Organizational Databases

Many organizations have internal data that they want to track. What tools do we use to store this data? Hateful Microsoft Access? MySQL? A web framework like Django? Complicated, brittle spreadsheets? Some cloud solution?

How do we migrate data from insane database systems to better ones? How do we back them up? What are some best practices to dealing with internal databases? What kinds of databases have you dealt with, and what approaches have worked for you?