COVID-19 was a significant driving force for organisational change. Businesses had to quickly transition to remote working almost overnight, and digital transformation became crucial for companies to survive. Because of this, the pandemic notably accelerated a swift move to the cloud, with cloud-first organisations now . A whopping 81% of organisations said they had accelerated their cloud timelines and plans due to the pandemic. But despite this, few databases are hosted/managed in the cloud. This is according to the latest version of The SolarWinds Query Report 2021: Database Priorities and Pitfalls.

As organisations continue to shift to the cloud as a priority, the need for database migration will increase in parallel. In short, if you haven’t yet migrated your database, you soon will. However, before taking the first steps towards this lengthy and complex migration process, IT professionals must focus on analysing and planning the proper migrations and ensure the solution and process they select aren’t only compatible but the right choice for their business.

Here are some ways to ensure your database migration is as seamless as possible.

Prepare and Plan

Unfortunately, cloud database migration journeys can’t be completed overnight. The complexity of such a process means planning is crucial to make the switch as smooth as possible. According to our same research, just under a third (31%) of respondents stated complexity has increased due to COVID-19 and the transition to remote work over the last few years. The key drivers of added complexity included more data demands from users, a higher volume of data, and an increase in security and compliance issues, for example, GDPR.

You don’t want to waste time and money migrating data and applications that don’t need to be moved. Start a basic data and code cleanse to identify what needs to be migrated. This will reduce any complexity and reduce the overall cloud cost after the completed migration.

It’s equally important to collaborate with all necessary teams to agree on a list of the business goals you are looking to achieve. This will enable you to put ground rules in place and start a discussion around what technology is best suited to your migration.

You should also identify the skills required for different stages in the migration to help identify the right people for the tasks. Without a strong team with the necessary skills, your migration is likely to fail. But while each step in the migration process is important, you must remind yourself and the team not everything can be priority number one. If being able to prioritise tasks becomes a challenge, running a quick cost-benefit-risk analysis will more than likely help to point you in the right direction.

Migrating Your Data

Once you have your plan and team in place, the next step is to drill down deeper and map out the whole cloud journey. Having a view of the entire process will help you determine which capabilities and activities are required to execute effectively. Thorough testing and data collection will help ensure the migration is a success.

It’s also vital to complete an in-depth assessment of your data estate to evaluate the dependencies or complex coding features that exist as part of the overall mapping process. Anything linked to a database may also be migrated to the cloud, so taking the initial precautions will help prevent future issues.

After this is complete, database professionals need to ensure they have insight into what the business will pay for in the cloud. This understanding will help them focus on maximising output and compute requirements to account for those costs and test for data fidelity to validate data integrity following the migration. This is a critical step in the process but is often ignored.

Summary

Migrating your entire database to the cloud doesn’t have to be such a daunting and complex task. Through careful planning and evaluation, you’ll be able to ensure you have a successful migration strategy in place. While you may be putting these conversations off now, you’ll likely have to start talking about the journey ahead soon, so it’s key to prepare now to avoid any issues later on.