Data Migration: Explanation and

Benefits
The data explosion in the past few years has resulted in producing over 90% of the
data. Only the minuscule 10% data was generated in the previous decades since the
inception of computers. So, the amount of data created adds up to about 40 zettabytes
by the end of the year 2020. With all the new data that’s being captured, you need to
save costs on storing and maintaining it.
Therefore, data migration services have become essential over time to manage the
bulk of the data by saving the internal IT resources of a company. Let’s dive in and
learn more about the needs and benefits of data migration, especially when you are
moving to a new software platform.

What is Data Migration?

Data migration is the process of moving data from a source system to a destination
system. It could also be between two applications, one being a legacy and another
being the latest adopted software. In case, the destination system is the cloud, then it is
also known as Cloud migration. Ideally, the data migration process is initiated after a
new system is implemented. The motive for migration is because the data has to be
fed into a new application while ensuring the data quality is top-notch without
affecting the production. Datasets used by the new application will still require the old
data to perform regular or augmented functions.
Understanding the benefits
The process your company undergoes will prove to be beneficiary once your
stakeholders begin realizing explicit and implicit advantages. Typically, the primary
and explicit benefit of Data Migration is optimizing the costs spent on on-premise
data storage and moving it to cloud-based storage.
Organizations and their operations centers across the world can access the datasets
whenever required with the available infrastructure. However, there are additional
benefits that may not be explicit like significant performance in data extraction for
executing operations and lower pressure on network infrastructure. The operations
could be scaled up without incurring excessive costs on infrastructure and the
flexibility to mold the data for various applications offers a unique benefit.
In the long run, Data Migration – if performed impeccably – will deliver exceptional
results to an enterprise. The lowered data storage and management costs will allow the
stakeholders to transform the costs into investments for offering innovative products
or services.
To summarize the benefits of moving the data from a
legacy to a new platform are:
 Scalability
 Speed
 Cost optimization
 Security
 Risk mitigation
Data migration to the cloud (aka cloud migration) is a complicated process and does
include addressing various challenges. We will talk about them in more detail in part
2 of our blog series: data migration guide.

No Dearth of Challenges
Data Migration to the cloud (aka Cloud migration) is a complicated and risky process
to be executed. Therefore, there are chances of things going wrong, which could
impact the organization’s business profoundly; stop the operations and bring the
company to a complete halt.
So, it is quintessential that we understand the crucial challenges in data migration that
could cripple the business when the process goes the unexpected way. The challenges
range from increased spending on the IT infrastructure to risking a disaster that could
wrap up the business in no time.
Below we have mentioned probable data migration
challenges one could face:
1. Improper communication with stakeholders
Several enterprises leave out the various stakeholders from the Data
Migration process. Every stakeholder is impacted either directly or
indirectly. It is crucial that we identify each stakeholder and communicate
with them about Data Migration and provide ample time to prepare for any
adverse effects during production.
2. Failed communication with business
When you plan Data Migration, you need to discuss at length with the
business and keep them updated about the progress. It is fundamental that
you keep your client informed and update the daily status report until the
business operations are back to normal. Do not take the client’s consent for
granted, even if the entire process is executed during the non-business
hours.
3. Lack of expected data quality
During Data Migration, you may lose out on expected data quality, and
some of the data attributes could be at risk while moving it from one source
to another. Therefore, it is essential that you validate your data quality after
you perform the migration process.
 4. Ineffective data governance
Ensure that the data operations rights and permissions are assigned to the
appropriate individuals. Authority to perform data operations like create,
approve, edit, delete and more, must be assigned to appropriate
designations, and you must document all of it in a document as a part of the
assessment plan.
5. Lack of experienced resources
Data Migration is a job that involves high risk; thus, having an experienced
professional who has undertaken similar projects earlier, preferably in your
company, is desired.
6. The risk of data loss
During the migration, the loss of data is a real possibility. Although it can
be avoided, you could still lose crucial data during the entire process,
which could hurt your daily operations and cost losses amounting to
millions of dollars. Minor damage can still be recovered from the backup
and not affect the real-time services.But a significant data loss is a
catastrophe and causes disruption in the service for a short term until the
data is restored from the backup. The service stoppage during such time
can cause your company to lose out millions of dollars.
7. Unexpected compatibility issues may crop up
When millions of records are transferred from source to destination, the
receiver’s operating system or change in the application may not accept the
default file formats in which the data is stored presently. So, the data needs
to be converted to the compatible file formats so that the destination
application can process the data smoothly. Technically the data is not lost,
but the accessibility indeed becomes difficult.
All these points mentioned above cover few of the many possible problems a data
migration process can face. That’s why it is important to associate with data migration
service providers like Datametica to ensure seamless and accclerated data migration.

In order to keep your business up and running with advanced technology, you must
implement data migration at certain time intervals. To avoid unexpected losses, you
have to know certain essential details before commencing your data migration
journey.
1. Data Complexity Evaluation
The first step that needs to be executed is to analyze and understand the complexity of
the data. The complexity evaluation includes identifying the structure of the
databases, the way data is classified and stored. This gives direction for creating the
data storing architecture at the target or destination data store.

2. Prioritizing Information
Every day organizations are overloaded with information or data but only a little data
is important and needs to be processed, maintained, and transferred. It is essential to
determine the important information and the way to segregate it. Applying the
standard methodology to filter the data will save time and cost of the data translation.
Thus, simplifies the cloud migration process.

3. Standardizing and Setting Business

Rules
Standardizing the business rules, gives direction on the data usages, setting the data
migration and translation strategy. It ensures data compatibility and compliances with
advanced technologies.
4. Conserving Data Quality
Data quality assessment is one of the methods to maintain the data quality and remove
duplicate as well as irrelevant data. It reduces the unnecessary data from the data
warehouse. So you are only left with the currently required data and the data which is
useful in the future. This reduces the unnecessary burden of data migration for further
usages and development. To carry out the entire activities, you have to appoint a
dedicated person who will  take care of the execution of the data maintenance process.

5. Arranging Migration Requirements

Once you have done all the above activities and your source data warehouse is ready
for cloud migration, then you have to figure out how the cloud migration will be
carried out, what will be the target data warehouse architecture, who will be
responsible for the whole process of data migration and finally how to execute the
data migration.
All the above-mentioned practices need to be followed by an organization. However,
it is always recommended to find a vendor who can boost and maintain the data
migration process for you without compromising on the quality of the migration and
data security.

Data Migration is a multifaceted process of transferring data from one system to

another. The changes in database applications and storage modes over many years in
the legacy system makes this process troublesome and difficult to control. That is why
it is very important to have a well developed data migration strategy to ensure
successful delivery of the projects. So now let us discuss some of the major challenges
or hurdles that one may face in Data migration planning. 
Challenges in developing Data Migration planning:
Data Migration Planning becomes so complex due to the following main reasons: 
 Complex workflow, job flow, and data flow. 
 Data Redundancy
 The processing happens at many places (ETL, SP, View, Scripts, etc)
 Limited documentation about the current systems 
 Overview of the complete lineage. 
 Incomplete inventory of artifacts and their respective ETLs.

Data redundancy becomes one of the most important hurdle’s in database migration,
as sometimes the data to be migrated has been collected over many years with no
proper quality checks.
Absence or lack of proper documentation of the data can make data migration
planning difficult for the data handlers. Lack of documentation also leads to unknown
job dependencies and table associations which can make data migration a messy
affair. Incomplete ETL workflow & data lineage is another very important part to
consider while data migration planning.