IBM Migration Factory

Companies are constantly looking for ways to improve their business and gain a competitive edge. Often, these newfound opportunities for improvement have the potential to affect a company's basic IT infrastructure and may require the migration of core applications and databases to a new environment.

However, where do you start? Where should you target to migrate first? What should you migrate first to give you the best return on investment (ROI) and lowest total cost of ownership (TCO)? We can help you answer those questions.

We use a proven methodology to help organizations just like yours meet those objectives. The first step in this methodology is IBM's Server Makeover analysis. This analysis is used to develop a high-level technical and financial roadmap that identifies optimization opportunities within the server environment and the best targets for migration.

Download the IBM Server Makeover analysis brochure to find out more. Take the first step to understand what your options are, and help you identify what you can and should migrate. (150KB)

A successful migration can bring substantial benefits. If executed correctly, it can offer real business advantages and rewards. Yet, if you wait until you need to migrate, many analysts say you've waited too long. The "if it isn't broken don't fix it" philosophy is a dangerous practice and can cost a company significantly more to migrate when it becomes critical or necessary due to such factors as loss of faith in current vendor, poor performance of current vendor, high costs of support from current vendor.

IBM has built a world-class migration capability to help customers move from their current non-IBM platform to IBM Systems – the IBM Migration Factory.

Download the "hows" and "whys" of migration: The IBM Migration Factory answers key questions. (250KB)

IBM Systems Migration Factory
See how the experts at the IBM Migration Factory can help you develop a migration roadmap, an estimate of our migration effort, and a customized business case for the migration. This video includes a testimonianal from a successful migration client.

Watch video (85.5MB)

The Migration Factory uses a five-step process, which has been meticulously refined over 25 years. While no two migrations are identical, the process IBM uses to help ensure success is always the same whether it's an infrastructure migration, database migration, ISV package, custom applications or combination of all four.

Migration services

Migration workloads	Description	Benefits
Custom applications	The IBM Migration Factory performs end-to-end migration of custom UNIX-based applications, allowing you to focus your valuable time on business issues. For software developers with large amounts of Solaris or Tru64-based C/C++ code who need to quickly port custom-code applications at a low cost, the Migration Factory's C/C++ porting service is an easy decision. This capability is solely focused on producing ported code and a clean compile-and-link on IBM AIX and Linux that can be integrated with the remainder of the application ready for test and deployment.	Jump-starts a migration project with source code successfully compiled for your IBM AIX and Linux target platforms. Allows much more expensive in-house talent to focus on getting the code to run properly in your environment. Limits assessment costs and permits more accurate schedules and cost estimates to be developed. Significantly lessens tool evaluation, training and licensing costs. Leverages extensive migration experience to resolve issues quickly.
Databases	Traditional methods to migrate data often do not work in the time users have available. The IBM Migration Factory has developed a suite of comprehensive services for Informix, Sybase and Oracle users that addresses the fundamental issues associated with reliably migrating databases to IBM AIX or Linux with nominal or no downtime.	Database migration can give clients the opportunity to: Maximize the value of Informix, Sybase, or Oracle software licenses by using dedicated database servers, Attain more processing power at a reduced cost. Leverage new Oracle database features like grid support, column level security or ultra large database support, and Save by consolidating existing servers and replacing them with fewer, more powerful ones.
Infrastructure	Print and file management Web Security/firewall E-mail and groupware	Infrastructure migration can help to give customers the opportunity to: Reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) via server consolidation Free up IT staff for mission critical projects Provide basic skill transfer
ERP applications	When Oracle E-Business Suite or SAP® customers think about migrating to other platforms, their number-one concern is risk and how those risks can be mitigated.	ERP migrations can help to give customers the opportunity to: Design new architecture to help enable growth and operational efficiency, Enable tested backup and restore solutions, which can drive higher availability and disaster recovery, Automate testing procedures which may be manual today, Reorganize database(s), which can help reduce space fragmentation, improve performance and data availability, Perform Oracle E-Business Suite upgrades and introduce new technology, and Improve Oracle E-Business Suite end-user experience such as faster response times and reduced batch runtimes.

Education & tools: Understanding migration

Migration Q&A with IBM's John Nelson
Before taking the migration plunge, you'll need to ask questions, evaluate resources and skills, and outline future objectives. Start here.

Migrating applications to new platforms
The right migrations can bring fast, substantial and long-running ROI. Here's how to choose, plan and implement your migration.

Article: The Migration Advantage, by Skip Garvin and Kevin Galloway
Companies are constantly looking for ways to improve their business and gain a competitive edge. Read why proactive migration is a wise strategic choice.

Successes

We've helped several companies migrate to IBM.

Baylor College of Medicine

Baylor College of Medicine consolidated 32 legacy Sun servers on three IBM Power 570 servers with IBM POWER processor-based technology, migrating from UNIX to IBM AIX and virtualizing critical workloads such as SAP with IBM PowerVM.