One Database Blocking Full Cloud Adoption
The firm's broader infrastructure roadmap called for consolidating on Azure, but its trading support and reporting database remained on an on-premises Sybase ASE instance with no cloud-native path forward.
Case Study · Sybase S2SIM — SQL Server Migration
Landing on Azure SQL Managed Instance
A financial services firm needed to exit an on-premises Sybase ASE environment for a cloud-scalable, Entra ID-integrated platform. S2SIM handled the ASE-to-SQL Server dialect mapping while OptiSol validated cutover against the firm's Always On Availability Group requirements.
Cloud
On-premises ASE fully retired
Entra ID
Native identity integration achieved
13 Wks
Duration
The Challenge
An On-Premises Platform Holding Back a Cloud Strategy
No Native Entra ID Integration
Access to the ASE environment relied on a separate credential system disconnected from the firm's Entra ID-based identity governance — a standing exception in an otherwise centralized access model.
HA Complexity on Aging Infrastructure
High availability for the ASE instance depended on Replication Server configurations that were expensive to maintain and increasingly difficult to validate against the firm's current resilience standards.
The Approach
S2SIM Conversion Validated Against Always On Requirements
Because Azure SQL Managed Instance's high-availability model works fundamentally differently from ASE Replication Server, OptiSol treated Always On Availability Group validation as a first-class cutover gate, not a post-migration afterthought.
Discovery & S2SIM Scan
S2SIM catalogued the trading support schema, stored procedures, and T-SQL dialect patterns, scoping the conversion against Azure SQL Managed Instance and flagging every feature with no direct managed-instance equivalent.
Automated Conversion
Schema and stored procedure signatures were converted automatically from ASE T-SQL to SQL Server T-SQL, with the bulk of syntax and datatype differences resolved without manual rewriting.
Specialist Resolution & Regression
Engineers resolved cursor and error-handling differences that required contextual judgment, then ran a full regression suite against the reporting and trading support workflows.
Cutover Validated Against Always On Requirements
Before cutover, failover behavior was validated against the firm's Always On Availability Group resilience standards, and Entra ID integration was confirmed for the new environment's identity and access model.
On-Premises Exception Removed From the Cloud Roadmap
Retiring the last on-premises Sybase ASE instance cleared the single infrastructure exception that had been blocking the firm's broader Azure consolidation strategy.
Resilience Proven Before Trading Support Depended On It
Treating Always On Availability Group failover validation as an explicit cutover gate meant the firm confirmed HA behavior met its resilience standard before production trading workloads went anywhere near the new platform.
Legacy Credential System Retired
Native Entra ID integration replaced a standing, disconnected credential exception, bringing database access under the same centralized identity governance as the rest of the firm's estate.
13-Week Migration Off Costly Replication Server HA
Automated S2SIM conversion of schema and stored procedures let the firm exit an expensive, increasingly hard-to-validate Replication Server HA setup in 13 weeks rather than a drawn-out manual re-platforming effort.
The Impact
The Business Impact
- On-premises Sybase ASE instance fully retired
- Trading support and reporting database now running on Azure SQL Managed Instance
- Native Entra ID integration replaced the separate legacy credential system
- Failover behavior validated against Always On Availability Group standards before cutover
- Azure Monitor now provides unified observability across the database layer
- Cloud infrastructure roadmap no longer blocked by a single on-premises exception
"We didn't just move the database to Azure. We proved its failover behavior met our resilience standard before we trusted it with trading support." — OptiSol S2SIM Delivery Lead
