Get These 5 Ms of Cloud Data Migrations Right

Planning a cloud data migration at a large-scale is not a small feat. Businesses must plan strategically to achieve their end-goals through the migration project while maintaining a high level of security. While the idiosyncrasies of migration strategies often differ from one company to another (depending on the use case), it is critical to get the core aspects right.

We have simplified the migration planning processes by stripping them down bare bones to the 5 Ms. Check them out below:

1. Migration Tool

The first M of cloud data migration of any size that your IT team should focus on is the migration tool itself. The migration tool you plan to use can make or break your organization’s entire migration project. When exploring tool options in the market, prioritize ones that are specific to your organization’s migration needs.

Also, it is best to partner with a cloud data migration solutions provider that has expertise in the migration path (cloud combination) your organizations want to migrate through. Also, make sure that the migration tool can preserve all the important file and folders features while ensuring optimum security.

At CloudFuze, we help organizations of all sizes and industries perform smooth and secure migrations that help them achieve their business goals, such as cost-savings in the target cloud, consolidation in the target cloud suite, etc.

2. Mirroring

The second M of cloud data migration to prioritize is mirroring (or replicating) the source cloud’s structure in the target cloud, especially when the migration use case is cloud consolidation. The more comprehensively your organization plans to replicate the source cloud structure, the lower the risk of end-user impact. And with little to no user impact, your organization can ensure smooth operations continuity post-migration.

Consider preserving some of the essential file and folder features to mirror the source cloud’s structure in the target cloud:

• Root and inner folder permissions
• Root and inner file permissions
• External sharing permissions
• File versions (all or selective)
• Timestamps
• Shared links
• Embedded links
• In-line comments

Accurate conversion of user roles and preservation of folder structure further helps ensure accurate replication of the collaboration structure maintained in the source cloud.

3. Mapping

The way you map your organization’s users from the source to the destination cloud plays an integral role in determining the accuracy and overall outcome of the migration project. Therefore, it is highly important to get the mapping part (the third M of cloud data migration) right.

While the straightforward approach is to map each source cloud user accounts to their respective new accounts in the destination cloud, it may not be the same for your organization. You may need to swap the mapping between specific user accounts for particular requirements. For example, your IT team may need to map multiple accounts of ex-employees to a single account of a management or HR team member in the target cloud.

Understand the overall requirements through a series of discussions with your internal teams and make the user mapping decisions accordingly.

Check out our “User Mapping Options” white paper to explore the various mapping options we provide businesses with.

4. Management

The fourth M of cloud data migration to not miss out on is management. We stress a lot about proper migration management in our MOVE Methodology. At the core, proper migration management is a set of processes that your IT team and organization needs to plan and set up to eliminate the risk of downtime and other performance issues.

Since your organization can encounter several roadblocks, such as API throttling, limitations of the target cloud, and more, during the migration, it is crucial to be able to navigate the unforeseen landscape.

And this is where white glove services, such as our managed migration, come into picture. Our managed migration team handholds businesses through the entire migration project by providing them with end-to-end support right from the pre-migration analysis to the post-migration phase.

5. Monitoring

With monitoring (the fifth M of cloud data migration), your IT team will not have full clarity on the way the migration is progressing, be it for any user batch. After starting the migration process, your IT team must consistently monitor the migration, and we make this process hassle free with the intuitive Reports dashboard of our tool that displays real-time progress of each migration batch.

Also, make sure to properly validate each migration batch by checking the tool-generated migration reports. Check the key parameters, such as the number of users and file/folders migrated, the total size of the data migrated, the time taken for the migration batch to get completed, status of any file or folder going into conflict, and many more.

Avoid Going Wrong in Any Area of the Migration Project

Our migration team can help you strategize your organization’s mgration project right from the pre-migration assessment to the migration initiation and cut over stage. This way, your IT team can navigate through all the complexities and avoid going wrong in any area. Get on a free and no-obligation discussion with our team to explore further.