The what, how, and why of data migration

Data migration is often an imperative exercise when enterprises decide to modernize their data platforms. 

Migrating business data to the cloud helps on multiple levels: To begin with, organizations find it possible to move beyond outdated legacy systems, achieve improved operational visibility and greater efficiency. 

However, data migration can be different things to different organizations. Therefore, a data migration strategy is likely to vary from one business to another, based on the volume, complexity, and quality of data assets.

In this blog, we’ll explore the core essentials of a successful data migration process. We’ll delve into the benefits an enterprise can achieve by migrating its data to a better location, the common challenges that often deter organizations from undertaking this journey, and how expert guidance can streamline and accelerate the process for optimal results.

Let’s dive into the fundamentals of data migration and uncover its transformative potential.

What is data migration?

Data migration is the process of transferring data from one location to another to achieve strategic objectives, such as system modernization, improved performance, or enhanced scalability. This could involve moving digital information between environments, storage systems, databases, applications, or even converting it into new formats to meet business needs.

At its core, data refers to the digital information businesses generate or collect for current and future use. It can exist in various formats, such as text, images, videos, and more. This data serves as the foundation for operations, decision-making, and long-term planning.

A well-executed data migration ensures that the information being moved is accurate, secure, and seamlessly integrated into the target system. It is not merely about transferring data but also about ensuring its quality, consistency, and alignment with business objectives.

By successfully migrating data, organizations can streamline processes, enable innovation, and maintain a competitive edge in an ever-evolving digital landscape. Whether driven by the need to adopt cloud-based solutions, improve system performance, or consolidate data across platforms, data migration is an essential step in modernizing business operations.

Life cycle of a data migration process

Why do businesses migrate their data?

Enterprises embark on data migration projects for a variety of reasons, ranging from modernization initiatives to meeting compliance requirements. 

While moving data from on-premises data centers to the cloud or between cloud platforms is a common scenario—often categorized as cloud migration—the drivers for data migration extend beyond this. Strategic, operational, and compliance needs frequently prompt organizations to undertake data migration projects.

Here are some of the key reasons why businesses migrate their data:

1. Ensuring data integrity

Data migration helps businesses maintain accurate and reliable information by consolidating or upgrading their data systems, ensuring consistency and trustworthiness.

2. Reducing costs

By migrating data to optimized environments, businesses can lower expenses related to hosting, hardware, software, and maintenance.

3. Enhancing system performance

Upgrading to more advanced systems or platforms can significantly improve the performance of applications, databases, and overall operations.

4. Strengthening security

Data migration often includes a shift to more secure environments, protecting sensitive information from cyber threats and enhancing compliance with data security standards.

5. Enabling better decision-making 

Consolidating data into a single, unified system creates a "single source of truth," enabling organizations to make faster, more informed decisions.

6. Fostering innovation

By adopting modern systems and tools during migration, businesses can gain access to advanced capabilities, driving innovation and facilitating new opportunities.

Whether driven by the need to modernize infrastructure, consolidate systems during mergers, or adapt to regulatory changes, data migration serves as a strategic enabler for businesses to unlock efficiency, resilience, and growth.

Data migration challenges 

While data migration to the cloud or other strategic environments can unlock immense value, it is not without its hurdles. Organizations often encounter several key challenges during the migration process:

1. Data complexity and volume

Modern organizations generate and manage vast amounts of data in varied formats and structures. Migrating such large and diverse datasets while ensuring alignment with new systems is a complex and resource-intensive task.

2. Security and Compliance Risks

The migration of sensitive information, such as customer or financial data, comes with significant risks. Organizations must secure this data while ensuring adherence to stringent data privacy and regulatory standards.

3. Business Downtime

Interruptions to operations during data migration can lead to substantial financial losses, particularly in industries like manufacturing, where delays can disrupt critical processes and operations.

4. Lack of Technical Expertise

Effective data migration requires a combination of skilled personnel, domain expertise, and advanced tools. A lack of technical resources or insufficient planning can derail projects and increase the risk of failure.

5. Incomplete or Inaccurate Data Backup Strategy

A robust data backup plan is crucial for mitigating risks during migration. Without it, errors in execution can result in data loss, process disruptions, and damage to customer trust, potentially jeopardizing the organization's future.

Addressing these challenges requires strategic planning, advanced tools, and expert guidance to ensure a seamless and secure migration with minimal impact on business operations.

Data migration: How we do it at Kellton?

At Kellton, we are pioneers in data innovation and engineering, supporting clients across industries to overcome diverse challenges. Our expertise goes beyond migration—we assist at every stage of the data journey.

Backed by a global talent pool of data scientists, engineers, and consultants, we leverage best practices, proprietary accelerators, cutting-edge platforms, and tools to help our clients realize the full potential of their data.

Accelerating data migration with purpose-built tools

Our data migration accelerators streamline and automate critical tasks such as data mapping, transformation, and validation. These tools ensure rapid migration with minimal disruption, enabling us to deliver efficiency and precision.

1. Discovery accelerator

Automates and expedites the initial phase of migration by scanning source databases to inventory schemas, tables, relationships, and data types. It also identifies data issues like inconsistencies and duplications.

2. Schema migration utility

Simplifies schema migration by automatically extracting and translating source schemas into formats compatible with target environments, supporting cross-platform migrations such as SQL Server to PostgreSQL or Oracle to Snowflake.​​​​​​​

3. Data migration utility

Accelerates ETL (extraction, transformation, and loading) processes while maintaining data integrity, structure, and security, ensuring seamless transfer with negligible business disruption.

4. Data reconciliation utility

Ensures data consistency across environments through table-level, row-level, and column-level validations. Discrepancies are flagged via detailed reports for swift resolution.

Empowering business success

From discovery to execution, our dedicated teams partner with clients to drive their most critical data migration projects. With investments in leading platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, we deliver strategic solutions tailored to the unique needs of each enterprise.

Kellton remains a trusted ally in helping businesses unlock data-driven transformation and achieve their goals.

Conclusion

Today, when we are producing and collecting data at the speed of business (thanks to GenAI and a slew of other tech innovations), there is an increased need to strategically secure and use business data. 

Data migration is often an imperative exercise to gain access to massive amounts of data that is residing across multiple locations and is largely untapped. However, if the data requirements are not rightly mapped, the migration can lead to severe consequences such as increased business downtime, customer frustrations, and legal consequences. It is, therefore, essential to seek expert help and guidance.

At Kellton, we have been at the forefront of data innovation for years and enable our customers to harness the power of data to drive business forward. Whether you’re looking for expert guidance for your next data migration project or need an extended team of certified data scientists and engineers for short-term or long-term, we can help.