Case Study
FTI Technology’s Technical Experts Rescue Complex Data Migration and Export Following Numerous Failures With Other Providers
A global corporation dealing in highly sensitive manufacturing needed to restore important data from a legacy database to include it in a timely legal review, without allowing any of the data to leave its environment. After facing prolonged delays and unsuccessful attempts to access the data with other providers, the organization and its law firm engaged FTI Technology to perform a technical, on-site assessment, restore the database and migrate it to a new on-site system.
Situation
The inability to access more than 2 million potentially relevant records was significantly impacting case progress and downstream legal workflows. Additionally, because of the sensitive nature of organization’s business, data could not leave its own environment, and any solution for data extraction and migration needed to be deployed in house. For nearly nine months, the client had engaged multiple e-discovery vendors, and none were able to successfully restore or unlock the database. Because the platform on which the data was stored had been long discontinued and was no longer supported, and there was no option to conduct any of the work outside of the client’s network due to data sensitivity and security, each prior attempt had ended in technical roadblocks.
The client was left without access to core review data and faced mounting time pressure from impending legal deadlines. In addition to the compressed timeline, the delays added strain to the client’s budget for the project.
The database schema was also very complex, with approximately 600 redundant and legacy fields, adding to the difficulty of structuring migration to a new, accessible platform.
None of the providers the client contacted could solve the challenges and restore the legacy database.
Our Role
FTI Technology quickly set up an environment on site at the client’s location and performed a technical assessment of the legacy database. The team was comprised of deeply knowledgeable technical experts with experience in the technology platforms involved, including the retired database and the platform the client was migrating the data to.
They determined that restoration was feasible and developed a structured, multi-phase recovery and optimization, which included:
- Within only four days, successful restoration of the database, after months of the client attempting this with other providers.
- Delivery of the long-awaited access the client needed to the data environment, all within the client’s environment to maintain strong protection of sensitive data.
- Quality control and technical solutioning to address data corruption, ensuring all settings and configurations in the database worked as needed.
- Comprehensive field-level analysis across ~600 fields in the dataset to determine which fields were necessary to keep and optimize the database. Nearly 500 fields were identified to be safely excluded, helping the client effectively reduce the overall data footprint.
- Backend work and technical guidance to support the client through the complex export process, migrating the necessary data to Datamine, a third-party hosting Reveal review platform.
- Hands-on support throughout every step to ensure a seamless data handoff. The Datamine vendor was so impressed with the quality of the restored and optimized data that its technical team later requested FTI Technology’s guidance on best practices for database structuring and migration.
Our Impact
This consultative approach quickly delivered to the client what other providers could not. FTI Technology’s work enabled the client to restore access to critical data, reduce data volumes and streamline the structure of the database from 600 fields to approximately 100, improving performance and reducing migration costs.
In only two weeks, while meeting the client’s needs to keep all data within its own environment, the migration was concluded, providing access after nine months of delays. The law firm commended FTI Technology’s speed and professionalism.