Fast Migrations

How fast is an observability or SIEM migration?

In weeks, not quarters, once a vendor-neutral control layer sits in front of your stack. You fork data at the source, write to the old and new platforms in parallel, prove the new one on real production data, then cut over by routing change. Yale New Haven Health moved 30,000 endpoints onto Microsoft Sentinel in two weeks.

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Why do migrations usually drag for 12 to 18 months?

A traditional migration is an all-or-nothing project. Months of planning, parallel infrastructure, two platforms licensed at once, and the risk of a compliance gap if data stops flowing to the old system before the new one is ready.

The dominant cost is the dual-license window, the months you pay for two SIEMs at the same time. Historically that runs three to nine months and consumes a large share of one year of the old platform run-rate. Every platform also has its own migration pressure, from renewal shock to portal consolidation deadlines.

The question is not whether you will migrate. The question is whether you can do it without disruption, and without paying for two platforms for most of a year.

2 weeks

30,000+ endpoints migrated at Yale New Haven Health (published)

40%

SIEM spend cut on that program (published)

100%

Of data kept in the compliance archive throughout

How does a control layer make migration fast?

A vendor-neutral control layer sits between your sources and your destinations, so collection is decoupled from any single SIEM. During a migration it writes the same data to the old and new platforms at once. You transition one source at a time, validate on the new platform, and retire the old route when it passes.

Because the layer normalizes data in flight, the new platform receives clean, pre-parsed events from day one. Full fidelity stays in cheap open-format storage the whole time, so the compliance archive never has a gap and the dual-license window collapses from quarters to days.

Fork at the source and write to old and new platforms in parallel from one collection layer, no duplicate forwarders.
Transition source by source at your own pace. Retire old routes only when validation passes.
Keep full fidelity in open-format storage (Parquet, OCSF) throughout, so the compliance archive never has a gap.
Normalize to the new platform schema (ASIM, ECS, CIM) before data arrives, for clean detections from day one.
Make the next migration a routing-rule change instead of another full project. That is the migration-insurance payoff.

How does Logmetry run a migration?

We treat every migration as a controlled, phased rollout led by an architect. No big bang, no data loss, and the parallel-run window kept as short as the validation allows. This is complex architecture work, and we own it end to end.

1Assess: inventory all data sources, map current routing, and order the migration by complexity and criticality

2Parallel run: route each source to both the old and the new platform, validating ingestion and detection coverage

3Source-by-source cutover: transition each source individually, validating alerts, dashboards, and searches before retiring the old route

4Decommission: remove old routes, confirm compliance archive continuity, and document the final architecture

Frequently asked questions

Can we run two platforms in parallel without doubling collection infrastructure?

Yes. The control layer collects once and routes to multiple destinations at the same time. One collection layer feeds both the old and the new platform during the migration, so you do not stand up duplicate forwarders or agents per destination.

How do we stay compliant during the migration?

Full-fidelity data routes to open-format storage like S3 or Azure Blob throughout the entire migration, independent of which platform is active. The compliance archive is never interrupted, and historical data stays queryable for investigations and audits.

How long does a migration take?

It depends on your environment, but the parallel-run window is short because validation happens incrementally, source by source. A published reference, Yale New Haven Health, moved more than 30,000 endpoints onto Microsoft Sentinel in two weeks with a 40 percent spend reduction.

What happens to the cost of running two platforms at once?

The dual-license window is the dominant migration cost, historically three to nine months. Because the control layer lets you validate and cut over by routing change, that overlap collapses from quarters to days, which is where most of the savings come from.

Ready to explore this further?

Let's discuss how this applies to your environment.

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