Hi,

I have been through a similar case. I am working for a large organization, which had the Human Resources data scattered through seven different Access databases counting about 200K records. The challange was not only to migrate them, but also to unify into one armonized structure.

I made a prototype with MySQL, after a cursory data migration, with ONE MILLION records (between real and simulated ones), which showed the potential users most of the benefits in matter of reliability, speed, accessibility and security.

The users were fascinated. The IT department not so much, since they had in mind a more expensive tool (which, under the most optimistic view, is not going to be deployed before 18 months) and they don't like the open source philosophy. However, since the users were so supportive, I got over the opposition and
managed to finish the project. Now I have 100 days uptime in my server and of course the users love it.

The key part was the business case that I proposed to the users. With a
prototype, they were able to appreciate the difference and support my choice.

Best of luck Giuseppe