Software application development
This blog is intended to provoke discussion and exchange between like minded software application developers, engineers, architects, project managers - and keen hobbyists too.
Thursday 6 March 2008, 10:09 AM
Migration frustration across the nation
Oh no, not another data migration story! Well, no actually, just a passing mention to say that this year migration could just be one of those IT vendor-speak buzzwords that you are more than just a little tired of hearing by the time you’re stuffing your Christmas pudding full of USB sticks.
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Why all the fuss? It seems like the migration vendors have found a new raison d’etre and a new line or argument to extol the virtues of their ground breaking state of the art high performance solutions (did I really just say that?).
According to the vendors… the “motivation” for data migration has fundamentally changed. Historically, migrations were often due to issues such as re-platforming applications in order to decrease costs and increase efficiency (IT issues). Today, apparently, the motivation for migrations is increasingly due to revenue drivers (business issues). This change, if it’s real, may signal a shift in responsibility for migrations from IT to the business.
Actually, that’s kind of hard not to agree with. I’m just wary of being told that this is – and I quote, “A fundamental, far-reaching change of huge significance.” Blimey!
Data migration is often presented as an opportunity to actually improve the quality, quantity and storage of data. For large enterprises migration can make up around half of the initial project costs, so you can bet our migration vendors are going to keep hammering home the ROI (return on investment) message here.
Sifting through the pdfs, press releases, white papers and backgrounders I found one point that I think is worth mentioning from an outfit called Celona who say that while every development environment is unique, only about 20% of it is actually different – meaning that 80% of the issues are common to all environments. That commonality points to an opportunity for automation, which allows the business to benefit from previously-developed technology and hard-won experience.
If we heard more of the stuff I’ve mentioned in the last paragraph above and less of the whole “game-changing” whiz-bang marketing-speak then I personally think we’d take this kind of technology issue more seriously. But then, that’s just my opinion.
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