Data warehouse Migration
Data warehouse migration is when companies decide to take on the challenging and complex task of changing their data warehousing/ management tool. This may be done by a firm for a variety of reasons: cost, performance, ease, scalability etc. This poses a unique challenge as the data warehouse is the basis for reporting, and changing the data warehouse platform impacts, in some manner, the entire BI stack. Some of the other challenges which make this form of migration complex, include: incomplete documentation in existing processes such as data load, reporting and interface processes, database “re-modeling”, isolation and confirmation of data model re-usability and potential issues, confirming re-usability of existing approach and/or alternate strategy, etc.
GrayMatter has provided data warehouse migration services which have addressed these, and many other challenges, successfully. Our deep knowledge of the data warehousing process allows us to execute migration from any data warehouse platform, to Pentaho Data Integration, seamlessly and quickly. Our migration projects have ensured that there is limited or no downtime for reporting users and they continue to consume their reports, in a very transparent manner, unaware of the underlying platform changes.
Database Migration
Organizations are adding more and more data to their transaction silos every day. There is, simultaneously, an increasing need for business analytics from the knowledge workers. What this means is that there is a wealth of data that needs to be trawled to distil information out of the same. Also, traditional databases are not equipped to deal with such volume of data effectively. This means that when a business user requests for a piece of information, it results in a large delay before the user gets the information from a traditional reporting system and database environments.
GrayMatter has proven expertise and established partnerships with the emerging analytical databases, more commonly called columnar databases, like Infobright and Ingres Vectorwise. These databases are providing blazing fast speeds for analytical applications, are easy to use and require minimal administration, provide a low TCO, are far more scalable than traditional databases, and provide for massive data compression. What would take a half hour on traditional databases takes as little as 10 seconds on these analytical database. GrayMatter can help your organization overcome the ‘too much data, too little information ‘ bottle neck by seamlessly migrating your reporting data from your traditional database(s) to these analytical databases, and help put information in your hand faster.
BI Migration
Pentaho has had good success in replacing proprietary BI Platforms like BusinessObjects, Cognos, Microstrategy, etc. at various client places. These clients saw a tremendous value in moving from proprietary BI to Commercial Open source BI as they have saved tremendous investments in making the change. Gartner estimates that migrating from Proprietary BI to Commercial Open Source BI can save organizations anywhere between 20% (for smaller organizations) to 90% (for large organizations) over time. These are truly considerable savings for organizations.
In such cases, where organizations revamp their BI Infrastructure, it is critical to engage with the right consulting partner for seamless migration from Proprietary to Open Source without any hiccups along the way. A consulting partner, who not only understands Pentaho but is an expert on the Business Intelligence Domain. This expertise on the domain is required to understand how the existing BI solution was implemented, what was taken into consideration, and what else will have to be factored into the migration to achieve BI Success. Also, BI Domain knowledge and expertise mean that the consulting company has exposure and experience on various BI tools. This is required because if the consulting company doesn’t understand the tool that is in place at the client site, it would mean either a delay in the timelines as the company would have to understand the existing implementation, or heavy increase in costs in hiring additional talent who understand the existing BI tool. Both of these scenarios can be mitigated by GrayMatter. We have a broad range of BI tool knowledge and an unrivalled expertise in Pentaho which will ensure that your cross platform migrations are seamless, quick and within budgets. SO if your organization is thinking of replacing its proprietary BI platform with Pentaho, contact us to guarantee you meet all of your migration goals.
Version Migration
As is commonly misunderstood, it is never a simple job to upgrade from Version X to Version Y of a complex packaged application like a Business Intelligence Platform. BI Platforms often try to incorporate the cutting edge technology in their newer versions which may be different when compared to their existing versions, they may revamp the underlying architecture, there may be material new ideas / processes of doing the a job, or there may be new features sets completely which never existed before. Therefore, a simple ‘hit the upgrade button’ does not work as any of the above (or a hundred different things in the newer version) could cause some major upsets in the migration process. Reports may not work the way they should, may not contain the required data, may not start in the first place, ETL jobs may not execute, etc.
In this context, it is imperative that the migrating team understands the nuances of the changes between versions and the effect these changes have on the migration so that these can be factored into the migration plan and a flawless migration performed, where everything works the way it should.
Migrations, by virtue of the facts mentioned above, have to be performed by a team which has, not only extensive knowledge on the existing version of Pentaho, but also, in depth knowledge on the next version. This is only possible when the team has a strong bond with Pentaho and gets access to insight into the engineering changes that Pentaho plans for the newer versions.
GrayMatter has both; an expertise on the running versions of Pentaho, from our various deployments worldwide over the past few years over literally every version of Pentaho as on date, and a strong multi-faceted partnership with Pentaho, where we are aware of the features, changes etc. that Pentaho is planning to incorporate into newer versions. This helps GrayMatter execute flawless migrations from between versions of Pentaho. Please contact us to help you migrate your Pentaho BI Platform with no worries, less time and cost, and better management.
