News

AWS Partner Caylent Finds 94% of Database Migrations Miss Timelines

• By David Ramel
• 08/19/2025

A new survey from AWS Premier Tier Services Partner Caylent finds that only 6% of organizations complete their most challenging database migrations on time. The Database Modernization Bottleneck Survey polled 308 U.S. IT leaders across industries, highlighting how database upgrades, cloud transitions, and cross-cloud moves remain some of the most failure-prone initiatives in enterprise IT.

Chronic Delays and Downtime
The report underscores that delays are not the exception but the rule. According to the survey data, nearly 85% of respondents said their most challenging migrations took between one week and six months longer than planned, with only 6% reporting that projects finished on schedule. The top causes included underestimated complexity, insufficient testing, lack of planning resources, and overconfidence in internal capabilities.

Downtime was another significant issue. Nearly half (46%) of organizations experienced more than five hours of downtime during their most challenging migration, and only 6% reported zero downtime. The business effects were immediate: 51% cited customer experience issues, 49% lost revenue, and 44% reported operational slowdowns.

Migration Types and Motivations
The most common types of migrations over the past two years were cross-cloud (58%), on-premises to cloud (56%), and database version upgrades (55%). These were also the three most frequently cited as the most challenging. On-premises to cloud migrations were especially difficult for utilities, manufacturing, and healthcare organizations, where regulatory requirements and legacy systems complicate transitions.

Respondents ranked their top motivations for modernization as: removing vendor lock-in (34%), reducing spend on database licensing (28%), and increasing scalability (13%). However, the report notes that "making data AI-ready ranked consistently low as a driver across all industries," suggesting that many teams are still approaching modernization reactively, focused more on costs than on enabling advanced analytics or AI adoption.

Licensing Dilemmas
Cost savings through licensing reductions were a major motivator, but outcomes varied. While 40% of organizations reduced licensing costs post-migration, 29% saw costs increase. The report warns that vendors like Microsoft and Oracle often raise licensing fees when their databases move to the cloud, creating "long-term contracts" that can undercut anticipated savings.

AI and Automation: Promise and Uncertainty
AI adoption is growing but uneven. Sixty percent of survey respondents said they used generative AI or data movement automation tools during their most challenging migration, and 77% rated those tools effective or highly effective. Still, a majority (53%) said they remain unsure which AI features or tools would best serve their needs.

According to Caylent CEO Lori Williams, "The survey confirms what we see every day -- modernization is imperative, but too often organizations are slowed by accumulated tech debt and outdated approaches that create unnecessary downtime and delayed returns. At Caylent, we combine generative AI with deep engineering expertise to lower the barrier of entry for even the most complex projects and accelerate the time to savings."

Key Time-Intensive Tasks
The most time-consuming parts of migration projects were identified as: moving data from source to target databases (29%), testing target databases including integrations (27%), and converting database schemas (24%). These repetitive, error-prone tasks are ripe for automation, the report concludes.

Industry Impacts
Sector-specific findings include: healthcare and pharmaceutical firms reporting the highest delays in the 3-4 week range due to compliance requirements; entertainment and leisure respondents most affected by customer experience issues during downtime (63%); and utilities reporting the greatest compliance and reporting disruptions (67%).

Methodology
The survey, conducted in July 2025, covered 308 U.S.-based IT leaders who had direct experience managing at least one major database migration in the past two years. Respondents held senior roles ranging from IT managers to CTOs and represented industries including education, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and energy.

About Caylent
Caylent is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner specializing in migrations, modernization, and generative AI. The company has been recognized as AWS Migration Consulting Partner of the Year, GenAI Industry Solution Partner of the Year, and AWS Innovation Partner of the Year.