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Migration Without Mishap (continued)

Test the new environment thoroughly "Companies often fail to test the new environment completely enough," says Chip Nickolett, president of Comprehensive Solutions, a data center consultancy based in Brookfield, Wisc. "It's far better to catch and address problems pre-migration than post-migration."

Ascertain data integrity Companies often fail to appreciate the critical nature of data integrity. Even the most miniscule floating point differences can result in very costly computing errors. Says Nickolett, "The old system must be kept properly isolated when it is still running, before migration to the new system has been implemented."

Rein in "power users" One often-overlooked problem is that so-called power users have frequently been allowed to create systems and processes on their own. "The more people who have been allowed to do this, the more likely there will be problems," says Nickolett. "These people are often reluctant to disclose what they have done, they usually don't possess any documentation and are not receptive to having someone take these systems away from them." Getting such users to buy into the migration, and be transparent and open about their former activities that could impact the migration, is therefore essential.

Although automated tools are making the actual migrations easier to accomplish, many strategic and organizational issues still abound. And for many organizations, the main one is achieving a certain strategic "coherence" in the data center. "Are you basically a Unix shop with a few islands of Windows servers and intend to keep that balance? Or do you envision a long-term strategy of moving over to Linux entirely?" asks Gould. "As the applications out there increasingly become available -- and interoperable -- on a number of different server platforms, these are the important questions to ask.

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