5 Things to Consider While Migrating your Data Between Cloud Storage Accounts

Cloud storage was a buzzword a few years ago, but now, it has become an integral part of our personal and professional lives. Gone are the days when we used to rely on multiple physical hardware to store and back up our data. Public cloud storage service providers such as Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, and Box have given us the ability to access our data from any device and from anywhere in the world without worrying about data loss.

The cloud computing industry is growing at a rapid pace. Forrester estimated that the public cloud industry would continue to grow with a CAGR more than 20% in the coming few years. The ever-increasing demand for cloud services has prompted cloud storage giants like Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, Box, etc. to invest heavily and capture the maximum market share. Unlike yesteryears, the cloud computing and storage choices for personal and business users are diverse.

The intense competition between the leading cloud service providers has benefitted users in the form of incentives, attractive pricing, and innovative features. Hundreds and thousands of businesses around the world, irrespective of their size, are migrating from one cloud to another to make most out of these benefits.

In addition to perks offered by cloud storage providers, factors such as cost, security & compliance, high availability, reliability, scalability, and application support are fueling cloud to cloud migrations.

Migrating data from one cloud to another may seem like a daunting task, especially when there is a massive amount of data to transfer, but a proper strategy helps make the transition as seamless as possible.

Here are five important things to keep in mind while migrating data between cloud storage accounts.

Decide Between Doing It Yourself and Partnering with a Cloud File Migration Service

If you are an individual and have a little data, then your best bet would be the manual migration. In this method, you download everything from your old cloud account to your computer’s hard disk and upload it the new cloud storage account.

However, if you have gigs of data stored in your cloud account, you must consider using a cloud file migration service that does everything for you while you sit back and relax.

Business users and enterprises should always work with a cloud storage migration enabler to ensure all files, users, folder structure, and permissions are migrated flawlessly to the new cloud.

Pay attention to the size of the data

How large is your data? Analyze the size of the data you need to transfer and that helps you make better decisions related to migration. If you have terabytes of data to migrate, you probably need to work with a cloud file transfer service that specializes in handling mission-critical migrations.

Files vs. Users

In the public cloud file migration industry, the cost of migration is estimated based on the number of users and the size of the data to be transferred. The pricing can sometimes be confusing for some people. Here is how it works.

Let’s say you have a Dropbox for Business account and have 50 users in it and have a combined data of 60 GB. Both the number of users and the size of the data will be taken into account to estimate the data migration cost. If you need to move files from a single-user cloud such as Amazon Cloud, only the size of the data will be calculated.

Multi-user cloud migrations are a bit expensive because the file permissions and user hierarchy need to be retained during migration, which is not as straightforward as migrating a single-user cloud.

Security

To facilitate file transfers between cloud accounts, a cloud file transfer service needs access to both your source and destination clouds. If you are an enterprise and if security is a top priority for you, you should be extremely careful in choosing a migration partner. Go with a service provider that talk about the depth of their platform’s security. Always inquire about the security measures put in place to prevent possible data breaches.

Have a Data Loss Prevention Strategy

In the twenty-first century, our data is one of our most valuable assets. Likewise, when formulating a cloud migration plan, you or your migration partner must have a data loss prevention (DLP) strategy to ensure that you don’t end up losing critical data.

Finally, pay attention to the customer service of a cloud file transfer company to make sure their support is good. For enterprise migrations, we recommend that you choose service providers that have dedicated migration specialists in place and offer fully assisted migrations.

you need a cloud storage migration service which guarantees first-rate security of your data throughout the process. Be a smart shopper, so to speak, and make sure your potential cloud migration service has live chat support as well as email support before engaging them.