So you want to put your data in the cloud? OK, great! As a world-class cloud service provider with a network of high-tech cloud storage data centers around the United States, Superb is here to help you with that. If you’re considering moving your data into the cloud as part of an enterprise migration project, then know that there are a host of benefits to doing so. Once your data is up in the cloud it’ll be secure, accessible, affordable stable and backed up. But first you’ve got to get it there.

Companies are increasingly turning their eyes towards system and application migration as a cost-effective and low-risk approach to modernizing their IT infrastructures. The rapidity at which hardware vendors, software companies and system integrators are adopting new applications and down-sizing techniques is astounding. Data is one of the most crucial, omnipresent and necessary assets of most enterprises, which means that migrating it without interruption to a new facility is of the utmost importance. Data migration involves the movement of data from your current system to a new one, and it has to go right.

Maximizing productivity and guaranteeing an efficient transition from an outdated application or system can only be achieved by having a data migration strategy in place before the big move. Any such strategy should be designed from the ground up to help your business address its business needs in the best way possible.

It’s important that you realize that while the cloud has a host of benefits, it isn’t a form of magic; it’s a form of technology. If your business processes are poor now then your data will be still be cheaper, safer and more readily available in the cloud, but the processes involving that data may still not be up to snuff. Take some time and effort to study and better these processes before dropping them off in the cloud. You’re going to have to do this anyways in order to figure out what your resources and performance targets will be, so spend a little bit more time during this stage and get things running better.

Don’t just migrate anything and everything because you can and don’t move everything all at the same time. Start small and see how it works out and then move more over later. The cloud is easily scalable, so putting more into your cloud instance down the road will be a piece of cake – fluffy, delicious cloud cake. Anyways, talk to your end users and explain to them that a migration is coming and let them know what this will mean for them. Clean up your data (user directories, process rules, etc.), test it out to make sure everything is in order and that expectations will be met. Only then will you be ready for the move.

Clean with the Cloud

Tech Target recently looked at a cloud enterprise data migration project and found that cleaning up data was one of the most important steps to take before the big move. If your current system is outdated and having troubles performing the way you need it to then you really need to relocate your data while your new storage solution is being put together. The cloud is a great place to put it.

Working on data in logical chunks is a great way to ensure that operational data sets remain usable and in sync. The data can be continuously moved up into the cloud in bits and pieces when you employ this methodology. Parking it in a cloud instance will result in the data being securely separated out and monitored on someone else’s infrastructure until you’re prepared to integrate it into your new solution – be it in another cloud or in a local data center.

Splitting up Your Data

When some organizations migrate, their biggest goal is to split data up. One IT exec told Tech Target that this means separating “the stuff we use all the time” from “the stuff we have to keep but don’t want to crawl through all the time.” You need both, but you don’t want the latter interfering with you having easy access to the former. Deciding what you’re going to store where should be dependent on response-time requirements, web accessibility necessities and your organization’s general plans for the cloud.

Regardless of which data type you decide to put where, taking this approach of division can be efficient when migrating a system to the cloud instead of using your cloud instance to support your on-premises data migration project. You can even split up the load by placing data subsets in one or more cloud solutions.

Data Migration: I Like to Move It, Move It

Much will be in motion during our data migration project. Putting the cloud into the strategy will indeed complicate things because it brings with it its own consideration set. Simplify things as much as possible by discussing the nature of your business problem that you’re attempting to solve through migration and work on strategizing from there.

Tech Target offers the example of moving beyond an old ERP system being a goal that was only identified after a client first began with a business imperative of needing to have an information infrastructure that was capable of supporting its market success. An outside analyst was brought in to look over the business processes and who was looking at what data and when and why they were using it. This enabled them to create a detailed blueprint for the entire migration.

The move is still happening now, but it’s believed that understanding what employees needed in order to do their jobs better helped everyone involved to come up with a cloud strategy that should work smoothly for their migration.

Image Source: Mashable

Find out more about Nick Santangelo on Google Plus