You should never sign a project on a guessed-at number.
So we do not publish one. Enterprise data work is scoped by your estate — how much of it moves, how much custom code sits on top, and how much downtime you can tolerate — and any figure published before we have seen that is wrong for almost everyone who reads it. What we publish instead is the shape: the three ways an engagement runs, the factors that decide how big yours is, and exactly how a fixed fee gets quoted. The first conversation is free and costs you thirty minutes.
Three shapes of engagement
Almost every conversation resolves into one of three. Working out which one you are actually asking for is most of the scoping, and it is what the free discovery call is for.
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A diagnostic — you buy the evidence first
When it fits — You suspect a problem, or you know you have to move, but nobody can size it.
A fixed-fee, read-only look at your real estate that ends in a document, not a proposal dressed as one: a locked baseline, a ranked risk register with the signal behind each finding, and a costed remediation or migration plan. It is deliberately the smallest paid step on the ladder, because its job is to make the next decision cheap. The deliverable is yours in open, portable formats whether or not you go further, and the fee is credited in full against a follow-on booked in the stated window.
Typical shape — Days to a few weeks. One database, one estate, or one programme.
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A scoped project — the work the diagnostic sized
When it fits — The evidence is in and you want the thing built, moved, or hardened.
The end-to-end piece of work: conversion, validation, an open-standards target build, a rehearsed cutover, and hypercare. It is quoted as a fixed fee against the evidence the diagnostic produced rather than against a sales-call guess, run under ITIL-4 change discipline, and invoiced on milestones you can see and sign off. Scope is written down before we start, and a change to it is a written change order you approve before any work happens against it.
Typical shape — Weeks to months, phased. Sized by the estate, not by a tier.
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Ongoing — keeping it healthy afterwards
When it fits — You are live and you do not want to stand up a full DBA team to stay that way.
Continuous monitoring running on your OWN infrastructure, plus the level of human cover you actually need — from architecture office-hours and on-call review, through defined support hours with a business-hours response commitment, up to round-the-clock cover for a mission-critical fleet. Month to month, sized to the fleet, and portable: the tooling runs inside your boundary, so leaving costs you nothing but the notice period.
Typical shape — Rolling monthly. Scales with the number of databases you actually run.
Why there is no price on this page
Because the honest answer to "what does this cost?" is a question, and the question is about your estate. The same words — "move us off Oracle" — describe a bounded application with a weekend window and a mission-critical platform that has to prove performance parity before anyone will sign the go-live. Those are not the same job, and a single published figure would misprice both.
We would also rather not anchor you. A number read before scope is understood becomes the number every later conversation argues with, and that is a worse outcome for a buyer than it looks: it pushes both sides toward defending a figure instead of getting the scope right. This is the norm among the specialist database and data-platform practices you would shortlist alongside us, and it is the norm on the enterprise cloud marketplaces, for the same reason.
What you will not have to do is guess. The first paid step is a fixed fee you see in writing before you commit to it, and it is deliberately the smallest step on the ladder — that is its entire job. If it is still more than you can approve without a longer procurement cycle, say so on the call and we will tell you honestly whether a narrower version is worth doing.
What actually drives the scope
These are the dials. Read them against your own estate and you will know which end of the ladder you sit at before you ever speak to us — which is the point of listing them.
| Factor | Why it moves the number |
|---|---|
| How much of the estate is in scope | One database is the small end. A handful of interdependent schemas, several environments, or a whole fleet is a different order of work — and the interdependence matters more than the count, because schemas that share transactions have to move together. |
| How much custom code sits on top | Stored procedures, packages, triggers, and application logic pushed into the database. Mostly-standard code converts largely mechanically; autonomous transactions, bulk routines, and vendor-specific analytics are the hotspots that set the critical path and consume the senior-engineering time. |
| How much downtime you can tolerate | A weekend maintenance window and a straight cutover is the cheap path. A near-continuous system needs change-data-capture, a rehearsed dress rehearsal, and a tested rollback — that is a different engagement, not a surcharge on the same one. |
| What has to be PROVEN, not just moved | Moving a system is one job. Proving performance parity against a locked baseline, or proving a reconciliation to the row, is another — and it is usually the part that decides whether the business signs off on go-live. |
| How many things are plugged into it | Integrations, downstream reporting, and BI surfaces are where migrations overrun. Each consumer is a contract that has to be inventoried, re-pointed, and re-validated. |
| Whether the data is regulated | Health, financial, or personal data under PIPEDA or Québec Law 25 brings an evidence trail, access controls, and a documentation burden into scope. It is real work and we would rather price it in than discover it in week six. |
| Advice, or delivery | Senior judgment on a hard call — target architecture, an identity or RAG design, a build-versus-buy — is a short, bounded block. Us doing the work end to end, with our name on the cutover, is not. |
Engagement sizes, in time and coverage
The ladder, expressed the way it is actually experienced: how long it runs, how much it touches, and what you hold at the end. Each rung buys down the risk of the next, so you never climb straight to the top.
