Beyond Cloud Migration
Beyond cloud data migration
Many of the challenges we face across an organisation can be overcome with technology. Consequently, as an organisation grows, so does its reliance on technology, especially when it comes to data and storage management. Today there is a demand for immediate access to high-quality data. This is especially prevalent within the financial services sector, and with the growth and amalgamation of data, other challenges can arise. Not least of all, what to do with this data and where to store it.
One way that financial services organisations can utilise technology to develop and scale their IT infrastructure is through implementing modern, cloud-based strategies for data management. However, with this comes the caveat, improvements are only worth making if they’re done right.
At Mudano, we believe cloud data migration is about more than just ‘putting data into the cloud’. We believe it’s an opportunity for organisations to change where their data is stored whilst also improving how it is stored.
Risk versus reward
There are many benefits to migrating data to the cloud. It can reduce Capex costs, aid disaster recovery (as and when required), as well as grant companies greater control over their technological output. In short, a migration to the cloud can offer your business greater agility and flexibility, which are so important when looking to scale an existing data function.
But contemplating cloud migration can be daunting, and businesses can be put off carrying out such large-scale digital transformation projects when the inherent value is perhaps not immediately visible. Concerns stemming from security, data privacy and compliance leave some organisations paralysed by fear of the unknown. As a result, they fail to act.
The majority of these fears stem from poor planning and a lack of strategy. It’s true to say that the advantages of cloud migration will be reduced if the migration is poorly planned and completed inefficiently but the benefits of moving to the cloud far outweigh the risks. As with any digital transformation project, you simply have to plan your migration carefully and use the best available partners and technological solutions to help optimise the outcome.
At its core, migrating your data to the cloud ensures that your data (and, therefore, your customers’ data) is secured in the most effective platform possible. This makes it easier to store, access, share, assess and realise the value of data as a cross-functional asset.
One of the most prominent barriers to entry is the sheer size and diversity of the available data. This includes the growing volume of unstructured data: emails, system logs, web pages, customer transcripts, documents, slides and informal chats. Paradoxically, data cloud migration can help to solve these issues despite the apparent scale of the migration process initially.
Assess. Plan. Optimise.
Once you’ve decided that cloud migration is the correct path for your organisation, you should assess the different stages that your migration may take. This mobilisation process should assess your current data storage capabilities and seek to learn exactly what you’re looking to gain from a cloud-based solution. It could be to enhance agility and scalability, control costs, promote innovation, manage risk and compliance – or all of the above.
Having established what sort of migration journey you’d like to take, it’s time to work out how you’re going to get there. This should include a step-by-step plan and include the tools, solutions and partners that you’re going to be using along the way. At Mudano, we recommend a value-led approach – identify use cases that will provide the biggest value, define measurable value goals that you can use to assess the success of the migration and define data security requirements. This provides a blueprint for the full migration promoting cloud adoption and engagement along the migration pathway.
Once the first wave of data migration is complete, you should optimise elements of your cloud-data-migration approach. This should involve defining the migration patterns for the complete migration based on initial use-cases and putting foundational insights and analytics infrastructure in place to get value out of the data in the cloud.
Optimise to accumulate
As mentioned, cloud migration should be about more than just ‘putting data into the cloud’. It’s crucial to analyse, optimise and manage how your data is stored, and this is an ongoing process that should continue to take place long after the initial migration is complete.
Every part of a migration is vital, but the element with the greatest reward is optimising how your data is arranged and stored once it has been moved to the cloud. Poorly managed data pollutes, diminishes and skews any future insights that are to be drawn from that data – not to mention the cost overhead it will generate. It’s vital that data quality issues are identified and rectified during the migration process.
To extend the metaphor, when moving house, if you correctly arrange the furniture in your new home at the beginning, you’ll enjoy long term benefits. We believe the same can be said of data storage. With an efficient migration complimented by optimisation of the new storage environment, you can build the foundations of a data strategy where data is trusted, democratised and available for immediate access.
We have also found that by taking on a diverse range of expertise on board to handle your data migration, the subsequent strategic implementation of your data is more efficient. This allows you to gain the most value from your cloud migration and begin to map and use data within your organisation better.
Our partnership with Google Cloud
Our commitment and focus on data has led us to be appointed one of the Google Cloud partners. Our partnership seeks to solve complicated transformation projects by providing efficient migration and quality data lineage, resulting in simple, efficient and low-cost data migration that has long term positive outcomes for our clients.
Our partnership with Google allows our clients to overcome any fears they may have and get on the road to cloud migration. And once they’re on their way, we’re there every step of the way, optimising the process and making sure that businesses can get the most out of their data.