The most successful organizations inspire innovation across their organization, providing high productivity tools within a low-risk environment. It’s our mission at Help4Access to aid in this pursuit by guiding the development, modernization and migration of custom Microsoft Access database applications from inception into maturity.
Very few companies would want to immediately eliminate all their legacy database applications. The best results are achieved by focusing on modernizing and then migrating those select legacy database applications that are limiting business efficiency and agility. With our team’s extensive IT asset modernization and migration experience, coupled with our advanced tools and utilities, we’ve developed a proven 5-step approach to identifying all critical business applications and migrating them to our client’s standard technology platform.
1. Discovery
We’ll perform a programmatic discovery across your entire network to gather and store a live snapshot of your complete Microsoft Access footprint. This repeatable process stores the statistics for each Microsoft Access database application, their dependencies, usage and level of complexity, and calculates the effort required to modernize and migrate each to the desired future state.
Our Tools: Will be utilized to programmatically assess each legacy database application’s effort required to modernize, convert and migrate to the target technology of your choice. Our tools perform the heavy lifting and provide more ROI than any other tools because we are constantly reinvesting in their development as we tackle new customer challenges. We are the only company in the world with these purpose-built tools.
Software: Help4Access – Microsoft Access DiscoverAccess™
Case Study: Albertsons/Safeway Merger
Results: A comprehensive IT asset inventory audit and analysis.
2. Assessment
Using our Help4Access – Microsoft Access Roadmap to Maturity™ framework, we’ll assess your high risk IT asset’s current level of maturity and design transformational architectures which mitigate the risk of achieving the next desired level of maturity.
Framework: Help4Access – Microsoft Access Roadmap to Maturity™
Case Study: HomeGuard Home Inspections
Results: Transitional architectures developed toward desired future state in line with established roadmapping framework.
3. Migration Planning
Our team of senior Solution Architects will modernize and develop the technical, data, application and business architectures of your MS Access systems, modernizing these systems toward the next level of maturity by leveraging the power of our pre-built Help4Access – Microsoft Access Solution Building Blocks™ library whenever possible, thereby reducing development and testing.
Off-premise deployments will be designed by a Microsoft Certified Azure Data Architect and a Microsoft Certified Azure Administrator.
Code Library: Help4Access – Microsoft Access Solution Building Blocks™
Case Study: California Public Utilities Commission Database Consolidation
Results: Detailed roadmap with activities, outcomes and costs.
4. Modernization, Migration and Testing
Our team of senior Solution Architects will migrate the applications as planned, using our automated tools and standard data transformation processes.
Framework: Help4Access – Microsoft Access Roadmap to Maturity™
Case Study: Blue Shield of California / Care1st Healthcare Merger
Results: Validated and migrated applications in target environments.
5. Deployment
Go live in a more powerful and efficient environment.
Our Tools: Automate the conversion and migration process, converting what other tools fail to convert. Our dedicated staff monitors all the processes and ensures the implementation and cutover are seamless.
Software: Help4Access – Microsoft Access MigrateAccess™
Case Study: HealthPlan of San Mateo Support
Results: Mission-critical systems in a stable and scalable state, ensuring long-term business continuity.
We have completed thousands of modernizations and migrations and have well over 100,000 hours of experience mastering the skills and perfecting our tools to work with every version of Microsoft Access, from Access 1.0 to Access 365.
- In large enterprise environments, a repeatable asset inventory and audit is highly recommended (Step 1 Discovery).
- In smaller workgroup environments, or when a specific mission-critical legacy access system has already been identified, then the Step 1 Discovery can be ignored.
- In organizations with an established and mature change management (CM) process adept at the unique complexities of promoting MS Access database applications into a production environment, then step 5 may also be out of scope for our team. Otherwise, we would propose a CM process which follows that documented in our whitepaper Help4Access – Microsoft Access Change Management using Azure DevOps©.
- The Help4Access – Microsoft Access MigrateAccess™ tool works best when the base system meets the best practices of the target technology, e.g., database normalized, high code reuse and stable business requirements, just to name a few.