| Step | Duration | What it covers | What you walk away with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discovery call | 30 minutes | Your estate at a high level — platforms, customizations, integrations, and the deadline you are up against. | An honest read on which first step is right, or that none of them is yet. No obligation, no slide deck. |
| First look at one database | Days, not weeks | One database, strictly read-only, and deliberately nothing else — no second instance, no estate sweep, no remediation. | A ranked list of what is actually costing you the time, the evidence under each line, a short do-this-first shortlist and a thirty-minute readout. Then it stops, and what to do about it is a separate decision you make holding the findings. |
| Database Health Audit | About a week from data receipt | One database, strictly read-only — catalog and metadata only, no row data. | A baseline, a ranked evidence-backed risk register, an explainable health score you can re-run against, and a costed remediation shortlist. A founder-led readout, no handoffs. |
| Migration / posture assessment | Two to three weeks | The estate behind a re-platform or a hardening programme — inventory, convertibility scoring, and the risk register. | An open-standards target architecture and a firm scoped quote you could hand to any partner, including one that is not us. |
| Paid pilot | Two to four weeks | One workload in one environment, against a pass/fail number you set with us before we start. | A measurable result in staging, with before/after proof, and a go/no-go meeting on the last day with you in the room. |
| Scoped project | Weeks to months, phased | The estate the assessment sized — conversion, validation, target build, cutover, hypercare. | The working system on open standards, the validation evidence behind it, and documentation you own. |
| Ongoing monitoring and support | Rolling monthly | Your fleet, monitored on your own infrastructure, with a defined response commitment. | A quarterly audit, a named senior contact, and a response SLA sized to how critical the fleet is. |
What makes an engagement bigger — and smaller
Stated in both directions, because a buyer deserves to know which way their own situation pushes before the conversation, not after.
It gets bigger when
- Several interdependent schemas or environments rather than one bounded application
- Deep vendor-specific code — autonomous transactions, bulk routines, proprietary analytics packs
- A near-zero downtime requirement, which brings change-data-capture and a rehearsed cutover into scope
- Performance parity that has to be PROVEN against a locked baseline before sign-off
- A wide integration and BI surface, where every consumer is re-pointed and re-validated
- Regulated data, an evidence trail, and formal sign-off gates
- Round-the-clock response cover rather than business-hours
It stays small when
- One bounded application, one schema, one environment
- A maintenance window the business can genuinely tolerate
- Mostly standard code that converts largely mechanically
- Non-regulated data, and a team that can make its own decisions in the room
- A team that wants the plan and intends to execute it themselves — we are happy to be the diagnostic only
How a fixed fee gets quoted
The commercial model, in full. There is nothing here we would not say on the call — publishing it is simply faster than repeating it.
- The first conversation is free, and it is a working session — Thirty minutes, founder-led, no demo. We map the estate at a high level, find the constraint that actually matters, and tell you which shape of work fits — or that nothing does yet. Plenty of calls end there, and that is a good outcome.
- The fixed fee for the first paid step is quoted in writing, before you commit — Within two business days of the call you get a written summary, the recommended first step, and a fixed fee for it. You know the number before you agree to anything, and it does not move.
- The diagnostic — not a sales call — sets the price of the project — This is the whole reason the ladder exists. Nobody can quote a re-platform honestly from a conversation, so we do not pretend to. The paid diagnostic produces the evidence, and the firm scoped quote comes from the evidence.
- Fixed fee, milestone-invoiced — no time-and-materials — You are not exposed to how long it takes us. Scope is written down before we start; if it changes, that is a written change order you approve first, never a surprise on an invoice.
- The diagnostic fee credits forward — The full fee of a paid diagnostic comes off the first invoice of the follow-on work if you proceed within the stated window. The de-risking step does not come out of the project budget.
- A value-based option where the win is measurable — Where the outcome is a hard, countable saving — eliminating a licence line, a quantified performance or cost win — we can price on a share of the first-year value instead of a fixed fee. Your choice, and we will put both structures on the table rather than picking for you.
- No lock-in, and no penalty for walking away — Every deliverable is yours in open, portable formats — baseline, risk register, architecture, quote — and monitoring runs on infrastructure you control. A pass, a fail, or a decision to stop: you keep the work. We would rather earn the next step on merit than hold your data.
All fees are quoted in Canadian dollars and GST/HST is charged as a registrant. A quote is issued in writing and holds for the period stated on it. Nothing on this page is an offer or a quotation; see Terms.
What happens on the call
Thirty minutes, founder-led. We will ask what you run, what is breaking or expiring, what the deadline is and who owns it, what downtime the business can genuinely absorb, and what has to be true before anyone signs off. You will get a straight read in the call itself, and within two business days a short written summary, the recommended first step, and a fixed fee for that step. If the honest answer is that you do not need us yet, that is what you will hear — and you will still have the summary.
Tell us what you run — we'll tell you what it takes.
It starts with a free 30-minute discovery call, not a commitment. We'll map your estate, flag the deadline you're up against, and come back in writing with the right first step and a fixed fee for it — before you agree to anything, and never a figure invented ahead of seeing your estate.
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