Modernization Without Illusions: Migrating a Business-Critical Equities Data Warehouse to Databricks

Transitioning a mission-critical data platform is rarely straightforward—especially when the legacy system already works and the environment is tightly regulated.This session shares real-world lessons from moving a high-stakes post-trade data platform to a cloud-native Databricks architecture, focusing on the trade-offs that determine whether teams merely migrate or truly land well. We explore how decisions around design, execution, and platform-native patterns shape performance, cost and business SLAs from day one—and why treating migration and modernization as a binary choice often leads to poor outcomes.Through concrete examples, we highlight how principle-driven interventions turned initially underperforming designs into stable, scalable solutions, offering a candid look at the realities of transitioning critical data platforms without sacrificing predictability or value.