Data Migration - DMM2: The write up and this week’s webinar

Well it's finally over. Data Migration Matters 2 went ahead on the 1st October and, judging from the feedback from delegates, speakers and sponsors, it was a great success. On the day nearly 70 people came in through the doors to listen to a great line up of speakers, interact with our sponsors – Kognitio (as gold sponsor), Dataflux, Datanomic, Talend, Celona, Trillium and of course ourselves, iergo - and to take the chance to network with their peers.

The delegates were a nicely balanced group of end clients with significant migrations underway, specialist consultants, software vendors and consultancies. Some were looking for guidance others for reassurance that they were heading in the right direction. I’m hoping and the feedback I'm getting tells me we succeeded in both areas.

I think one of the key talking points during the day was industry analyst Philip Howard of Bloor Research's comments about the role of entity models in the data quality and ETL phases of a migration programme. For Philip the ability to speak in the language of the business – talking maybe about Customers and Products not about obscure field names – was the mark of next generation software.

I have to say that I broadly agree with him. I’ve long been banging on about the use of metadata models in data migration projects for ages (as long term followers of this blog will agree). In fact right now on one of our projects we are trying to reach an understanding about the use a migration model as a focus for DQR activity.

Good then to see Philip and I agree. Of course, as our positions in the Data Migration biosphere would dictate, I tend to be of a more pragmatic disposition than Phil. If a model is useful then use whatever you have at hand to create it. If the software we are using is not as far advanced as we would like but it has features we find useful, then we use it, making up for deficiencies within the architecture of the particular migration solution we are using for a particular programme. We have to do what we can with what we have right now to solve today's problems.

The use of Data Models is something I will want to return to in future blogs.

But for now let me tell you about what I’ll be doing next. On Wednesday evening (BST) I'll be following up my earlier overview webcast with one on Business Engagement. Here I'll be looking at how BE is not a stand alone activity but how it overlaps into the other activities you carry out on a Data Migration project.

Check out

www.datamigrationpro.com

for details.

Johny Morris
jmorris@iergo.net