Abstract:
Legacy information systems (LIS) are the main strength of organizations’ work flow. Therefore they are critical and their failure can have serious impacts on business [1]. A legacy information system is a massive investment which represents long term data capture. However an old LIS can cause several problems for the host. The final solution for LIS problems is data migration to the new system. Data migration is very complex but it can bring long term benefits to the organization. Although there is not a single generic method to suit all types of systems, it is essential to have sets comprehensive guidelines [1]. According to the participant data migration surveys, large percentages of the data migration projects last longer than anticipated. Consequently, resources are used for longer than planned which causes the risk of the budget overrun. Careful and detailed planning needs to take place to limit the overtime risks and to minimize the data loss. Any data interruption could have a severe negative public relations impact. The loss or unavailability of the critical business data could directly impact the customer service and profit and loss of the business[2]. Time and budget are the two main elements or risk factors of the data migration [2]. There is no doubt that highly constrained budget and timeframe have a big impact on the whole data migration process and can cause sacrifice of some of the data migration steps. The main purpose of this work is to propose a detailed process model for large scale data migration projects for the integrated GIS target system, while coping with highly constrained timeframe and budget which are lacking from the previous studies. This is achieved by minimizing some of the general migration steps according to their risk analysis. In order to validate the process proposal, the proposed data migration process is applied to the newly developed integrated GIS application from a series of different legacy systems.
