Craig Guarente

A Guide to Freeing Yourself from Legacy RDBMS

Oracle introduced the first commercial relational database (RDBMS) to the market in 1979 — more than a decade before the World Wide Web. Now, digital transformation is reshaping every industry at an accelerating pace. In an increasingly digital economy, this means a company's competitive advantage is defined by how well they build software around their most critical asset — data. MongoDB and Palisade Compliance have helped some of the largest and most complex Oracle customers transform their architecture and shift to a cloud-first world. Although every client is unique, we have identified three important steps to moving away from Oracle software, reducing costs, and achieving their digital transformation goals: Understand your business and technical requirements for today and tomorrow, and identify the technical solution and company that will be by your side to help future-proof your organization. Decipher your Oracle contracts and compliance positions to maximize cost reduction initiatives and minimize any risks from Oracle audits and non-compliance that may derail your ultimate goals. Mobilize internal momentum and traction to make the move. MongoDB can help with #1, Palisade Compliance assists with #2, and you have to supply #3. This is a guide to getting started, as outlined by the main pillars of success above. 1. Understand your requirements and find the right partner — MongoDB The most common requirements we hear from organizations are that they need to move faster, increase developer productivity, and improve application performance and scale -- all while reducing cost and breaking free from vendor lock-in. For example , to keep pace with demands from the business, Travelers Insurance modernized its development processes with a microservices architecture supported by agile and DevOps methodologies. But the rigidity of its existing Oracle and SQL Server databases created blockers to move at the speed they needed. The solution was MongoDB and its flexible data model. They eliminated the three-day wait to make any database changes, creating a software development pipeline supporting continuous delivery of new business functionality. Similarly, Telefonica migrated its customer personalization service from Oracle to MongoDB. Using Oracle, it took 7 developers, multiple iterations and 14 months to build a system that just didn't perform. Using MongoDB, a team of 3 developers built its new personalization service in 3 months, which now powers both legacy and new products across the globe. MongoDB helps Telefonica be more agile, save money and drive new revenue streams. While some organizations try to innovate by allowing siloed, modern databases to coexist with their legacy relational systems, many organizations are moving to fully replace RDBMS. Otherwise, a level of complexity remains that creates significant additional work for developers because separate databases are required for search, additional technologies are needed for local data storage on mobile devices, and data often needs to be moved to dedicated analytics systems. As a result, development teams move slowly, create fewer new features, and cost the organization more capital. MongoDB provides the industry’s first data platform that allows you to accelerate and simplify how you build with data for any application. Developers love working with MongoDB’s document model because it aligns with how they think and code. The summarized functional requirements that we typically hear from leading companies and development teams regarding what they require from a data platform include: A data structure that is both natural and flexible for developers to work with Auto-scaling and multi-node replication Distributed multi-document transactions that are fully ACID compliant Fully integrated full-text search that eliminates the need for separate search engines Flexible local datastore with seamless edge to cloud sync In-place, real-time analytics with workload isolation and native data visualization Ability to run federated queries across your operational/ transactional databases and cloud object storage Turnkey global data distribution for data sovereignty and fast access to Data Lake Industry-leading data privacy controls with client-side, field level encryption Freedom to run anywhere, including the major clouds across many regions MongoDB delivers everything you need from a modern data platform. But it’s not just about being the right data platform; we’re also the right modernization partner. Through our Modernization Program we have built and perfected modernization guides that help you select and prioritize applications, review best practices, and design best-in-class, production-grade, migration frameworks. We’ve built an ecosystem around accelerating and simplifying your journey that includes: deployment on the leading cloud providers to enable the latest innovations technology companies that help with data modeling, migration, and machine learning, and expert System Integrators to provide you with tools, processes and support to accelerate your projects. We are proud to be empowering development teams to create faster and develop new features and capabilities, all with a lower total cost of ownership. 2. Manage Oracle as you move away — Palisade Compliance Oracle’s restrictive contracts, unclear licensing rules, and the threat of an audit can severely impact a company’s ability to transform and adopt new technologies that are required in a cloud-first world. To move away from Oracle and adopt new solutions, companies must be sure they can actually reduce their costs while staying in compliance and avoiding the risks associated with an audit. There will be a time when you are running your new solution and your legacy Oracle software at the same time. This is a critical phase in your digital transformation as you do not want to be tripped up by Oracle’s tactics and forced to stay with them. It may seem counterintuitive, but as you spend less with Oracle you must be even more careful with your licensing. As long as you keep spending money with Oracle and renewing those expensive contracts, the threat of an audit and non-compliance will remain low. Oracle is unlikely to audit a company that keeps giving it money. However, the moment you begin to move to newer technologies, your risk of an audit significantly increases. As a result, you must be especially vigilant to prevent Oracle from punishing you as you move away from them. Even if you’ve found a technical partner and managed your Oracle licenses and compliance to ensure no surprises, you still have to find a way to reduce your costs. It’s not as simple as terminating Oracle licenses and seeing your support costs go down. As stated above, Oracle contracts are designed to lock in customers and make it nearly impossible to actually reduce costs. Palisade Compliance has identified eleven ways to manage your Oracle licenses and reduce your Oracle support. It is critical that you understand and identify the options that work for your firm, and then build and execute on a plan that ensures your success. 3. Mobilize internal momentum and traction to make the move Legacy technology companies excel at seeding doubt into organization and preventing moves that threaten their antiquated solutions. Unfortunately, too many companies succumb to these tactics and are paralyzed into a competitive disadvantage in the market. In software, as in life, it’s easier to stay the course than to follow through with change. But when it comes to technical and business decisions that impact the overall success and direction of an organization, innovation and change aren’t just helpful, they’re necessary to survive--especially in a world with high customer demands and easy market entry. Ensuring you have the right technical partner and Oracle advisor is the best way to build the confidence and momentum needed to make your move. Creating that momentum is easier with MongoDB’s Database Platform, consisting of a fully managed service across 80+ regions, and Palisade’s expertise in Oracle licensing and contracts. Technical Alternative (MongoDB) + Independent Oracle Advisors (Palisade) ⇒ Momentum Parting thoughts To schedule a preliminary health check review and begin building the right strategy for your needs, fill out your information here . And to learn more about MongoDB’s Modernization Program, visit this page . About Palisade Compliance With over 400 clients in 30 countries around the world, Palisade is the leading provider of Oracle-independent licensing, contracting, and cost reduction services. Visit the website to learn more. To schedule a complementary one-hour Oracle consultation send an email to info@palisadecompliance.com.