We are living in the era where the technology that we are using today will most probably get redundant only half a year later. And running a successful IT business in the current times is not everyone’s cup of tea. You need to constantly evolve and keep up with the trends to ensure your position in the market. And keeping with trends means using every possible technology for your business productivity if it fits in your budget. But after you decide to upgrade or add a new technology in your IT infrastructure, you are bound with a critical process i.e. Data Migration and Deployment.

You need to migrate your existing applications and data assets to a new system and ensure that your services are still available for use to your customers. A successful migration and deployment will definitely take your business to new heights of success. But if you overlook even a single step in this process, your running applications may halt and you may lose your important data.

The following points give an insight into the risks associated with data migration:

• Corruption of sensitive business information rendering it useless
• Data loss
• Serious business downtimes costing the reputation of the organization
• Security breaches causing Data theft
• Failed migration may cost you thousands of dollars already spent on buying new equipment
• Insufficient knowledge of the target system resulting in inefficiencies

Data Migration Checklist

Data migration requires adequate planning and strategy. Before migrating, you have to ensure whether the target location is the right solution for your business operations.

You need to analyze each scenario in the process and do a thorough study of the target system to ensure a smooth transition. Here are the following things that you should ensure before actually migrating your data. This checklist will ensure a successful migration and business continuity after deploying the data.

1. Study the target system:

 Today’s market contains many advanced tools and resources that can easily mesmerize you. And it is said that you should not judge a book by its cover. In order to successfully integrate new technology into your business, you need to study its actual usage in your organization. Which means that you should have a fair understanding of the target system. You should have the knowledge of changes that are needed in the source. Doing so will minimize the impact of irrelevant data, reduce exposures, and deploy your applications on the new system quickly. Therefore, study the target system to ensure the migrated data delivers maximum value to your enterprise.

2. Perform data validation:

 Data validation ensures that the data sent to the target system is complete, accurate, secure and consistent. Data validation helps in preparing the right strategy for deployment before it is actually migrated. Also, in some cases, your data may be already corrupt and once deployed you may believe that it got corrupt during the migration.

Outside the business world, whenever you shift from one city to another, you make boxes of the stuff that you have. When you make them, you get an idea of what things you have. For sensitive items like crockery and glass, you do extra packaging to ensure that they are safe. The same things apply to your data. By auditing it at an early stage you get to know what measures should be included in the migration plan.

3. Define the data mappings to make migration easy:

Once you have done the auditing of the source and the target system, mapping the source data with the target system becomes easy. Some migration tools require you to write a piece of code to ensure that data rests in its correct place in the destination system. Mappings help in designing these migration scripts.

4. Define a budget:

 You will easily find yourself spending more than necessary by adding tools that were not needed at all. Therefore, have a budget before you spend your first penny. Ensure that it is relevant so that it is neither too much nor too little to successfully complete the migration. Executing the above steps correctly will help you in preparing the right budget.

5. Select the right tools:

 Select the tools that fit in your budget. Choosing the right tool is necessary to speed up the migration process. Select the tool that gives you more comprehensive control over data migration, as an extract, transform, load (ETL) tool. It should not only speed up the process but should also handle the large volume of data to be transferred.

6. Train your employees, to use the target system:

 Once you have a migration plan ready, there is one thing left to make it full proof- Training your staff. Any upgrade in the existing technology is of no use if your employees don’t know how to use it. Your business may suffer serious downtimes even if the migration was successful. Therefore, you should consider training your employees. Give them a detailed presentation about the changes that they will see after migration. And train them how to adapt the change.

To take advantage of the opportunities, you need to ensure that you are ready to bring any change in your IT infrastructure. Such is the case with data migration and deployment. It may vary depending on various parameters like type of target system, enterprise size, and data complexity. But with a robust data migration plan, you can get the maximum return on investments.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™  services and solutions in how we can help your business.