Why data migration?

Almost every company stores its accounting documents, which are subject to retention, electronically in a digital archive. Unfortunately, most archive systems do not survive the lifetime of their own documents. Far too often, support is discontinued early by the manufacturer of the systems or systems are no longer compatible with updates. Therefore, in order to meet the document retention requirement, archiving systems often need to be replaced on short notice, quickly and without loss.

"Unfortunately, unpredictable things happen during the lifetime of systems, such as media errors, system crashes, faulty updates, user operating errors, etc. As a result of such unpredictability, inconsistencies can occur in the data holdings of archive systems. This means, for example, that some data is written more than once, or that data is written to the wrong place - and in exceptional cases data is not written at all or is written incorrectly".

Handling data that must be retained requires a basis of trust.

We migrate our customers' business-relevant data according to the highest quality standards. Our self-image stands for security, data protection and quality - you can rely on this at any time. No matter what tasks your data migration involves: We have the appropriate solutions.

Data migration consulting:

Special tasks require individual solutions. Benefit from the many years of experience of our migration and archive experts. We offer you targeted advice on the implementation of your personal data migration strategy: review of the data to be migrated (migration pre-audit), derivation of an individual migration concept, migration post-audit (completeness checks, logging, etc.) taking into account the legal requirements (DSGVO). In addition, you have the option of having targeted data quality and consistency checks performed.

Migration services from imbus

imbus performs standardized data migrations for its customers in one of the most powerful migration centers in Europe. Legal and audit security is not only ensured by detailed processes with conclusive logging: Strict data protection guidelines are also regularly subjected to internal and external controls to ensure the level of confidentiality required by the customer.

The process of data migration requires experience and field-tested processes, which we provide:

The archive data can be read and migrated from almost any system
The transfer of data is checked according to fixed quality characteristics, so that the data is transferred to the new system in a quality-assured manner. This is particularly important for documents subject to retention.
The data converted in this way can be transferred to the import interfaces of all archive systems available on the market.
The entire migration is carried out in compliance with data protection regulations (legally compliant and audit-proof).

Your data is important to us! Numerous companies have already benefited from imbus migration services. Let us advise you!

Request data migration consulting!

Reasons for data migration

Change to a new archiving system

As a result of ongoing technical change, it is regularly necessary to replace existing systems. A functioning data migration is an indispensable prerequisite for this.

Introduction of an archiving system from digital data sets

In this context, digital data stocks would be, for example, a large quantity of documents stored in the file system, which are to be transferred to an archiving system.

Missing or low data quality

Poor data quality can be, for example:

Data multiples:

Media may contain data or data fragments, but for which there are no database entries (anymore). A possible cause would be a failed attempt by your archive system to save a document to the media. In the course of the subsequent read check, this data could no longer be read properly, so the document was simply written to the data carrier a second time.

With WORM media (write once - read multiple), such incorrect write attempts cannot be cleaned up afterwards. Due to the above reasons, such unreferenced data can be found on almost every archive medium.

This can also occur if the archiving system offers a function that allows the user to delete documents from the archive holdings manually or automatically. This deletes the data from the database, but not from the medium.

Data shortages:

Sometimes there may have been circumstances in the systems over their lifetime due to which some parts of the data were not written to the archive media in the first place (e.g. system crashes, etc.). Such data overstocks - as well as data shortages - are to a certain extent part of the normal picture of a data migration.

Unser Prüfprozess für eine sichere Datenmigration

Regardless of whether the data migration takes place in a single complete transfer within a predefined time window or in several successive or overlapping phases (delta migrations) over a longer period of time, the so-called ETL process (extract, transfer, load) is usually always run through. This is divided into the following 3 phases: Extraction filters the existing data and delivers the data to be migrated. In the next phase, the transformation of the data to the target system or format takes place. For example, they have to be reformatted, restructured or sorted differently. The final step loads the transformed data into the target system and makes it available there for the operational processes.

To ensure that the data migration is also correct, we perform several quality assurance measures described below during the migration.

One of the most important principles for archiving - but also for archive migrations - is to ensure that all data is complete. During migrations of archive data, this completeness is ensured at a wide variety of levels.

Checking the completeness of the data agreed for migration
After the data has been delivered, a comparison is made between the amount of data available according to the offer and the amount of data actually delivered.
Checking the completeness of the delivered documents
After the source database has been built, a comparison is performed to determine whether all the interfaces expected according to the source archive (containers, packages, data, etc.) have actually been captured.
Completeness check after import into our migration center
After the import has been completed, a check is performed to see whether all data objects to be imported according to the source database have actually been imported into the migration database. This is done to ensure that all documents have been imported and that all documents are being processed.
Completeness check after output from our migration center
After the output is completed, we check whether all documents to be output have been taken into account and sent to the customer.
Checking the completeness of data after output to a self-supporting archive
After the optional output of the data to a self-supporting archive and before delivery to the customer, it is checked whether all the intended data have been completely output to the agreed medium.

Data protection is a top priority for us during data migration!

Due to the highly confidential customer data we have at our disposal during the processing of a migration service, various measures to ensure data protection are indispensable.

Of course, the highest level of data security prevails: in our offices, workstations and on our production servers. We work DSGVO compliant and also process highly confidential data.

All data entrusted to us is made accessible to as small a closed circle of processors as possible. Here, a few key points deserve special mention:

All employees of the "Data Quality and Migration" division have been bound by banking secrecy and insider guidelines, and all project participants sign an undertaking in accordance with the German Federal Data Protection Act. Only project participants have access rights to rooms in which data from the migrations are stored, processed or checked.

The customer is given a declaration of purpose, according to which imbus may only use the transferred data for the purpose of the migration. In addition, destruction and data erasure declarations are handed over to the customer.

We work in compliance with ISO 27001 DSGVO.

Data Quality and Migration

Data Migration from DMS, ERM, ECM and archive systems