Forget Big Bang, phased migrations and coexistence enable banks to move away from legacy core banking systems confidently with less risk.
Historically, migrations have been a cause of huge trepidation for banks. Any changes to backend IT systems that inadvertently prevent customers from accessing banking services, even temporarily, can have severe consequences.
Traditionally, migrations have been a ‘big bang’ event, where a specific weekend gets chosen, and everything is moved from one system to another in one go, says Arun Chalil, Product Manager for Migration at 10x. With a small window to migrate, test, and fix any issues, this approach can be risky and challenging.
In this blog, we explore how we’ve applied the concept of phased migration to our platform, helping banks move away from their existing banking systems safely and securely.
What is a phased core banking migration?
In a phased migration, batches of data are migrated at different times rather than all at once, helping to identify and overcome any issues, reducing the risk of project failure.
At 10x, we’ve taken this a step further. Banks can upload data to SuperCore, our cloud-native core banking platform, in any number of granular batches. Once uploaded, data is assigned a ‘near live’ status, which means it is uploaded but not yet live.
While in this state, banks have a safe space to check, reconcile, validate, and even roll back their upload. This functionality is unique to SuperCore, enabling banks to get 100% migration accuracy before any data gets published to the live platform.
“You can load your data today but then not go live for another month, giving you the ability to reconcile data with peace of mind,” says Arun. “You’re not having to rush it through in 24 hours. You can work through the issues and solve them slowly. You could decide in days, weeks, or months that you are ready to go live. When it’s ready, the data can be added to the next batch to be pushed into production without needing to be reconciled again.”
Enjoying the blog? Download our migration whitepaper, in collaboration with AWS and Contino, for more.
The 10x migration solution allows banks to phase data out in any way that they want.
Arun Chalil Product Manager, 10xAdapting to fit the needs of every migration
Banks can also choose how they want to slice up the phased migration process. For example, data could be uploaded by product type, so first they could focus on a specific product line, such as current accounts, and look to move other systems after that.
Co-existence during core banking migration projects
There are other risk management considerations for the phased approach.
When banks are running their new systems and old systems in parallel, known as coexistence, data must flow between the parallel core banking systems.
Typically, a systems integrator is best placed to support a migration and mitigate risks: “There are technical steps like data extraction and loading which can be quite cumbersome,” says Arun. “Systems integrators bring project management and governance expertise to the table. They will also provide testing strategies and tools out of the box so that a bank doesn’t have to do everything from scratch.” The phased approach can also significantly cut down migration times for banks.
Arun says the ‘big bang’ approach often takes at least two years to prepare for. By taking it in incremental steps, banks can start migrating to a new system in just a few months. Without the added pressure of migrating everything at once, banks can begin modernizing faster.
Get the migration whitepaper to learn more
To get a six-step framework for core banking migration and see phased migration in action, download our whitepaper today, written in collaboration with AWS and Contino.
