Data integration offers archival off-switch
July 15, 2010
Above, a demonstration of DBIntegrate, from a 10-minute YouTube video. You'll need Flash capability in your browser to watch it from this page.
Transoft, which has made its bones in the 3000 market doing modernization and migration of 3000 systems, is offering another way to transform an MPE/iX enterprise. The company is introducing sales of a stand-alone product for database integration, DBIntegrate.
Although the concept has been served already in the marketplace -- MB Foster's got three products to migrate databases to targets, including real-time transfers -- Transoft is now offering software that it's been using with customers for more than 12 years, according to its Sales and Marketing VP Bruce Kopkin. The company, part of the Iris Software and Services corporation, took a closer look at a tool that's already proven itself in customer engagements.
"It was working but we hadn't done much with it," Kopkin said. Formerly called Enterprise Join Engine, the new DBIntegrate takes data from multiple data sources "and allows it to be viewed as a single data source. Over the last year we recognized this thing has a lot more power than what we've used it to do. It does database integration, data migration, and some cleansing of data using rules as you're doing an integration or migration."
Transoft's goal with DBIntegrate is to capture some of the 3000 marketplace which is using systems as archive machines. This archival market is likely to be the last outpost of 3000 homestead users -- companies that find it simpler to keep historical data on 3000s and use the reports and databases there for lookups and business intelligence. DBIntegrate, which Transoft intends to be also used by application vendors for their clients as well as the sites running home-grown code, is a means to shut off archival systems at the end of their lifespans.
This could be a long-term solution for an HP 3000 site that invests in DBIntegrate, in part because the product is platform-agnostic, Kopkin said. Data migration is a strong measure for any company's enterprise, whether it's moving business-grade database contents to personal desktop report tools, or emptying the data out of a server that will be decommissioned soon.
This kind of tool has often been sold as a part of a professional services engagement; Transoft said it has sold DBIntegrate a few times in that manner. But it's also been sold to companies like a charity that buys customer lists, cleans them up and transfers them to a centralized data warehouse. A couple of companies which Transoft has migrated, but have left data behind on some 3000 servers, are now in the queue for use of the product.
The database administrator, or the IT director or developer at the customer's site, is often the best person to use this software, Kopkin said -- which makes it a better standalone product than a services tool.
"People that know the application are much more powerful with it than us, who only know the tool," he said. High-structure databases similar to IMAGE, such as ISAM, have been moved into Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL with DBIntegrator, he added.
Licensing for the software depends on the scope of use, Kopkin said. A simple deployment has started at $5,000 in other markets, while a systems integrator "moving lots of data, with runtime licenses afterwards, with integrated data sources, and those have run in the low six figures."
Data migration can be a cost-effective path to shut off a production 3000, once the business rules are in place in the replacement application. Transoft, which has sold the software and done the work for under $10,000, plans to structure the licensing in functionality sets of simple, more complex, and enterprise use for the 3000 marketplace. The levels would translate to moving only, with rules for checking; moving with cleansing the data; and enterprise level with real-time migrations repeated as needed, either in batch or interactively.
"We'll be fine-tuning that as we move along and find out what the HP 3000 customers need," Kopkin said. "Our overall philosophy about migrations is that our customers can do it in pieces, not just big bang. You can migrate part of your application or your data, while the other part is still running as it was, That makes it a low-risk process. That's one of the neat things this product allows you to do."