A Correct Mindset for a Successful Enterprise Data Migration

 

Understanding the correct mindset needed for a successful on-premises to a cloud-based solution migration

Let's face it: data migration is happening everywhere, partially because of firms having to accommodate employees who were forced to work from home due to the pandemic, but it's happening at a breakneck pace. However, many companies face similar challenges 

and cite the same tech initiative priorities to achieve their aim of greater business agility and efficiency owing to their haste in migrating enterprise data from on-premises to managed cloud solutions.

In truth, despite the best intentions, having a handle on growing volumes of data from various sources remains a fresh and confusing concept for many businesses, and missed opportunities are nevertheless widespread. One of the biggest concerns is that many executives believe that the success of cloud migration is only based on technology resulting in a rise in cloud infrastructure spending.

However, although technology is critical, an organization's IT executives and their attitude when dealing with today's complex data environment is equally important. You must first change your mindset about how things are generally done to revolutionize your organization. This is true in almost every aspect of business, and it is especially true when it comes to how we utilize data analytics to drive organizational change.

Process-oriented vs data-oriented

Many corporate leaders are stuck in a process-driven paradigm; therefore, there is much misunderstanding about managing analytics in today's corporations. The most widespread misperception is that just shifting data to cloud solutions would immediately solve integration and analytics problems. Agreed that moving storage and processing to the cloud is a must for attaining scalability, but it does not provide insights on its own. And a process-centric strategy enterprise data migration will only result in a large amount of data being collected but not integrated.

Therefore, we need to go over the "just throw it in the cloud" mindset. By taking a more strategic, data-centric approach to the cloud business analytics process, IT leaders will be able to develop more actionable insights that can be applied to the organization to improve customer experiences, save costs, manage resources, and better information management and analytics. Things will begin to shift if we start to view data as a distinct, helpful entity rather than something that is just spat out by a computer.

The End-All and Be-All of Technology

Let's be clear: the right data tools are essential for a successful data transfer plan, and IT administrators must do their research to find the ideal alternative. With hundreds of cloud data management solution providers to choose from, it's critical to consider all available capabilities. However, the core issue is that some people feel that having the most up-to-date technologies will secure their success and significantly impact the firm.

In reality, today's enterprises may be caught off guard by focusing solely on obtaining the most up-to-date feature sets rather than focusing on their requirements, such as being overly process-focused rather than data-focused. Even the most advanced product on the market won't guarantee success unless the firm uses the data it creates to make informed decisions using apt information management solutions.

A Singular View on Data's Implications

Decentralization can negatively influence data quality when various departments make different assumptions or employ different standards. Despite this, many IT executives unintentionally follow this method, and too often, teams go to the cloud archiving solution as a fast answer without thinking about how their data interacts with data from other departments.

Rather than viewing cloud migration as a solution for a single data team, IT executives should consider it as a means of accomplishing the enterprise-wide digital transformation. Businesses will not only avoid a huge gap during the transition if they consider this, but they may also uncover some unexpected value that these unstructured analytics may provide to other sections of the company.

The plain fact is that businesses that fail to reap substantial business benefits from enterprise data migration frequently have fundamental data misconceptions. While there are more technical factors to consider during this process, having the proper data perspective is critical and should come first before adopting any specific plan. Taking a more holistic approach to any migration can help firms succeed and avoid some common issues that IT professionals face when migrating to the cloud.