The Data Migration Challenge

Matthew Barben

— 2 min read
The Data Migration Challenge

The data migration challenge

Introducing ethel by driver lane

With each new system implemented within an organisation, the question inevitably arises: how do we bring our existing data into this new system? 

And each new system brings its own set of challenges…. 

The challenge with migrating data

Migrating between systems has become increasingly complex. With each new migration comes a new set of issues:

  • Different data sources
  • Different destinations
  • Different methods for ingesting and extracting data — years ago it was SOAP, now it is REST
  • Many of the tools that are bundled are less flexible and require more lock-in to their platforms. 
  • Many times, these tools are limited by the scale they can operate at

Introducing Ethel

ethel is a data migration framework tool focused on moving and updating data in and out of content management systems… at scale

With ethel you can use the following as either sources or destinations

  • SharePoint 2013 — all the way to SharePoint Online
  • OpenText Content Management (Formerly Content Server)
  • File Systems
  • Databases
  • Controlled files
  • And many more 

Flexible platform

Photo by Alora Griffiths on Unsplash

ethel can be deployed:

  • On-premises or in the cloud
  • As a portable application (with an embedded database)
  • Or, at a larger scale using Postgres and RabbitMQ
  • Run on either Windows or Linux operating systems
  • Run stand-alone, or as a container as part of a wider deployment. 

Ultimately, ethel is a tool migration approach that is designed to scale to millions of documents and terabytes of data. 

Configurable

Photo by Laura Ockel on Unsplash

ethel comes out of the box with a host of standard extractors and loaders. These can be augmented through the use of custom transformers that allow for multiple use cases. 

Control costs

Photo by Fabian Blank on Unsplash

Using the one tool with many connectors means that costs can be reduced through:

  • Quicker start-up times — Stand up ethel and start migrating within hours
  • The ability to scale — add more nodes to increase the scale of the migration 
  • All with the flexibility to customise to your specific use case