The Complete Data Migration Guide in Toledo
All organizations that utilize software, particularly database-based solutions, will need to migrate data at a certain point.
It may be that they’re undergoing a digital transformation and may be obliged to digitize data and execute a migration to their data management tool of choice. It’s also possible that stakeholders have decided to move their data from their on-site server or data center to a cloud data warehouse through cloud migration.
Despite your use case, in order to have an effective migration, there are specific standards a company must employ to maximize their investment and the time invested (as well as potential downtime) needed to conduct the migration.
In this post, we will analyze what a data migration is, why they're essential, as well as the stages of a migration.
We'll also cover best practices for migrating which involve affairs like streamlining your business tasks and reviewing data quality and potential data cleansing opportunities.
Our mission is to provide the data migration tools you require to alleviate the burden of this operation. So, are you ready? Let's get to it.
What is a Data Migration?
To begin, what is data migration, exactly? In simplest terms, it's the act of transferring all of your business’s data from one storehouse to another.
This can be process documentation, company assets, customer information - essentially anything stored (whether the data is stored physically or digitally) and used to administer or facilitate the functionality of your business.
Data Cleansing
Unfortunately, for many companies, this is a lot of information. And in due course, this information may have gotten rather disorganized and there might be a considerable quantity of data that is no longer needed, or outdated, as a result of which your overall data quality weaker and less beneficial.
Therefore, apart from just relocating data, there is a component to data migration that entails what we call data cleansing.
This is the process of deleting or updating antiquated information, eliminating unnecessary data altogether, and possibly restructuring the information you would like to keep so that team members can find it more easily.
Data Governance
Beyond that, for several companies who gather, utilize, store, or transmit confidential customer information, there is also the matter of data governance that needs to be tackled.
Data governance addresses why and how the data can be acquired, who has authorization to access it, observing your customer's rights to the data, and verifying that it is secured in a way that meets industry requirements.
Data governance requirements and standards differ by industry. A number of common frameworks include GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, FedRAMP, and more.
Therefore, a business must ensure that not only is the data properly prepared prior to transfer, but also that how it is treated prior to and after the migration fulfills any criteria that the company is required to uphold.
Regardless, after the hard work is done, there are several positive benefits of conducting a data migration for your company.
The Benefits of Data Migration
A well-planned and executed data migration can have several positive effects for your organization, including the following:
Improved user experience with locating and arranging data
Increased efficiency, output, and competence
Strengthened data integrity
Lessen costs of managing excessive amounts of information
Enhanced data discovery (i.e. utilizing the proper data to generate useful insights for your organization)
Yet, it should be mentioned that when a migration is poorly planned and an organization has not done its due diligence in data preparation, migrations can actually have some major repercussions.
This could be missing, imprecise, or redundant data. If worst comes to worst, it could potentially lead to the exposure sensitive information and non-compliance concerns. Each of these can result in lowered productivity and revenue loss, some can cause severe reputational and financial damage.
Now that we have reviewed what a data migration is and why it is beneficial, let's now take a look at the different phases of a migration.
The Phases of a Data Migration
There are three primary phases for a data migration project. These are preparation, migration, and post-migration QA. Let's go over each phase a bit more in detail.
Phase 1: Preparation
In any case, whether you’re contemplating a Jira migration in Atlassian Cloud or going with a hybrid platform such as Microsoft Azure or AWS, the preparation remains the same.
First, you have to consider all of your dependencies and requirements for your data.
Next, you will want to understand your hardware, bandwidth, and availability requirements.
From there, you will obtain your tools and licenses.
Then, you will want to perform a pre-migration data cleanse to verify that outdated, unnecessary, inaccurate, or redundant data is treated.
The cleansing phase will also include how you will classify your data eventually as well as the naming conventions you will employ.
When your data is accessible and your requirements are established, you could now begin outlining your migration strategy.
Will it be a one-time lift and shift, or will you have to migrate in stages to avoid lost productivity?
You must also backup of your prepared data to guarantee that nothing is misplaced during migration, or if the migration fails.
Develop and evaluate your migration process including data mapping, integration, automation, etc.
Phase 2: Migration
You’re now ready to begin! At this point, you may have to revisit some aspects of the planning process in order to fine-tune and modify the process to better fit your requirements. A few of these duties could include:
Adapting migration procedures.
Assuring that software or hardware requirements have been met.
Putting your migration process to the test (Yes we're reiterating this because it is non-negotiable).
