Many companies are already storing their data in the cloud and even more are considering making the migration to the cloud. The cloud offers unique benefits for data access and consolidation, but some businesses choose to keep their data on-prem for various reasons. Data migration isn’t a one size fits all formula, so when developing your data strategy, think about your long-term needs and goals for optimal results.
We recommend evaluating these 4 questions before making the decision to migrate your data to the cloud:
1. Why do you Want to Migrate your Data to the Cloud?
Typically, there are two reasons businesses find themselves in a position of wanting to change their IT infrastructure. Either your legacy platform is reaching end of life (EOL) and you’re forced to make a change, or it’s time to modernize. If you’re faced with the latter – your business data expanded beyond the EOL platform – it’s a good indication migrating to the cloud is right for you. The benefits of cloud-based storage can drastically improve your business agility.
2. What is Important to You?
You need to know why you’re choosing the platform you are deploying and how it’s going to support your business goals better than other options. Three central arguments for cloud storage – that are industry and business agnostic – include:
- Agility: If you need to move quickly (and what business doesn’t?), the cloud is for you. It’s easy to start, and you can spin up a cloud environment and have a solution deployed within minutes or hours. There’s no capital expense, no server deployment, and no need for an IT implementation team.
- Pay as you go: If you like starting small, testing things before you go all in, and only paying for what you use, the cloud is for you. It’s a very attractive feature for businesses hesitant to move all their data at once. You get the freedom and flexibility to try it out, with minimal financial risk. If it’s not a good fit for your business, you’ve learned some things, and can use the experience going forward. But chances are, the benefits you’ll find once utilizing cloud features will more than prove their value.
- Innovation: If you want to ride the technology wave, the cloud is for you. Companies release new software and features to improve the cloud every day, and there’s no long release cycles. Modernized technologies and applications are available as soon as they’re released to advance your business capabilities based on your data.
3. What is your Baseline?
The more you can plan for potential challenges in advance, the better. As you consider data migration to the cloud, think about what your data looks like today. If you have an on-prem solution, like a data warehouse, lift and shift is an attractive migration plan because it’s fairly easy.
Many businesses have a collection of application databases and haven’t yet consolidated their data. They need to pull the data out, stage it, and store it without interfering with the applications. The main cloud providers offer different, but similar options to get your data into a place where it can be used. AWS offers S3, Google Cloud has Cloud Storage, and Azure provides Blob storage. Later, you can pull the data into a data warehousing solution like AWS Redshift, Google BigQuery, Microsoft Synapse, or Snowflake.
4. How do you Plan to use your Data?
Always start with a business case and think strategically about how you’ll use your data. The technology should fit the business, not the other way around. Once you’ve determined that, garner the support and buy-in of sponsors and stakeholders to champion the proof of concept. Bring IT and business objectives together by defining the requirements and the success criteria. How do you know when the project is successful? How will the data prove its value in the cloud?
As you move forward with implementation, start small, establish a reasonable timeline, and take a conservative approach. Success is crucial for ongoing replication and investment. Once everyone agrees the project has met the success criteria, celebrate loudly! Demonstrate the new capabilities, and highlight overall business benefits and impact, to build and continue momentum.
Be Aware of your Limitations
When entering anything unknown, remember that you don’t know what you don’t know. You may have heard things about the cloud or on-prem environments anecdotally, but making the decision of when and how to migrate data is too important to do without a trusted partner. You risk missing out on big opportunities, or worse, wasting time, money, and resources without gaining any value.
2nd Watch is here to serve as your trusted cloud advisor, so when you’re ready to take the next step with your data, contact Us.
Learn more about 2nd Watch Data and Analytics services
-Sam Tawfik, Sr Product Marketing Manager, Data & Analytics
