A special case of data exchange—data migration—became quite popular with the passing of a few decades of IT history. Software and hardware became old and needed replacement. However, over the course of business, a lot of important data had been gathered and processed. This data had to be moved from legacy systems to new systems.

When more systems became outdated, data migration became a common operation, in the last decade. Merges and acquisitions also played a significant role when merged companies running different software wanted to create a consistent approach to their information.

It is important to note that the main difference between data migration and data integration is that data migration procedures are performed once and the data in the old system is retired. This does not mean though that the data migration will not be repeated in future. If the data migration is simply the result of replacing the aging hardware, the same procedures may be repeated in four to five...