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Outgrown Your MS Access System?

Three Proven Options to Consider

Outgrown Your MS Access System?

Three Proven Options to Consider

Have you out-grown MS Access?  Thinking of Upsizing?

Have you already invested countless hours in a highly-customized, in-house MS Access system — and now, system performance and stability continues to decline, but your costs, hassles and risk continue to increase?  You are in good company… join the THOUSANDS of businesses that are in the very same boat.  When it is obvious that you have out-grown the limitations of MS Access, you have 3 Options to consider:

Option 1 — Continue to invest in MS Access Work-arounds?
Option 1Examples of common work-arounds to MS Access limitations include: create multiple MDBs (multiply maintenance and support efforts).  Continually compress and repair MS Access (and pray “this isn’t the time” MS Access corrupts your valuable data).   Use Terminal Services to enable Internet use of MS Access, and pay the additional performance expense.This is the place most businesses find themselves in after using MS Access for 3, 5 or 10 years.   Option 1 is Ground Hog Day, and your MOST EXPENSIVE option — you will continue to dump more time and money into MS Access, and with continually dimishing returns.
 
Option 2 — Migrate/Upsize MS Access to SQL Server
Option 1Upsizing the MS Access database to SQL Server is the minimum investment required to stabilze your system, and avoid the work-arounds needed to keep your system running and protect your data.   You can also take advantage of many powerful SQL Server capabilities to substantially improve performance, data integration with other systems, etc.Bang for the buck, this option is often the wisest choice.   A major drawback is no Internet access to your system.   Connecting MS Access to SQL Server a cost-effective approach to improve system reliability, performance and datastore capacity, and will allow you to sleep at night knowing your core business system is stable, reliable and secure.
  
Option 3 — Convert MS Access to SQL Server and .NET
Option 1If growing your business depends upon taking full advantage of capabilities, performance and cost-efficiencies, Option 3 is the best choice over the long run.  Up-sizing to SQL Server and .NET will require a significant investment up-front, but your business will yield multiples in return over time through gains in data management capabilties and ease-of-use.This is your only option if you need to expose data management and/or reporting capabilites directly to your customers (to improve service, and lower your cost).   And, you can continue to use MS Access to support all of your internal ad-hoc reporting needs.