International. A study by the consulting firm Gartner identified that more than 70% of companies have already migrated at least some workloads to the public cloud, which allows workers who work from the office and from their homes to connect with each other and with the fundamental data for their daily operations.
In addition, the cloud offers different platforms designed to manage, store and organize complex data sets with backup capacity to ensure that they can be restored if needed. In addition, it provides the ability to scale storage based on what is needed.
"In fact, moving data to the cloud gives many SMBs the ability to have a backup. And it also makes data available to different customers, suppliers, employees and other organizations around the world. For larger companies, on the other hand, this is a way to securely store large amounts of data on a platform that allows the integration of the same to be carried out without problems, "says Andrés Alexander, SVP Regional Cluster of Services and Cloud of BGH Tech Partner, a company specialized in this type of services.
Risks and challenges
Migrating data from the datacenter itself to the cloud (which are ultimately external facilities) is an initiative that presents several challenges. It should be noted that in the data migration data will be transferred between storage systems, computer systems and/or data formats. Therefore, to face it with a certain fluidity it will be necessary to have visibility of the data. This is quite an issue for many companies that do not know where their data is, or what is the data they should move.
"With the right strategy, which has to be aligned with business objectives and a modern data catalog, it is possible to migrate to the cloud in relatively short times and with reasonable costs, particularly when compared to the cost of maintaining the IT infrastructure on-premises," BGH Tech Partner said.
At the strategic level, there are different ways to perform the migration, type "big bang" (unique process during which live systems experience downtime. Data is extracted, transformed, loaded and moved to the new database) and drip, designed in phases, is slower but avoids operational interruptions.
In any case, the migration plan must also incorporate security policies and solutions for the new environment, which adequately respond to compliance requirements. That is, the organization's management policies must be in line with the measures taken by the cloud service provider to ensure complete data security.
Success factors
In migrations, having a modern data catalog brings two important things: clarity about which data should be prioritized when migrating (since metadata tags the most used and useful data); and also provides visibility into subsequent processes and movements (through lineage), reducing the risk of losing vital business information.
Regarding the costs of migrating data to the cloud, the volumes to be migrated, the training of staff in the new technology and the transfer of data to or from the cloud will have to be considered. All these factors should be discussed with the supplier, to avoid surprises. "It is vital that you can trust this provider, as you will ultimately be entrusted with critical business data," concludes Alexander of BGH Tech Partner.
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