Data migration is the process of transferring data between computer storage types or file formats. It is a key consideration for any system implementation, upgrade, or consolidation. Data migration is performed to achieve an automated migration, freeing up human resources from tedious tasks. Data migration occurs for a variety of reasons, including server or storage equipment replacements, maintenance or upgrades, application migration, website consolidation and data center relocation.

To achieve an effective data migration procedure, data on the old system is mapped to the new system utilising a design for data extraction and data loading. The design relates old data formats to the new system's formats and requirements. Programmatic data migration may involve many phases but it minimally includes data extraction where data is read from the old system and data loading where data is written to the new system

To effectively conduct a data migration project, the following are the 8 key essential things that we undertake.

A pre-migration assessment

We will assist you to plan your project in two parts: project structure and technical aspects. The project structure plan would include things like clearly defined migration objectives, deadlines and budget. The technical review which we will develop with your internal IT team, we will outline the migration method, timeline and tools.

Data quality check

Before we carry out any migration project we will assess the quality of your data. Incorrect, inconsistent or duplicate data can cause a failure in your new system and that is not something you want to discover after an attempted migration.

Our consultants will profile and evaluate your data and map it onto the new system to make sure that the formats and requirements fit. By doing so, we can reduce the risk of project overruns, delays and outright failure.

Talk to other departments

Although the IT department may oversee any migration project, this should not exclude the rest of the business. Talk to your colleagues and actively seek out their insight, as they likely have an inherent understanding of the data your business has. They are best placed to advise on what data to keep and what data to throw away.

 Validate and test throughout the migration process

 We always check and double-check. We do not want to get to the end of the migration process only to find an error which threatens the whole thing. Testing will help us find error with data conversion, comparison and duplication. We try to solve problems along the way. The end result is better with this approach.

Anticipated downtime

 During our project planning, we build in some downtime as it is tricky to perform data migration during regular working hours. We remove some of the pressure by doing migrations during non-business hours. This allows us to attain a good level of data consistency.

Watch for security leaks

During data migration, we place great emphasis on security. Data migration can compromise your data permissions and security settings, making your data vulnerable to theft, corruption or misuse. To avoid this, we carry out block level migrations, rather than file-level. As this migration is on a different level, your security remains untouched.

A rollback plan

 Doing a migration can disrupt other systems and processes if not done properly. We establish a rollback plan to restore your servers to a problem-free version.

Allow enough time to learn the new environment

There are many things in data migration that can uptime, reliability or security of your servers. We will put a whitepaper together for your organization with everything you need to know. This does not just include the technical challenges but also business objectives for the migration.