Quick Guide to Seamless Cloud Data Migration

The key to safe, successful data migration to Cloud is in the planning of a thorough strategy. Communicating that strategy to key stakeholders throughout your organization will help to align other areas of the business and smooth the transition to Cloud.

Plan Out a Migration Strategy

Rehost, Refactor, Revise, Rebuild, or Replace. Gartner defined the “5 R’s of Cloud Migration” according to platform, service, and infrastructure models. Each of these methods has its best implementation scenario according to the needs of your business, but there are some potential concerns that apply consistently throughout. For example, missed aptitude or potential issues with data access. Careful planning and strategy are your best options for avoiding these bottlenecks.

Identify Which Data to Migrate

Is it best to migrate all of your data to Cloud at once?

Legacy data migration is particularly important during Cloud PLM implementation. And it’s vital that you have a complete plan in place for this process to go as smoothly as possible.

There may be multiple reasons why you won’t need certain data on Cloud right away, or even at all. There may be obsolete versions, duplicate data or even replicated backup. So, it’s important to identify the data that needs to be migrated. And to prioritize, and sort batches of data before migration.

Prepare Data for Migration

Filter out unnecessary data to save time and storage.

According to your particular dependencies, Cloud data may need to be stored in a number of formats. Active data may require planned, automated migration as part of your Cloud workflow, to guarantee access during the process. Data preparation might involve copying, exporting, formatting, reformatting, or archiving data. In such scenarios, local storage may not prove to be efficient. In this instance, you should consider setting up a dedicated storage space to stage the prepared data.

Transfer the Data

Careful data identification and preparation can help you accelerate this stage, as network transfer speeds will vary according to your local uplink. You can’t send data faster than the physical bit rate. But by carefully identifying priority access data, organizational downtime can be kept to the minimum. It’s also important to remember that the transferal of data to your Cloud provider may not be the end of its journey. If your data needs to be replicated across regions or providers, then you’ll need to plan for this procedure.

Validate the Data

Migrated cloud data should be validated before it is made available to all. During validation, you’ll have to ensure that there is a match between every byte sent and every byte received. This will be your first level of verification. But, even if the sent and received bytes match, there can be a functionality loss and may therefore mark this data as defunct.

So, a secondary level of verification should be put in place to reaffirm the initial phase. Once the data is verified, it can be re-extracted, re-formatted and distributed for further use. And you’re one step closer to full Cloud integration.

In Our Experience…

Cloud PLM implementation is the ideal moment to re-evaluate existing processes and mindsets, as bringing Cloud to your workspace won’t be an overnight change. Moving to Cloud is not a simple task but a journey altogether. And a thorough, systematic approach can make the journey a much smoother experience.