Financial Giant Migrates Legacy Sybase & Oracle to AWS PostgreSQL

Client profile

Our customer is a leading financial services firm operating in the United States. They provide a vast array of financial services, including investment banking, commercial banking, financial transaction processing, and asset management. With a history spanning over a century, the organization operates a complex, high-volume IT infrastructure supporting millions of customers worldwide.

Objective

The customer sought to modernize their data infrastructure by migrating mission-critical workloads from legacy on-premise databases to a cloud-native environment on AWS. The primary objectives included:

• Modernize the stack.Migrate away from legacy Sybase ASE and Oracle monoliths to modern architectures.
• Optimize costs.Reduce the total cost of ownership by eliminating expensive proprietary database licensing.
• Enable cloud scalability.Leverage the elasticity and performance of PostgreSQL within the AWS ecosystem.

Challenge

Migrating a financial institution of this magnitude presents unique technical and compliance challenges. The customer's legacy environment relied on:

• Complex heterogeneity:The need to migrate two distinct source dialects (Sybase ASE and Oracle) into a single target platform (PostgreSQL).
• Business logic:A significant amount of business logic embedded in stored procedures and triggers.
• Strict compliance:The requirement for absolute data integrity and security standards for the banking sector.

Solution

Assessment Stage

The project began with a technical deep-dive into the existing Sybase and Oracle instances. Ispirer experts analyzed the database schemas and dependencies to map out the complexities of converting T-SQL (Sybase) and PL/SQL (Oracle) to PL/pgSQL (PostgreSQL).

Customization & Migration

To ensure a high level of automation and code quality for this massive environment, the team leveraged the Ispirer Toolkit. Given the project's scale, the customer required 40 specialized customizations to handle the unique architectural patterns of their databases.

The solution focused on:

• High-volume сustomization:implementing an initial 9 out of 40 planned customizations to optimize the conversion rules for the firm's T-SQL and PL/SQL patterns.
• Automated conversion:extensive conversion of tables, data, and complex business logic (stored procedures, functions, triggers) to AWS PostgreSQL.
• Cross-platform compatibility:addressing the specific behavioral differences between Sybase/Oracle and PostgreSQL to ensure functional equivalence.

Technologies

• Source:Sybase ASE, Oracle
• Target:PostgreSQL (AWS)
• Tools:InsightWays, SQLWays

Benefits and Results

The migration project, which launched in January 2026, is currently ON TRACK to meet its 12-month completion goal. The collaboration with Ispirer has enabled the financial giant to:

• Unified infrastructure: Consolidate disparate legacy databases into a unified PostgreSQL architecture on AWS.
• Scalable automation: Utilize 40 expert-level customizations to minimize manual rewriting and ensure code consistency across thousands of objects.
• Efficiency: With over 5 weeks of engineering time already logged, the project is maintaining a steady pace toward full decommissioning of legacy systems.
• Reduced licensing costs: Eliminate dependency on expensive legacy database vendors.

Planning a legacy move to the cloud?

Sybase/Oracle to PostgreSQL

Let Ispirer handle the heavy lifting of your database migration. Book a demo today or try our toolkit for free and take the first step toward a faster, smarter, and more scalable data infrastructure!