Businesses hold vast amounts of data, most underutilized or unused. Most of the data is hidden from users and divided across several on-premises repositories. Eventually, these large volumes of data become difficult for teams to store and process.
All of this calls for robust storage. Businesses opt for cloud data migration services owing to this. Let’s examine why a business should migrate to cloud infrastructure over legacy environments.
Why Are Businesses Migrating Their Data to the Cloud?
Technological setbacks are a major cause of cloud data migration. This occurs when the initial system ceases to deliver a secure solution and faces performance problems. Moreover, it is often certain that the IT systems will be combined during an acquisition or merger. Eventually, it becomes essential to migrate all data into a single system.
The next reason why businesses are migrating their data to the cloud is digital transformation. Organizations work hard to gain a competitive advantage in the market. For instance, when the company focuses on new improvements for their employees, operations, or workflow, it is obvious to face a shift in the existing operations.
Therefore, top-level executives show interest in cloud data migration so they may better use their data and boost important business and operational activities. In addition, organizations would like to resolve the data-related issues they are currently facing. Sluggish provisioning processes, storage and security concerns, inadequate analytics, and increasing expenses all call for cloud data migration.
Why Do Businesses Need a Solid Data Migration Strategy?
The primary goal of a data migration strategy is to gather information from multiple sources, integrate it into a central cloud repository, and transform it for business use.
A solid migration strategy can help you get the most out of a data migration. In other words, teams can accomplish the following by migrating their data to the cloud through a perfect strategy. Take a look!
- Improved Cost Savings: A strategized migration can help enterprises increase their cost savings by using modern cloud platforms, which will further provide several services, including enhanced workflow, storage, and transformation services.
- Strengthen Compliance: To cope with the evolving requirements, businesses must future-proof their compliance strategy by safeguarding their data. A solid migration strategy would ensure the data is protected during the transfer.
- Accurate Data Insight: By transforming data into valuable insights, businesses can use it for better reporting, analytics, and decision-making.
- Flexibility: Teams generally want to share data with partners and across applications over APIs so that they may collaborate on developing new products and services. Having a strategy helps them to take advantage of this flexibility.
Challenges and Solutions Associated with Data Migration
Because cloud data migration is complex, it is essential to have a solid understanding of the basic challenges and their solutions. Below are three major challenges and solutions you may face while migrating data into a cloud.
Challenge 1: Failing to Prepare Sufficiently
As part of the cloud data migration process, teams must work through a systematic process that includes producing documentation on data sources, aligning with significant stakeholders on project objectives, etc. Without a solid strategy, data migration can fail drastically. Moreover, businesses also run the risk of losing data during the transfer.
- Solution: To produce the desired outcomes, it is essential to invest a reasonable amount of time in comprehending and preparing the data, analyzing and mitigating the risks, and establishing accurate structures to preserve the data quality during migration. To eliminate the risk of data loss, businesses can keep a backup of the data stored in a different location.
Challenge 2: Risks in Data Compatibility
Teams often desire to integrate data from several sources to view the company’s performance comprehensively, which can lead to data compatibility risks.
- Solution: The teams must properly understand all of the data formats that they are attempting to incorporate. In addition, they must guarantee that the formats and character encoding are compatible. In short, thorough data source analysis during the planning phase can reduce integration risks.
Challenge 3: Data Security Risks
Migrating data from one location to another can cause significant security risks if it is not regulated and monitored closely.
- Solution: IT teams must encrypt data before, during, and after migrating it to a new data lake or lakehouse. Furthermore, teams can restrict data access to only pre-approved workers. Teams may also employ robust authentication protocols and auditing systems to look for irregularities or risks.
Best Practices for Data Migration
Businesses can streamline their cloud data migration process and proceed methodically by following these best practices.
- Verify and Test Data After Migration: Testing your data post-migration ensures that it has worked as planned and that no problems, such as data loss or incompatibilities, have been encountered.
- Ensure Thorough Auditing at Every Stage: To mitigate risks, conduct consistent audits of systems and processes even after your data migration is complete.
- Finish the Necessary System Upgrades: If your old systems or the new apps require any upgrade, make sure you take care of it before migrating data. This reduces the complexity and the likelihood of data compatibility risks.
Conclusion
Summing up, data migration is essential for simplifying business operations. However, it is crucial to conduct a comprehensive migration assessment.
Doing this will give you a better understanding of the technicalities needed to prepare the data for migration, analyze why you need it, identify its benefits and risks, and determine the new data location.
Moreover, this will help you not only have a clear picture of cloud data migration but also choose the perfect tools, vendors, and platforms for efficient data migration.
