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TechFlow has a long history of helping clients through complicated and difficult upgrades and migrations. The following examples highlight how a well-planned upgrade or migration can overcome obstacles, minimize risk, reduce project costs and most efficiently use project resources to deliver data to a new system. In these cases, TechFlow's xTend™ Methodology was used to organize and manage the project to a successful and expedient close.
Lotus R5 to IBM® Lotus® Notes Domino™ 6 Upgrade
The Challenge
A commercial company had dozens of IBM® Lotus® Notes database applications that were on Release 5 and the company wanted to take advantages of the advances in Notes and Domino 6. Some of the applications were web enabled, some worked through the Notes client, and some worked on both environments. All were custom and involved workflow and integration with additional databases for authentication and data sharing. To further complicate matters, the company had integrated some applications with partners and clients that were not going to be upgraded, which translated into the company having to maintain a mixed environment of versions where some application databases were not upgraded and some of the company's staff would remain on the Release 5 Notes client software.
The Solution
TechFlow worked to identify the entire set of application databases in the company's environment, and the users, roles, and integration needs for each application. The foregoing analysis was used to determine which databases would be upgraded and which would be left at Release 5.
A careful functional review of the databases to be upgraded uncovered a few incompatibilities that would arise following the upgrade. In those cases, TechFlow implemented appropriate application changes to maintain the business functionality following the upgrade. For example, a modification was necessary in the way the company maintained users for authentication, both within Notes and to some non-Notes applications.
Once the upgrade strategy was planned and approved, the upgrade itself was tested on a test server. After successful testing, a pilot upgrade was completed for a system administrator user and a database application only used by that individual. Following that success, the official upgrade continued in several phases based on roles and application usage.
The Results
The upgrade was successful with no major problems reported. The majority of the company's applications and users are taking advantage of the additional features available in Notes and Domino 6, and the applications which remain at IBM® Lotus® Notes Release 5 are working as they always have.
Lotus Migration to Oracle
The Challenge
The U. S. General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Technology Service (FTS) had a requirement to integrate two legacy order processing and financial processing systems into a common data repository. The two systems used separate back-end data repositories - Lotus DominoTM for order processing, and Microsoft Access for financial processing. The project required integrating both of these data repositories into a common Oracle back-end database without disrupting either system's workflow or ability to process transactions. While the Access database was completely replaced with the Oracle database, the original Lotus Domino repository would remain. This Lotus Domino data would continue to be used in the newly integrated version, but a subset of the data would be integrated with the Oracle database. To go live with this solution, the initial population of the Oracle database involved a large and complex data migration of the Lotus Domino data.
From an historical perspective, both systems had gone through several significant coding revisions and prior data migrations. TechFlow had already migrated order processing data from seven different regionally sponsored custom development projects into Lotus Domino. The financial transaction data had been migrated from several old systems that no longer existed. In both cases, GSA felt that the data needed to be cleaned up as well as migrated - referential integrity had not been required before, data elements were missing, data constraints had not been enforced, and the data structure was not consistent across the two systems.
Early estimates placed the amount of data to migrate at about 60 gigabytes - of which the client expected to see 75% - 85% successfully migrate. On-going business requirements and data size issues constrained the project's ability to process transactions quickly enough to migrate all the data at once.
The Solution
 Using the xTend™ derived Migration Methodology, TechFlow was able to break this project down into workable components and deliver a valuable solution. The first steps focused on putting the right team together - both client and TechFlow members were selected. The combined team collected preliminary data and presented a high level plan to the GSA decision makers.
A significant part of this plan was risk assessment. The risk assessment uncovered some new challenges and presented some actionable plans to mitigate each risk. For example, it was discovered that the two data sets overlapped in many areas, but did not necessarily have the same values - in one system "TechFlow" could be spelled out and in the other it could include "Incorporated". To address this risk, TechFlow leveraged a toolkit it had created on a past data-scrubbing project called Reconciliation. The reconciliation toolkit provided a simple way for users to see and fix data in two different systems, as well as fix data automatically through background processes. Reconciliation allowed data to be cleaned and normalized prior to migration, which had a significant impact on the project's success.
