Whilst the success rate of data migration initiatives has climbed in recent years, I still find that one of the key goals of data migration, legacy decommission, often gets overlooked.

The financial benefits of shutting down the legacy environment are many. Relinquishing licenses and dormant hardware are obvious advantages of legacy decommission, but there are many other benefits, too. For example, reducing the complexity of your data landscape and eliminating administration are clearly beneficial.

So why do legacy environments live on beyond their planned decommission deadline?

Part of the reason is because, surprisingly, there is no decommission deadline! There is often no planning at all to complete the decommissioning process. All the focus is on the target system load and go-live. As a result, the legacy environment persists and everyone is too nervous to make the closure complete.

How can you improve on this situation?

The answer lies in focusing on decommission at the start of the data migration instead of the end. This reversal strategy works because the focus is on stakeholders to determine what criteria must be fulfilled in order to complete the decommissioning process.

Simply ask your stakeholders to sign off a decommissioning statement with their list of requirements for closure. Then, when the migration completes and those actions have been completed, you can then close down the legacy systems in the knowledge that you have fulfilled all obligations.

Yes, it’s an obvious tactic. But when it comes to data migration projects, common sense can often be a rare commodity.