SUMMARY:
XTIVIA modernized its 30-year-old Virtual-DBA platform by migrating from IBM Informix to a cost-effective, cloud-optimized PostgreSQL/TimescaleDB.
Table of contents
In enterprise IT, there is a pervasive “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” mentality that often keeps mission-critical systems anchored in legacy technology. For almost 30 years, our homegrown Virtual-DBA platform, which monitors thousands of database instances for large global retailers and financial companies, has been reliably and capably powered by IBM Informix. It was reliable and performant, but as we entered 2025, it became somewhat of a strategic bottleneck.
The technical debt was mounting. We faced increasing proprietary licensing constraints, limited integration with cloud-native architectures, and limited compatibility with modern, AI-ready data ecosystems. We knew that to continue delivering the observability our clients expect, we had to modernize our own core.
We didn’t just talk about it, we did it, with a small, specialized team. We successfully migrated our high-velocity time-series Informix workload to a modern PostgreSQL architecture powered by TimescaleDB. Now, we’ve documented the entire journey in our latest technical success story download: “The Cobbler’s Children Finally Get New Shoes: A Technical Chronicle of Migrating Virtual-DBA from Informix to PostgreSQL.”
Why PostgreSQL is the Future of Enterprise Data
Recent industry data suggests that the average global enterprise wastes over $370 million annually due to technical debt and inefficient legacy systems. For high-stakes sectors like retail and finance, a single hour of database downtime can cost between $1 million and $5 million.
Our move to PostgreSQL and TimescaleDB wasn’t just a cost-saving measure; it was a risk-mitigation strategy designed to ensure 99.999% uptime while gaining AI and cloud-native flexibility. By choosing this stack, we unlocked:
- Columnar Compression: Achieving over 90% storage savings on AWS EBS.
- Hypertable Architecture: Automating data partitioning for sub-second query performance on massive datasets.
- Modern Security Standards: Aligning with SOC 2 compliance through updated SSH and encryption protocols.
The “War Story” Perspective: From Strategy to Cutover
Modernizing a 30-year-old system is never a simple “lift and shift.” Our whitepaper dives deep into the technical hurdles we cleared, including:
- The Parallel Load Strategy: How we ran the legacy Informix and new PostgreSQL systems side-by-side for months to validate every millisecond of data integrity.
- The SQL Optimizer Trap: A post-migration “war story” where a missing index caused a massive CPU spike—and how our team resolved it in a surgical maintenance window.
- Code Modernization: Transitioning decades of monolithic Perl scripts and Informix SPL into modular, maintainable functions interfacing with PostgreSQL.
ROI by the Numbers
This isn’t just an engineering success; it’s a business success. By moving to an open-source, cloud-optimized model, we achieved:
- 40–60% reduction in long-term administrative overhead.
- Elimination of proprietary licensing fees, shifting CapEx to a flexible OpEx model.
- Infrastructure optimization that allows us to scale as our clients grow into the era of AI-driven observability.
Get the Full Technical Breakdown
At XTIVIA, we believe in “eating our own dog food.” We navigated the complexities of database optimizers, application logic rewrites, and character encoding traps, so that when we help you modernize your estate, we do so with hands-on experience.
Ready to see how we did it?
Download our comprehensive whitepaper to view the full migration timeline, data benchmarks, and specific lessons learned to help de-risk your modernization journey.