Studios
For mid-sized businesses moving off legacy databases, consolidating from multiple systems, or shifting between on-premises, cloud, and hybrid setups. The new system replicates the old one in parallel so the business never has to flip a switch on a single cutover weekend.
The vendor or implementer wants a single go-live weekend. Everyone signs the change order, the team works through Saturday night, and Monday morning half the orders are missing pricing or customer history. Nobody can roll back.
Twenty years of records in a schema someone built around how the business worked in 2005. Fields repurposed for things they were never designed for. Customer codes that mean different things depending on who entered them. No new system reads it the way the old one did.
The vendor only sells SaaS. Compliance, latency, or executive preference says some of the data has to stay on-premises. The conversation ends with a quote you can’t accept, or worse, you sign it anyway and find out later what you gave up.
The migration ran. The old database got archived to a tape nobody can read. Three months later you find a calculation the new system gets wrong, and there’s no way to verify what the old one would have done.
A good migration is one that lets the business keep running while it happens, validates every record before retiring the source, and gives you real options on where the data ends up. Cloud is one of those options. So is on-premises. So is hybrid.
“We can’t afford a Monday morning where the system is wrong and we don’t know what the old one would have said.”
— OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, NINE-FIGURE DISTRIBUTOR
The approach we use across every data migration we run, regardless of where the data starts or ends up. The old database keeps running. The new one runs alongside it. Both stay in sync until the team is confident the new system handles every case correctly. Only then does the old one get retired. Four things shape how this gets done.
We build the new database, then replicate the old one into it continuously. Every record gets validated as it moves. The team starts using the new system in production while the old one stays live as the source of truth. The old database only gets retired after every workflow has been verified end-to-end on the new one.
A flat monthly rate gets you a senior US development team. Scale up or down as the migration phases shift. No hourly billing, no surprise invoices when a dataset turns out to be messier than expected.
When a validation flag fires or the sync misses a record, you reach a senior developer who knows your data model, in under sixty minutes*, during business hours. Not a ticket queue. Not a junior on rotation.
*In practice, the average is just a few minutes.
If, in the first sixty days, you decide we’re not the right partner, we refund your first month. As far as we know, no one else in this industry offers this. We do because we’ve never had to honor it.
Most data migration vendors only sell cloud because it’s the easiest model for them to charge against. We’ll tell you honestly which destination fits your business. For a lot of mid-sized operations, the right answer isn’t one or the other.
Fully managed infrastructure, no servers to maintain, accessible from anywhere. Right answer when remote access is the priority, the data volume is manageable, and there are no on-premises hardware or compliance constraints holding it back.
The database stays on hardware you own, on a network you control. Right answer when the data is regulated, latency-sensitive to floor operations, or when leadership has reason not to put it in a vendor’s cloud. Slower to set up. More predictable to run.
The primary database runs on-premises where the operations team needs it. A continuous backup syncs to the cloud so a hardware failure, fire, or ransomware event doesn’t take the business offline. You get the speed and control of on-prem with the redundancy and disaster recovery of cloud. For most mid-sized businesses, this is the right answer.
From the first call to the day the old database gets retired. Each step has a clear scope, a clear price, and a clear way out if it isn’t working.
A thirty-minute working call. We diagnose where your data lives now, what depends on it, what the existing schema looks like, and where the data needs to end up. If a simpler answer serves you better, we’ll point you in that direction. You leave with a written assessment either way.
We stand up the new database and start the dual-database replication. The old system keeps running. Every record that moves gets validated against the source. The team uses the new database in production for a defined slice of workflows while the old one stays live. If at any point in the first sixty days you decide we’re not a fit, we refund your first month.
Once every workflow has been verified on the new system, the old database gets retired. We keep a verified snapshot you can read for as long as you need, so nothing is ever truly gone. The engagement continues under the same monthly subscription if you want ongoing data work. If you don’t, you cancel. No contract.
Each of these clients had data that mattered to the business, in systems that no longer served it. We moved the data without interrupting daily operations.
Their core operations ran on a Visual FoxPro database older than the developers maintaining it. We built the replacement database, replicated the old one into it, and migrated workflows one at a time so daily operations never paused. The legacy system is being retired piece by piece.
Read the full case study →Misty had spent two years trying to find developers who could untangle four decades of legacy data without documentation. We rebuilt the data model around the way her team actually worked, replicated the source database in, validated every record, and shipped the migration eighteen days after launch.
“They made us feel valued and respected, with the intention of building a lasting partnership rather than just collecting a paycheck.”
Amy was running her clinic on fifteen different off-the-shelf programs, each with its own database, none of which talked to each other. We migrated the data from all fifteen into one unified system designed around her actual workflow. The old programs were retired one at a time as the new database absorbed their data.
“Every part of this project has been smooth, with clear communication and frequent check-ins throughout.”
We stand up the new database first. Then we set up continuous replication from the old database into the new one. As your team enters data into the old system, the new one updates within seconds. The team can start using the new system in production for specific workflows while the old one remains the system of record. Both run in parallel until every workflow has been verified on the new system. Only then does the old database get retired. No flip-the-switch weekend. No data loss window.
No. We migrate to whatever destination fits your business. On-premises, cloud, or hybrid. For most mid-sized businesses, hybrid (primary database on-prem, continuous backup to cloud for disaster recovery) is the right answer. The team gets the speed and control of an on-premises database with the redundancy of cloud. We’ll tell you honestly which option fits on the assessment call.
Almost every legacy database we see has years of accumulated inconsistencies. Duplicate records, fields repurposed for something they were never designed for, customer codes that mean different things depending on who entered them. The replication and validation phase is where we surface these. We build rules that translate the messy source data into a clean target schema, flag anything that can’t be auto-resolved, and walk through the exceptions with your team. The migration is also a chance to clean up data the old system never made you clean up.
Most clients see the first replicated dataset live and validated within four to six weeks. Full migration with the old system retired typically takes six to twelve months depending on data volume, schema complexity, and how many workflows need to move. We migrate one dataset or workflow at a time so the business sees value early.
Yes. The old system stays live until every workflow has been verified on the new one. The team transitions piece by piece, not all at once. There is no operational downtime and no day where everything breaks while we wait for the new system to catch up.
All replication runs over encrypted connections. Production data never sits in a developer’s working copy. For on-prem and hybrid destinations, the data never leaves your network. For cloud destinations, we use the cloud provider’s own encryption-at-rest and encryption-in-transit. If your industry has specific compliance requirements (HIPAA, SOX, PCI), we’ll walk you through how the migration accommodates them on the assessment call.
We keep a verified read-only snapshot you can query for as long as you need it. The old database doesn’t get permanently deleted on day one. If, six months later, someone asks how the old system would have calculated a specific record, the answer is still available. Most clients keep the archive for two to five years before retiring it fully.
Legacy modernization replaces the entire system: the database, the application code, and the interface. Data migration is the data half of that work. Some clients need the full modernization. Some only need to move their data between databases or platforms because the application is fine. On the assessment call we figure out which one fits.
A thirty-minute working session. We listen to what your data runs on now, where it needs to end up, and what depends on it staying available during the move.
If a full migration is the right move, we’ll tell you. If a simpler integration, a configured off-the-shelf platform, or staying where you are solves it, we’ll tell you that too, even if it’s not us.
A written assessment, including our honest recommendation and (if a migration is the right move) the destination, the dual-database plan, and the timeline. Free to keep, whether or not we work together.