Migrating to the cloud may seem like a straightforward proposition, but in truth, data migration is a fairly complicated and complex process. In order to ensure that your data migration project is successful, it is important to identify any potential challenges and risks well in advance.

As CIO, you need to know if this is a project that can be completed; will it increase costs; and will you lose functional mechanisms that provide stability and disaster recovery within your applications? By going to cloud you will be embracing new application paradigms, so it’s important to conduct a thorough assessment so that you fully understand the risks. Armed with this information, you will be empowered to make well-reasoned decisions.

Is Your Database Ready for Cloud?

The data applications that are ideal candidates for cloud are those that require scalable transient workloads. Such applications include information, social and mobile. Scalable applications might include web server and application servers, backed by a scalable cloud-ready database platform. This combination provides a platform that can scale horizontally. Oracle RAC and MongoDB are two examples of databases that do well in cloud.

Functions that present greater difficulty moving to cloud are those requiring very large data sets where the prime bottleneck is the network. It’s important to consider how much data you have, whether it’s static or dynamic, and whether you require direct attach or network storage.

Is There Source Protection?

Migrating to the cloud shouldn’t be a make or break proposition. Be sure to take into account whether the migration can be terminated if something goes wrong. Can application processing be restarted or continued on the source data/device? If you can't be guaranteed that there is a graceful means for suspending the process should things go sideways, perhaps the risks are too great.

Keep it Legal

Many organizations fall under at least a few compliance mandates when it comes to customer, patient, partner or employee data. Is your organization one of them? It's best to determine what requirements each data type has and it's suitability for migration to the cloud. Maintaining compliance is an important consideration.

What are the Export Capabilities of your Systems?

Understanding the export capabilities of your source system is key to the success of any migration. You need to assess factors such as: export schema, data volumes and export performance. The next consideration should be determining if your new cloud-based system can handle the data input, assessing the import and export capabilities of the destination environment. Once you are comfortable with the import and export capabilities, it’s important to evaluate the compatibility of the destination system. Does the export contain all required information? Can the required information be accommodated within the destination?

Start with Some Spring Cleaning

As database size increases, so too do your costs. This presents a good opportunity to do a little spring cleaning. Reducing database size by eliminating garbage data before migrating it is a good way to streamline your data and achieve greater efficiency.

 Following an assessment of the portability of your database, you will be in a better position to develop an effective roadmap to migration. A successful cloud migration requires due diligence at the outset, which will pay off handsomely down the road.