Data Migration and Customer Data Integration with Talend - Part 1
Streamlining Data Migration and Integration with Talend
In the dynamic business landscape of today, changing needs and market demands make it imperative for enterprises to adopt new tools and technologies for data management. This modernization often involves a data migration process that goes beyond a simple conversion from A to B. Organizations require a robust, scalable, and flexible toolset for effective database management and customer data integration. Here are several scenarios that highlight the necessity of a comprehensive data migration strategy:
- Market agility and organizational growth require a more scalable system architecture, such as ERP or CRM migrations.
- Consolidation of multiple (satellite) systems into a new central core environment is essential for operational efficiency.
- Software vendor support termination creates the need to exchange parts of the IT infrastructure seamlessly.
- Redesign of system architectures is often necessary due to mergers and acquisitions.
- Leverage functionality of new technology stacks, including databases, big data, cloud services, and applications.
Based on three reference cases, this article provides a summary of the flexibility and capability Talend offers to support complex migration projects.
Use Case 1: ERP Migration from Navision to SAP S/4 HANA
Before APIs became the standard for system communication, businesses relied on tools like the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for application integration. These technologies facilitated the exchange of data between internal and external systems. The ESB Service Bus is known for its queuing functionality, where messages are sent to a message broker for orchestration. On the other hand, EDI enabled businesses to exchange information using standardized formats.
Key Requirements for Data Migration and Customer Data Integration
Due to compliance regulations in the financial industry, several important requirements emerged regarding data migration:
- Easy connectivity and metadata management for both data extraction and loading.
- A scalable framework for processing large data sets and complex data objects.
- Extended capabilities for data cleansing and validation of sensitive data.
- Audit trails and reporting for all data transformation steps during the migration process.
Talend’s Integrated Data Management Solution
Talend provides a flexible, low-cost integrated solution for data management and migration, featuring:
- Over 900 components and connectors to model and map data transfer services and transformations.
- A visual design environment that allows key business users to collaborate with the migration team through drag-and-drop functionality.
- Out-of-the-box integration with both ERP systems, using configurable connector components to easily read from or write to various file formats, databases, mainframes, enterprise applications, and cloud services.
- Extended logging and reporting capabilities, including audit trails and data lineage, supported by our CIMT job instance framework.
- A subscription-based licensing model offering a predictable total cost of ownership (TCO) for the migration project.
As a leading technology partner for SAP integrations with Talend, we had the opportunity to support our customer with this challenging migration project, moving millions of data records and facilitating the rollout of SAP S/4 HANA. In addition to source-target mapping and conversions, Talend’s capabilities were utilized for orchestrating migration jobs. This included managing the chronology and logic necessary to transform and move dependent data objects to SAP. By setting up the project this way, we ensured consistency and robustness, providing options to recover, restart, and monitor the process in case of errors or failures.
The Talend Migration Framework
Our Talend migration framework enables a consistent approach across all stages of the migration process:
- Identification
- Data Extraction
- Profiling & Mapping
- Conversion & Quality Control
- Load Preparation
- Load Execution
- Migration Reporting
Applying this standardized approach ensures the security, validity, and integrity of the data during the migration. Establishing these steps, workflows and the necessary documentation with this customer resulted in a smooth migration experience.
Follow Us for More Insights
Stay tuned for the next part of our series on successful project references using Talend. We will discuss how we support the consolidation of multiple system instances with our migration framework and how to apply Talend’s data quality capabilities for data deduplication.
If you’re interested in how we can assist you with your data migration projects, please don’t hesitate to contact us for more information and live demonstrations.