infoTECH Feature

November 21, 2014

Companies Have Good Reasons to Fear Data Migration

I visited my dentist this morning for my regular cleaning and there was an air of excitement and nervousness throughout the office. While the practice is relatively small, both my dentist and hygienist were worried about an upcoming data migration that is happening this weekend as the office moves to updated IT equipment.

It would be easy to say that their worries are unfounded, but research confirms that they have every reason to be nervous. According to a recent study from Bloor Research, as referenced by LinkTek Corporation, the failure rate for data migration projects is 38.1 percent, which is not a very encouraging statistic.

Data migration is often complex and tedious, and yet it is a necessity for a number of reasons. In the case of my dental practice, they simply need to update to newer and better systems with more advanced digital capabilities. But other organizations need to migrate due to cost, or perhaps to consolidate redundant systems, or because of mergers and acquisitions. Or maybe a company is making the transition to the cloud for some or all of its applications and processes.

Whatever the reason for data migration, IT managers should hone in on one very important detail, and that is the integrity of the actual data they are migrating. Data, while it may work fine in its current environment, can often contain inaccuracies that do not show up in the source system. But once that data is moved to its new location, all kinds of issues may arise in the target system. Having a deep understanding of both the source and target systems and how data will live in each environment before the migration is made can go a long way toward preventing problems or in the worst case, migration failure.

Proper data migration planning is also critical for preventing these types of problems while also ensuring that data is intact and uncompromised before, during and after the migration. Another issue that can throw a wrench into data migration is missing or improper file links for organizational data in Microsoft (News - Alert) Office applications as well as apps like Acrobat and InDesign. Missing or broken links can create serious problems leading to cost overruns, failure to meet deadlines and a whole lot of time wasted.

"The best way to avoid this problem is to pre-test the data," said Rick Crites, executive vice president of LinkTek. "Unfortunately, many of the link-reporting applications currently available are very limited as to the file types they support."

"Data migration is a fact of life for IT managers,” added Crites. “To perform this task to the expectations of their management and customers requires an arsenal of modern, specialized, automated tools.”




Edited by Maurice Nagle
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