How To Make A Successful Data Migration Strategy

For any enterprise, data migration is a crucial operation to drive better business decisions. It helps the organizations to expand their data storage and management abilities to ensure successful, cost-effective business operations. Data migration is a highly strategic process, and according to IDC (International Data Corporation), 60% of any large enterprise project is represented through data migration.

Essentials of Data Migration

Data migration is the process of transferring the content like file formats, databases, and more from one system or repository to another. However, if the data is diverse, then along with the transfer, mapping of data also needs to be implemented. The situations in which the data migration may be required are:

• Scaling up the current system which accommodates volume growth
• Replacing the legacy systems that are not up to the mark
• Cutting down the operational costs by updating a system which consumes less power and space
• Creating a substantial plan for disaster recovery
• Keeping with the modern technology trends
• Removing the infrastructural charge by transferring the data to the cloud

Whenever you plan for data migration between systems, factors like data integrity, user experience, data assessment, business impact, data quality, possible downtime, and process cost need to be considered.

Types of Data Migration:

Database migration:

When you want to upgrade the current database engine or move the data from one database engine to another, then you need to plan the database migration. This process modifies only data, not the schema. It requires careful planning, and testing a database is a crucial part of any system.

Storage migration:

Storage migration mainly focuses on moving the data from one device to another within premises (like on hard disk) or on the cloud. It is the most straightforward migration process in which features like data validation, cloning, and removing corrupt information are implemented. It offers scalable performance with lower costs.

Application migration:

It is nearly the combination of storage migration and database migration. It is applied when an organization switches from one platform or vendor application to another in which the OS, management tools, and virtual machine configurations can be different at the time of development and deployment.

Cloud migration:

When you perform cloud migration, all or partial information of your organization assets, applications, management tools, services, and configurations are transferred to the cloud platform. It ensures storage scalability, cost-effectiveness, firewall security, and easy access to the data to the authority staff.

Steps for data migration success

It would be best if you had a detailed plan that covers the essential steps for a successful data migration project. It will help you to select, arrange, extract, modify, and transfer data in the right form and quality. Follow the steps below to make this process easy and successful.

1. Identify the type of the data you are migrating, its format, where it is located, and in which layout you want it in the destination system.
2. Scope the data migration plan to identify the resources, stakeholders’ required deliverables, business & migration expertise, reporting needs, and required a budget for that.
3. Before starting the migration process, make sure to take the data backup, especially the content you are migrating to another system. Use cloud storage method to get the most secure backup plan.
4. Make a thorough assessment of the migration process. Determine the skills of your team, the resources & time availability to complete the project, and the additional help like a good-quality data migration software to execute the process.
5. After identifying the right tool and resources, execute the data migration plan. Ensure data cleanliness for protecting the destination system, then load the data by following migration rules, and closely track the process to identify and resolve any issue that comes across.
6. Test the system to check if there are any connectivity issues between the networks and if all the migrated data is clean, secure, and located at the right place.
7. Conduct a full system audit to get an assurance of everything in place, and there is no missing or corrupt data in the system. If you find any, restore that file from your data backup.

Choose the right tool that can help you to follow the above steps and incorporate industry standards in the project plan for ensuring a successful project delivery with minimum risk. For example, the Talend software is excellent for the industry seeking a big data integration. The Talend data migration tool streamlines every step in the migration process, including data preparation, integration, and data streaming from one system to another system or the cloud.

At first, full-scale data migration may seem overawing. However, if you break it down into smaller steps and using the right tool, it will become more captivating. Rather than seeing the whole process as a big move, please take it in a step-by-step fashion. It will help to simplify the migration and gain more strategic value from your data.