

3. Deploy without Impacting Your Business Processes
Data virtualization's decoupling of sources and consumers even as you migrate them, assures the continuity of your daily business operations will not be affected.

4. Ensure Reporting Continuity
Data virtualization also insulates reporting users during data warehouse migrations.

5. Complete Your Migration Effort Quickly
Think in terms of weeks, not years.  Development and deployment is fast and easy with data virtualization.  Most implementations take just a few weeks.

6. Get Productive Faster
Your IT staff will enjoy using data virtualization platforms such as the Composite Data Virtualization Platform. They are easily to learn and use.  And they completely automate many of tasks required.

7. Keep Your Data Secure
Data virtualization executes authentication and authorization security functions to protect your data from improper use before, during and after migration.

Data Warehouse Appliance Migration
To reduce data warehousing total cost of ownership by migrating to a data warehouse appliance, this large technology company used data virtualization to decouple their reporting from their data warehouse during and after the migration.  Data warehousing cost reductions were achieved while reporting was successfully migrated without interruption.

Migration Due to a Merger
To rationalize staff and systems after a merger, the acquiring pharmaceutical company needed to integrate R&D pipelines and staffs as well as underlying systems.  Data virtualization combined this diverse data in just a few weeks, enabling them to quickly realign researchers and project managers optimally across the unified companies and move forward with little disruption.

Conclusion and Next Steps
While most people think of data virtualization as a high productivity, low cost way to integrate data for business intelligence and analytics, many organizations also find it is very effective at legacy migration.

With so many new technology opportunities and data virtualization at your side, you no longer need to holding back because legacy migration is difficult and risky.

So take advantage of these new technologies and trust data virtualization to get you there.

To learn more about data virtualization, check out the many multimedia resources available at the Data Virtualization Café.

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