PROVENTA Smart Database Transformation Framework

Project Information

DATATRANS

Grant agreement ID: 774817

DOI

10.3030/774817

Project closed

EC signature date 20 April 2017

Start date 1 May 2017

End date 31 August 2017

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

PROVENTA AG
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DATATRANS (PROVENTA Smart Database Transformation Framework)

Reporting period: 2017-05-01 to 2017-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Companies around the world spend more than €220 billion on Systems and Data Integration projects every year (10% of all IT expenditure). IT budget reductions, high database license and maintenance prices, shorter product lifecycles, new technologies and increasing requirements are pushing companies towards complete transformations of their database architectures.
Systems based on Open Source database technology have become as reliable as standard commercial products in the market, at a fraction of their cost, a large quantity of companies are seeking ways to integrate them to replace expensive and outdated systems.
Unfortunately, database transformation projects involve high costs and risks: 40% of all data migrations either fail or exceed their budget and implementation schedules. This prevents many organizations from implementing necessary changes to integrate better and more affordable technologies, resulting in a vendor lock-in and thus negatively affecting their overall competitiveness in the long term.
With Datatrans, we have built a complete functional platform and interface, including Java-based custom packages and a core data management engine, that facilitates and automates the transformation process for all the major database management systems. This will provide an optimal exit strategy for thousands of enterprises that are currently looking to migrate from expensive, rigid and opaque proprietary DBMS to affordable, flexible and transparent market-validated technology, provided by Open Source vendors. Enterprises will be able to benefit on multiple levels: Increasing operational flexibility and scalability, reducing license expenses, ensuring total compliance EU data privacy regulations, optimizing general database performance, releasing from vendor lock-in and gaining strategic leverage.
On a technical front, we have designed a detailed development plan for the remaining technical objectives of the project that will expand Datatrans’ interoperability to more than 96% of all features for the selected databases. On the commercial front, our strategy for Datatrans will be based on a multi-layered approach, starting with local-level initiatives with close partners and allies, that will gradually increase in size and scope, culminating in an EU-wide expansion, facilitated through strategic partnerships with large distributors and an ambitious franchise-based commercial approach.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

On a technical level, we determined the current status and attainable interoperability objectives of Datatrans. We have performed an in-depth technical analysis of all features for the main database types targeted by Datatrans. The goal was to estimate with the highest possible accuracy the level of current and target interoperability between the source databases and the Open Source target databases, as well as to identify the key challenges for future development tasks.
We have distributed the analysis in different levels, identifying first the current level of interoperability, and then distributing the necessary compatibility expansion workload for the Phase II in 2 separate stages: The first stage involves the integration of a wide range of existing Open Source adapters, while the second one revolves around the in-house development of specific extensions for missing functionalities in the target database. This strategy will allow us to fill the maximum number of gaps.
As a result of our technical analysis, we have designed a development plan, for both standard and advanced features of DBMS, that will allow us to achieve an interoperability of more than 96% of all features, resulting in an effectively complete interoperability for more than 99% of all heterogeneous database transformations.
Regarding IPR management, we have been able to validate a complete Freedom-To-Operate for Datatrans: The risk of facing patent infringement litigation is extremely limited. Although some of its key features are found in multiple patent applications, the operational, functional and technical details greatly differ from our product. Datatrans goes well beyond any of the analysed applications.
Our in-depth market study has allowed us to confirm the outstanding commercial potential of Datatrans, with several key industrial trends indicating a clear transition towards Open Source databases, and a lack of automated and affordable solutions to answer this growing demand.
Our commercial analysis has also revealed that our current partner ecosystem already provides us a perfect strategic position to promote Datatrans as the key tool to transition towards more affordable and efficient database alternatives. We have also identified and contacted key players and prospects for our future partnership plan that will allow us to complete the strategy and position Datatrans as the absolute reference in the market.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Datatrans provides a direct, easy and affordable solution that is completely aligned with the current migration trends towards OSDBMS. Datatrans is the only product that successfully manages automated, heterogeneous DBMS migrations on Cloud and on premise. Our decisive competitive advantage over current state-of-the-art solutions is that it relies on its capacity to also provide syntax interoperability and real-time code and object transformation, thus ensuring operational compatibility beyond the migration process.
To take full advantage of our lessons learned over decades of migration projects, we have designed Datatrans to seamlessly integrate our own standards and best practices. Datatrans prevents both causes and effects of potential migration problems by acting directly at the root of the problems: Its extreme compatibility provides homogenization and stability, while its preliminary assessment tool already identifies the main operational and business concerns. Finally, its complete automation and proven architecture prevents any potential failure or downtime in the process, and minimizes the necessary budget and time.
Datatrans will reduce the cost of traditional migrations by more than half through its automated migration assessment and execution. However, Datatrans will fulfil its full potential with complex heterogeneous database transformations. In such cases, the cost of such transformations could be reduced by more than 80%, thus facilitating an affordable technical path for European Enterprises to migrate away from expensive and outdated proprietary technology and fully comply with EU data privacy regulation.

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