Data Migration Services

Here at Sentinel, we can support IT Implementation and Business Transformation projects by providing an effective combination of our Data Management Platform and our consulting expertise.

Sentinel's Data Management Platform is a powerful, functionally rich and fully configurable toolset, ideally suited to the requirements of an ETL, ELT or ETLT data pipeline, providing the perfect Data Migration Software Utility. Our specialist consultancy resources provide an experienced, specialist data team to supplement a client's own project team.

This combination saves time and reduces risk by removing the need for bespoke builds. It provides a fully configurable data transformation and migration toolset, in the hands of experienced consultants, allowing the focus of attention to be on data content from day one.

Our Data Migration Utility works with all data object types such as Master Data (Customers, Vendors, Properties and Products) and Transactional Data (invoices, purchase orders, contractual arrangements and stock movements).

Key features and benefits

Data Acquistion

Configurable utility: Sentinel's Data Migration Utility can be easily configured to extract data from all structured database types (SQL Server, Oracle, JavaDB, MongoDB, Sybase, MySQL, DB2 etc) plus ERP systems such as SAP, and Siebel with support for text files and XML.

Transformation, Cleansing and validation

Once extracted data is in the Migration Utility, transformation rules are applied to validate and transform it ready for loading on to the new system. As with all data processing rules in Sentinel’s Data Migration Utility, these rules are entirely configurable.

The data can be pre-validated within the utility to monitor data cleansing progress, and to simulate the data load results. There is a clear audit trail of all transformation activities.

The result is strict control and monitoring of data quality and completeness throughout the migration pipeline for all data objects and scenarios.

Safe and compliant use of data for testing

Wherever migrated data requirements exist, the industry best practice is to ensure that as many of the projects functional test phases as possible, are carried out using migrated source data. This means that stable and reliable data migration processes are a dependency on the key test phases and must be ready early.

Sentinel’s software utility and approach have all been developed using the ICO’s ‘data protection by design’ approach. Where required, Sentinel's Data Migration Utility can work in conjunction with Sentinel’s Data Masking for UAT Utility to create realistic but anonymised test data.

Data masking is often required where client data includes personal data and can be accessed by multiple third-party IT and Testing organisations. Masking (or ‘scrambling’) personal data ensures compliance with the Data Protection Act without compromising test objectives.

Reporting and data profiling

Once the data has been extracted into the Data Management Utility, any validation, transformation and load activities will automatically generate detailed reports showing data volumes and exception lists. These reports will support the data reconciliation requirements associated with any data migration process.

Improved data accuracy

Where data errors are found, the transformation rules can be refined and re-run as many times as required until the data is ready for upload. The transformation rules can also include automated cleansing logic to remove or replace incorrect data.

Data staging and cleansing

Where legacy data needs to be cleansed, enriched or enhanced in ways that cannot be supported by legacy systems, Sentinel's Data Migration Utility provides the perfect answer.  

Flexible data upload

Sentinel's Data Migration Utility is not tied down to any rigid API data formats.

Data can be acquired, stored, transformed and published in any format to suit new data requirements. Data upload processes can be supported via any mechanisms such as flat / structured files, direct database connections and web-services.