Companies Migrating Their Data from On-premise to Cloud

The number of companies that have either already made the transition to cloud solutions or are seriously considering making the switch to cloud solutions is growing exponentially.

Cloud provides multiple benefits for companies and businesses including reduced dependency on data centers and reduction in IT infrastructure and maintenance expenditure.

In addition, cloud migration supports a number of critical aspects of running a business or an organization with an eye of the future. These include:

• Modernization of current IT infrastructure.
• The need for incorporating highly scalable tech solutions in anticipation of future business/market needs.
• Boosting business agility.
• Robust disaster recovery security.

However, companies that want to adopt cloud technology face an important challenge – moving data from their on-premise databases to cloud data storage.

If you don’t have a road map and you are unprepared to deal with specific technical challenges, migrating your data to the cloud can be a tedious and lengthy process.

Remember that not only is data the new age currency, but staggering amounts of data is being generated every single day. It is estimated that by 2020, data generated and copied will touch 44 zettabytes. In such a scenario, cloud migration is just a matter of time.

Top 5 Considerations in Migrating Data from On-premise to Cloud

Migrating your data from on-premise to cloud requires detailed planning. It’s not going to happen magically overnight. Here are the top five considerations to keep in mind when transitioning to the cloud.

Migrating Current Data

Once you have selected the right cloud data warehouse for your company, you can then go ahead and make an initial copy of your data.

Keep in mind that we could be talking about hundreds of terabytes of data – so it is important to plan how this data will be transferred to the cloud. In addition, you will need to verify the schema and format of your data from the warehouse so it can be imported to the cloud data warehouse prior to data loading.

Setting-up Data Replication

You will need to export an on-prem data warehouse snapshot and copy it to the cloud data warehouse.

Once this is done, you can start with setting-up data replication. Every copy operation will required capturing of any data changes and its schema and then applying those changes to the cloud data warehouse.

Migration of Analytics Infrastructure

Moving analytics infrastructure is a relatively less risky venture for one simple reason – analytics definitely is a critical component for any company or organization, however, it is not the core component.

Most companies, who are hiring lots of people now because of low taxes, employ data teams making it easier for companies to set up analytics tool(s) that work well and align with their cloud data warehouse.

Migrating Custom or Legacy Data Applications

After moving your entire analytics infrastructure and data analysis teams to the cloud, you can focus on migrating your customer data applications and reporting tools to the cloud as well.

Moving custom data applications and reporting tools might throw up specific technical challenges that may require you to make changes to your data model.

However, if your data synchronization mechanism can support these transformations, you will find it easier to implement some of the needed changes to your data model.

Work with and instruct your change managers or data engineers on the new cloud data warehouse and on the data migration tools used so they are better equipped to manage the migrated applications.

Moving Legacy ETL Processes

When you start moving your ETL processes to the cloud, it may just require simple configuration changes or you may need to do a complete re-write.

However, once you successfully move your ETL processes to the cloud, your on-prem data warehouse will become obsolete marking a complete transition from an on-prem data warehouse to a cloud data warehouse.

To Wrap Up

There is no doubt that migrating your data from on-prem to the cloud is not only beneficial but necessary both in the current market space and for future markets.

The absolute advantages that cloud offers over on-prem data warehouse include high-cost efficiency, increased performance levels, easy scalability, improved business agility, and robust data security.

By focusing on the above mentioned five stages of data migration, you can plan and implement your data cloud migration to the cloud as seamlessly as possible.