After, you can begin the migration from your old system to the new one. When complete, you will need to ensure that everything has been properly mapped over and that all files were successfully carried over.
Phase 3: Post-migration QA
During the post-migration stage, you will need to double-check that everything is correct. While tedious, this is a crucial stage to verify that you have successfully carried over everything that was supposed to be moved. This includes:
Checking that every translation and field mapping occurred properly.
Evaluating the old and new systems to check for conflicts and data loss.
Post-mortem assessment of the migration and the efforts taken - this’ll be essential if the migration needs to be repeated in the future.
And lastly, retiring your legacy tools and operations.
By this moment, you could be feeling as though this entire process is a bit overwhelming. Don't worry! We have numerous extra best practices that can help you guarantee that your migration occurs as smoothly as possible.
Data Migration Best Practices
As previously mentioned, the data migration system will vary from company to company depending on the intricacy of your processes and information, along with the type of migration you are seeking.
As such, there are some best practices that are applicable in all migration plans which we’ll share now.
Back-Up Your Data Before Migration
This should go without saying, but just in case, we'll say it anyway: don't proceed unless you have adequately backed up your data. We recommend backing up your data in its initial state and after it's been cleaned, so you have both copies in case of a failure.
A recommended practice for this case is to backup system images because, in the event of a data loss, restoration can be done very fast.
Conduct a Pre-Migration Systems Audit
Understanding what you already have, what needs to be moved, where you fall short, and where developments are required is a vital first step in ensuring your migration succeeds and is worth the time and money invested.
This is especially useful for firms with a low level of data integrity. It's best to "tidy up" before you move or you might end up just jumping from one disaster to the next.
Plan Your Migration Carefully
It also is crucial to plan each phase of your migration carefully. When team members understand when systems may be unavailable (if migration cannot be scheduled during off-hours) they can plan their duties accordingly and minimize disappointment and lost proficiency.
Furthermore, depending on the severity of your migration, it may be required to migrate in stages based on systems so that you don't have to take the whole company offline at once.
This improves your ability to assess and QA the migration for problems, step by step, instead of having to sort through several potential issues simultaneously which could only add to your stress and downtime.
Conduct Staff Training in Advance
Another often forgotten aspect of migrations is preparing your personnel. To hasten the adoption of new workflows or technology, it's key to educate your personnel on the new procedures or organizational processes and guarantee that they are ready to jump in and take advantage promptly after migration.
Test, Test, Test
If something goes badly with your migration, you can always rely on your backups. But, this can rapidly get tricky when you're trying to finish everything at once and have not thoroughly evaluated your migration procedures and the new solutions.
Which is why we encourage extensive testing before, after, and during to assure that minor errors are handled promptly before they snowball into something far more complicated and time-consuming to resolve.
Automate as Much as You Can
Through automating the data migration process, you can improve data integrity in the specified system, receive reporting on your progress and any difficulties that arise, and audit your operation in real-time to troubleshoot if something goes awry. This’ll enable you to make your migration far more efficient and eliminate the possibility of human error.
Don't Forget the Post-Migration Review
Again, don't just assume that everything went to plan simply because there was no failure or alert. A post-implementation audit will help to guarantee that everything is ready for production and that you could securely uninstall your legacy system.
Moreover, you should continue to conduct checks and evaluations of the new solution over time to compare to your standards and verify that your new solutions are not deteriorating over time.
Any performance delays, unusual access behaviors, possible security flaws, or other inconsistencies can be resolved if discovered early on. If not, these can rapidly chip away at the progress and advantages you initially received from your migration process.
How Wave Can Aid With Your Data Migration in Toledo
If you are searching for ways to modernize your back-office processes or accelerate your digital transformation journey, this could involve a partial or full data migration to a new solution or system.
We can assist you by working as a partner with your company to analyze your existing systems and processes and discover opportunities to increase productivity by integrating innovations or simply adding a few add-ons where needed.
If data migration is needed, we could provide a white glove approach, helping your organization in making a flawless transition that translates to improved productivity and efficiency. We can provide step-by-step guidelines to enable a cost-effective migration with as little interruption as possible so you could maximize your people, processes, and technology.
We proudly work with over 60 industry-accepted DMS and ECM platforms including OpenText, M-Files, SharePoint, and Oracle.
So, if you are keen to learn more, get in touch with us today and we can arrange a time to talk about your next data migration project.