Your organisation’s data is essential. And if it’s not shifted with the proper care, it can cause painful data loss and disturb functionality in your business model. But with a suitable data migration strategy in New Zealand, you can ensure the success of your digital transformation and modernization initiatives.
What is a Data Migration Strategy?
Simply put, a data migration strategy is a plan that will allow you to transfer your data from one platform to another. It may sound as simple as copying and pasting data from one document to another, but it’s more complex than that. Because of the amount of data that a business or organisation utilises, a lot of factors need to be taken into account. Preparations also need to be set up for the many complexities that may arise from the whole data migration process.
With a good data migration strategy, you can follow a precise and systematic process to reduce risks and ensure the project’s success. It can be achieved by doing a project assessment, coming up with a data migration and testing design, development, and execution.
Data Migration Strategy in New Zealand: Which One to Use?
In a nutshell, data migration is the process of moving data from one location to another, such as a new system, server, database, data warehouse, or data lake, or from an on-locations legacy system to the cloud, or between two different clouds.
There are quite a few data migration strategies available. Which one you’ll use will depend on the needs of your business and end users, the volume of data to be migrated, and, most importantly, your company’s resources. All these factors will help you determine and decide on the best New Zealand data migration specialists to work with and the most effective data migration strategy. Here are some of the most common ones:
1. The Big Bang Methodology
This data migration strategy transfers the sum of the data from its source to the target system in a solo operation and point of time. It’s an all-at-once tactic that involves utmost pre-planning and data management to ensure its success. A huge disadvantage of this approach is that it needs a certain amount of interruption to complete the migration. If your business operates 24/7, you may not find this a viable or satisfactory option.
2. Slow or Gradual Migration
This is a more detailed method of data migration. It breaks data into smaller groups, creating a more mapped-out process. This way, the data migration team can confirm whether each data set has been transferred successfully. If one of the sub-migrations fails, it can be re-worked unintrusively with the rest of the migrations. The most significant disadvantage of this type of data migration strategy is that it’s time-consuming. It also uses more resources since the old and new systems must run instantaneously
3. Zero-Interruption Migration
This data migration strategy copies your data from the original database to the target database with no downtime. It permits the use of the source data during the migration process, decreasing the disturbance to your business and facilitating a quicker migration time.
Tips on How to Conduct a Successful Data Migration in New Zealand
A successful data migration can be achieved by following some of the best practices for data migration, which are mentioned below:
1. Define the Size and Scope of Your Project
Before starting the data migration process, you need to clearly define the scope, size, and objective. Also, make sure that everyone in your organisation is in agreement with everything. People who will be significantly impacted by the data migration should also be well-informed in advance to reduce any downtime and errors.
Like most IT projects, have the foresight that scope creep will likely happen. If you’re using a slow or gradual migration strategy, prioritise which database to move first according to the influence on business results and user understanding.
2. Assess Your Current Data
Consider the type, volume, relevance (which data should be migrated, and which data can be left behind), and strategic prominence,. List details like data format, where your data is stored, and who uses the existing data.
Recognise data format, data location, and sensitivity. For example, cloud migration from on-premises systems to the cloud will take a considerable amount of time for data maintenance, and it can impact your business productivity or output.
Once you have decided on the type of data migration your organisation needs, you can proceed to the next steps without a hitch.
3. Do a Full Data Backup
If you’re migrating organisational data, it’s essential to do a proper backup of your data. Anything can happen during data migration, especially when you miss a step or do something incorrectly. Therefore, perform the necessary tests beforehand to catch and fix errors before they have an influence on end users or critical systems. More importantly, do a full backup in case of data loss or issues during the migration process.
4. Use Clean Data
You don’t want anything bad or corrupted being moved to your new system. Before moving forward with any type of data migration, make sure that the data is clean and ready to be transferred to the new system to avoid any disruptions or errors.
5. Identify the Right Resources
Data migration is a huge undertaking that takes a significant amount of planning, time, and resources. From the outset, communicate fully and clearly to your teams, end users, and shareholders what will occur during data migration. They should know what the data migration process includes and what their participation is expected to be. Moreover, they should be aware of the likely effect on key systems, user experience, and critical timelines during and after the process.
Final Thoughts
It’s crucial to have a well-thought-out and meticulously planned data migration strategy. Doing so will prevent missed deadlines, exceeded budgets, and failed projects. A good data migration strategy will also prevent poor execution and errored data.
Consider the needs of your business, the influence on your end users, and the possibility of a potential loss of data or data quality. More importantly, determine whether your business can afford a period of interruption.
Use a data migration strategy that works for your business. If your business needs to upgrade its systems, consolidate data, or move to the cloud, data migration is necessary. A crucial project like this needs to be handled by experts to keep the integrity of your data and ensure that the data migration process is done right from start to finish.
Working with a data migration team with expert knowledge and skills will ensure that your entire data migration process will run smoothly and error-free. If you need more information or want to request a free demo, we’d love to connect! Leave us a comment, shoot us an email at sales@macro-gen.com, or message us on Whatsapp.
