Cloud migration is the process of moving data from one cloud service to another cloud, or from your on-site facility into the cloud. It is a very tough process that involves careful planning from the IT department, especially in the healthcare industry.

It is not an easy task to move your company entire data from one place to another. Your IT department and CIO should make a clear strategy. They should also understand the benefits of moving your data to some cloud facility. There are various factors like scalability and ease-to-use which plays an important part when you are choosing a storage method. Almost every enterprise is moving its applications and data to the cloud. Electronic Health Records are another major reason for choosing cloud storage.

It is difficult to move all your data from one place to another place. You need proper planning before moving your data. Data can’t be migrated all at once due to these reasons:

Your systems can’t move such large data at once due to hardware and network restrictions.
You can’t access your data during the transition phase.
Leaving data in the transition state increase the risks of data loss.

The process of moving your data from your local storage to the cloud can be complex. But, with the right preparation and help, cloud migration can be a turning point for your enterprise. You can explore the below strategies for successful cloud data migration.

Select the Right Cloud Provider

There are many different cloud providers available in the market. It is very difficult for any organization to find the right cloud provider for their business. First, you must determine your business, organizational and technical requirements. After that, you must determine the technology, experience, and services that various cloud providers are offering.

You can get input from your peers and conduct industry research for understanding your requirements. It is always best to ask cloud providers to share their experiences, location requirements, custom hardware, software set-ups, and compliance. Make sure that the service-level agreements that your cloud provider offers are meeting your expectations.

Data security

Data security is the most important thing in the healthcare sector. If you are moving your data without any plan, then multiple gaps in your security can occur. Thus, you need to strengthen your security policies before moving your data. If you are moving your data to cloud storage, then you might need to reconfigure your network security.

You can assess your current security posture by using the security triad model: Availability, Integrity, and Confidentiality. This model will help you in reconfiguring your policies for your data. Integrity will ensure that your data is accurate and trustworthy. Confidentiality will ensure that only authorized personnel can access your data. Availability will guarantee that your data is always available to authorized people.

If your business has achieved all three components, then you have got solid security policies. This is more important for hybrid environments where both data and users move between cloud and on-premise infrastructure.

Communicate Regularly

There should be regular communication between the IT department and cloud providers during the migration process. They should share the goals, timeline, and the scope of the migration with other stakeholders. Throughout the migration, you have to share your status update, milestones, risk mitigations and key decision points with other department heads and team members. There should be frequent communication about the transition dates and training when your project is about to be completed.

Duplicating the environment

The reconfiguration will be required during the data migration process. But, you can’t reconfigure your resources at the risk of losing data. If you are changing an application to fit the cloud storage method, then it will affect the compatibility within your current infrastructure. Your users shouldn’t be allowed to access the data that is migrating to a new storage environment. You need various tools to migrate your data to a new environment without damaging the old environment.

It will take a good amount of time to replicate the current environment. But, your IT department can test your applications in this environment without risking your data. Every healthcare organization has different needs and requirements. It is very common to make errors during the transition phase. If your IT department is working on the duplicated environment, then it will prevent the errors from affecting your actual data. Your IT workers will also get time to fix any issues.

There are many third-party tools that will help you during the data migration process. But, no tool can handle the whole process alone. Most cloud services like Microsoft Azure and AWS will duplicate your current environment during the transition phase. If anything goes work during the transition phase, then you can still access your data.

Deduplication

Deduplication is the last step of the migration process. There is no need to keep a copy of your data. Thus, you can delete all the duplicate files from your in-house premise. This will make some room for new data. All your data will be available in your cloud storage. Still, you should keep one copy of your data in the in-house infrastructure.

Conclusion

Cloud computing has completely changed the IT industry. Almost every organization is using cloud services for storing their data. Healthcare organizations will get a lot of benefits from the cloud once their migration process is completed. Cloud will help you in increasing your data availability and lowering the operational costs. Cloud services will take your healthcare organization to the next level. But, you should do proper planning before migrating data from local storage to cloud storage. To learn more about cloud migration, you can contact Bleuwire experts. They will help you in creating a perfect migration strategy.

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