Another important facet of the methodology that contributed to the project's success was the iterative style of engagement and communication. During a cutover for a single region, there were well over 25 demanding, time-critical steps that needed to be followed involving 20 individuals in 4 different teams across 4 different organizations. Success was tied to TechFlow's ability to manage the process consistently and reliably every month for nearly a year. The methodology enforced a rigorous review and regular scheduled improvement of each step that shortened the process from 12 days to less than 2 days, and also eliminated errors.
To support this project, TechFlow used IBM's Enterprise Integration tools including LEI, LC LSX, JDBC, LS:DO and Oracle Connectors.
The Results
At project close, TechFlow had far surpassed the clients' expectations by migrating more than 95% of the client data in a series of business unit specific migration runs. TechFlow captured the lessons learned and augmented its best practices and methodology as a result of this success.
Lotus Migration to SAP
The Challenge
The GSA had a requirement to implement a new ERP system that would be initiated with data currently residing in multiple IBM® Lotus® Notes and Domino datasets. The first step of this consolidation was to merge four business data feeder systems into one mega-system in order to establish a foundation to support all the FTS task orders. Unisys, IBM, SAP and TechFlow teamed up to help the GSA with this consolidation.
TechFlow was engaged to manage the data migration of multiple unique systems to SAP. The migration involved multiple business units moving to the new system in phases that spanned over a year. Data was relatively clean, but unique challenges surfaced related to the complexity of the SAP solution and its configuration and training requirements to support the expectations of legacy users.
In many cases, data did not even exist in the legacy systems to support new required SAP functionality. Further, each SAP functional area (e.g. CRM, Procurement, FI, Project Management) had a separate owner who controlled the decision making for the specific data elements and module configuration. Finally, the decision makers had been allowed to make changes to the central configuration even after the design was officially "frozen."
The Solution
TechFlow used its methodology to help manage and guide this project through its complex phases. During the first phase, the data was broken into the various SAP functional areas. The TechFlow team needed to ensure that all data flowed from each SAP module properly to ensure the system worked together as a whole. Leveraging the methodology as a guide, TechFlow put together a combined team of functional experts and legacy users to help address and decide together on critical data element decisions. This approach resulted in facilitated negotiation and agreement with the configured system, and effective knowledge exchange with legacy users.
However, the TechFlow team was also concerned about the high risk associated with the changing data elements and needed to develop a solution to mitigate the impact of configuration changes as data elements were migrated. During the tool selection phase of the project, TechFlow reduced risk by requesting a complete COTS evaluation be conducted in order to find the best ETL (Extract, Transform, Load*) tool for the project. Through careful selection and analysis, the Informatica application suite was chosen as the best tool. Using such a tool allowed the project team to make quick and easy changes to the data mappings between systems to accommodate the changing central configuration.
The Results
Using TechFlow's xTend™ derived migration methodology, the team was able to improve and encourage user involvement during the data migration from the Domino system to the new SAP application. The user community was given a voice in the process and a champion to request customization. The end result was legacy users who understood the data and thus were able to work better in the new environment with data elements that were mapped according to workflow experiences.
This multiphase migration is still underway. The business units that have migrated to date have seen upwards of 99% of their data successfully migrated. This, again, surpassed the GSA's initial hopes and expectations.
*ETL stands for extract, transform and load - the processes that enable companies to move data from multiple sources, reformat and cleanse it, and load it into another database, a data mart or a data warehouse for analysis, or on another operational system to support a business process application
Conclusion
As these examples show, a well planned upgrade or migration ensures a successful outcome despite complex and overwhelming challenges. By turning past experience into best practices, paying attention to lessons learned, and adhering to good, sound process utilizing expertise with the right tools, your data upgrade or migration project can be an incredible success.
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