Challenges | Data Migration Guide (Part-II)

No Dearth of Challenges

Data Migration to the cloud (aka Cloud migration) is a complicated and risky process to be executed. Therefore, there are chances of things going wrong, which could impact the organization’s business profoundly; stop the operations and bring the company to a complete halt.

So, it is quintessential that we understand the crucial challenges in data migration that could cripple the business when the process goes the unexpected way. The challenges range from increased spending on the IT infrastructure to risking a disaster that could wrap up the business in no time.

Below we have mentioned probable data migration challenges one could face:

1. Improper communication with stakeholders
   Several enterprises leave out the various stakeholders from the Data Migration process. Every stakeholder is impacted either directly or indirectly. It is crucial that we identify each stakeholder and communicate with them about Data Migration and provide ample time to prepare for any adverse effects during production.
2. Failed communication with business
   When you plan Data Migration, you need to discuss at length with the business and keep them updated about the progress. It is fundamental that you keep your client informed and update the daily status report until the business operations are back to normal. Do not take the client’s consent for granted, even if the entire process is executed during the non-business hours.
3. Lack of expected data quality
   During Data Migration, you may lose out on expected data quality, and some of the data attributes could be at risk while moving it from one source to another. Therefore, it is essential that you validate your data quality after you perform the migration process.
4. Ineffective data governance
   Ensure that the data operations rights and permissions are assigned to the appropriate individuals. Authority to perform data operations like create, approve, edit, delete and more, must be assigned to appropriate designations, and you must document all of it in a document as a part of the assessment plan.
5. Lack of experienced resources
   Data Migration is a job that involves high risk; thus, having an experienced professional who has undertaken similar projects earlier, preferably in your company, is desired.
6. The risk of data loss
   During the migration, the loss of data is a real possibility. Although it can be avoided, you could still lose crucial data during the entire process, which could hurt your daily operations and cost losses amounting to millions of dollars. Minor damage can still be recovered from the backup and not affect the real-time services.But a significant data loss is a catastrophe and causes disruption in the service for a short term until the data is restored from the backup. The service stoppage during such time can cause your company to lose out millions of dollars.
7. Unexpected compatibility issues may crop up
   When millions of records are transferred from source to destination, the receiver’s operating system or change in the application may not accept the default file formats in which the data is stored presently. So, the data needs to be converted to the compatible file formats so that the destination application can process the data smoothly. Technically the data is not lost, but the accessibility indeed becomes difficult.

All these points mentioned above cover few of the many possible problems a data migration process can face. That’s why it is important to associate with data migration service providers like Datametica to ensure seamless and accclerated data migration.