Accelerators

Database Migration Assessment

6-week diagnostic that benchmarks database performance, identifies over-provisioned capacity, and delivers migration roadmap with cost projections and risk analysis.
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The Problem

Why Database Migration Assessment?

Most scaling companies inherit legacy, over-provisioned, or mismatched database architectures that can't keep pace with application demands. Teams struggle with query latency that degrades user experience, database costs that grow faster than usage, scaling limitations that block new features, and aging platforms that lack the resilience modern applications require. Leadership knows databases are expensive and slow but lacks visibility into whether the issue is architecture, right-sizing, tuning, or the fundamental platform choice.

Why It's Hard

Database modernization requires understanding workload patterns, data models, performance characteristics, cost-utilization ratios, and migration complexity—all while maintaining uptime and data integrity. Organizations debate managed vs. self-hosted trade-offs, evaluate dozens of database engines (relational, NoSQL, time-series, specialized), and struggle to quantify the business impact of migration vs. optimization in place. Without focused expertise, teams waste months profiling workloads, comparing vendors, or attempting migrations that fail due to unforeseen schema incompatibilities or application dependencies.

The Accelerator Advantage

This Assessment compresses discovery into 6 weeks. We benchmark current performance and costs, profile workloads by access patterns and scalability needs, evaluate fit-for-purpose database engines (cloud-native managed services vs. self-hosted vs. optimization in place), assess migration viability and complexity, and deliver an executive-ready roadmap with phased implementation, cost projections, and rollback strategies—so teams get faster queries, leadership sees clear cost reduction paths, and migrations happen with minimal risk.

Benefits and Metrics

2x
faster query and transaction performance through modernized architectures
40%
cost savings from right-sizing and managed service efficiencies
Improved
uptime and resilience with validated failover and auto-scaling

Partner Certifications

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THE SOLUTION

What's Included

Every Database Migration Assessment follows a proven 6-week framework designed to baseline performance, identify inefficiencies, and prioritize modernization investments that deliver measurable improvements in speed, cost, and resilience.
Discovery & Benchmarking
  • Stakeholder interviews across engineering, data, and operations teams
  • Database environment mapping (current deployments, dependencies, data volumes)
  • Workload profiling by performance needs, data models, and access patterns
  • Query performance analysis and bottleneck identification
  • Cost and utilization audit (spend vs. actual usage and performance requirements)
  • Availability, resilience, and disaster recovery assessment
Deliverables
  • Performance and cost baseline report with data-backed inefficiency analysis
  • Database environment map showing current deployments and dependencies
  • Workload categorization and fit-for-purpose analysis
  • Viability scorecard ranking workloads by modernization potential and business impact
  • Platform evaluation (managed services vs. self-hosted trade-offs across AWS, GCP, Azure)
  • Migration roadmap with phased approach, cost projections, risk analysis, and rollback strategies
  • Executive presentation linking database modernization to business outcomes
Outcomes
  • 2x faster query and transaction performance through modernized architectures
  • Up to 40% cost savings from right-sizing and managed service efficiencies
  • Improved uptime and resilience with managed failover and auto-scaling
  • Reduced operational overhead by leveraging cloud-managed databases
  • Clear migration sequencing with complexity and risk quantified per workload
  • Foundation for scaling databases without scaling costs or operational burden
Case Studies

Proof in the results

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Zendesk
70% Infrastructure Cost Reduction Across 2,500 EC2 Instances
How Zendesk modernized instance management to cut cloud spend, eliminate licensing dependencies, and improve security posture—all while accelerating engineering velocity.
Read case study
See Case Studies
FAQ

Common Questions

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What happens after this Assessment?

Three options: (1) Execute migration yourself using our roadmap, viability scorecard, and rollback strategies, (2) Engage us to deliver high-priority migrations or optimizations identified in the assessment, or (3) Embed a Database Engineering TechPod for continuous optimization and migration execution. Most clients choose option 2 to prove ROI on specific migrations—typically starting with lower-risk workloads to validate process and performance gains—before committing to broader modernization programs.

Do we need to migrate to cloud-native managed services?

Not necessarily. We evaluate three paths: (1) optimize your current platform through tuning, right-sizing, or architecture improvements, (2) migrate to managed cloud services (AWS RDS/Aurora, GCP Cloud SQL/Spanner, Azure Cosmos DB), or (3) hybrid approaches where some workloads migrate and others optimize in place. Often the issue isn't the database engine—it's over-provisioning, poor query optimization, or missing indexes. We're platform-agnostic and focused on outcomes, not vendor preferences.

What if we have multiple database types?

That's typical. Most scaling companies run relational (Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server), NoSQL (MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis), time-series (InfluxDB, TimescaleDB), and specialized databases (Elasticsearch, Neo4j). We profile each workload independently, assess fit-for-purpose alternatives, and prioritize migrations or optimizations by business impact. The goal is the right database engine for each workload, not forcing everything into a single platform.

How do you handle migration risk and downtime?

We design phased migration strategies with rollback plans, validation checkpoints, and zero-downtime cutover approaches where possible. The assessment includes complexity scoring for each workload, identifying schema incompatibilities, application dependencies, and data volume challenges upfront. For high-risk migrations, we recommend starting with read replicas, shadow traffic testing, or blue-green deployment patterns to validate performance before cutover.

How quickly can we start?

Most Database Migration Assessments kick off within 2 weeks of signing. Week 1 requires stakeholder availability for interviews and read-only access to database environments for profiling. We don't need write access or production changes during the assessment—just visibility into performance metrics, query patterns, and cost data to baseline current state and move fast.