How a Hybrid Integration Platform Can Accelerate Data Migration

Companies around the world are migrating their IT and business applications from on-premises data centers to cloud environments. The benefits of hosting apps in the cloud are clear and well understood; however, the process of data migration is much more challenging than one would think. Migrating data between different applications that are either located on-premises or in the cloud or in hybrid environments is often where IT teams encounter problems. Leveraging a hybrid data-integration platform, such as Actian DataConnect, can help companies both accelerate the cloud data migration process and lower the risk of migration issues.

What is Data Migration?

Data migration is the process of moving data from one system to another. While this might seem straightforward, it involves a change in storage and database or application. In the context of the extract/transform/load (ETL) process, any data migration will involve at least the transform and load steps. This means that extracted data must be subject to a series of functions in preparation, after which it can be loaded into a target location.

Why Companies Are Migrating Data to the Cloud

Increasingly, organizations are migrating some or all of their data to the cloud to increase their speed to market, improve scalability and reduce the need for technical resources. Organizations initiate data migrations for several reasons. They might need to overhaul an entire system, upgrade databases, establish a new data warehouse, or merge new data from an acquisition or other source. Data migration is also necessary when deploying another system that resides next to existing applications.

Below are just a few of how moving to the cloud can be a winning decision for your organization.

1. Cost-Effective – IT Infrastructure Costs from Capital Outlays to Operating Expenses – As the infrastructure in on-premises data centers ages and reaches end-of-life, many companies are taking the opportunity to migrate applications to cloud environments instead of replacing physical hardware. IaaS and PaaS environments are available in both public and private cloud configurations and enable companies to add capacity without the capital outlay and provisioning time required to acquire physical servers.
2. Scalable – Leverage the Scalability and Manageability of Cloud Environments – Many companies are moving applications to the cloud to enable greater control over capacity utilization. Cloud services can be scaled up and down quickly to respond to the seasonality of business demands. Underutilized IT capacity is costly to maintain and with cloud services, unneeded resources can easily be reclaimed and provisioned elsewhere.
3. Improve Efficiency and Performance With Modern Environments – Technology evolves quickly and infrastructure is no exception. Investment in on-premises hardware locks a company into whatever features and performance were available at the time the infrastructure was acquired. Leveraging cloud services, companies can shift workloads to modern, more efficient environments as soon as they become available – leading to better performing applications and lower processing costs.
4. Enable Business Resiliency and High Availability – Cloud services are architected for resiliency and provide continuity of service in the event of a failure or outage. Major incident management and disaster recovery for cloud-based applications is much easier, because remote operators can quickly and easily re-deploy applications to a new location from an administrative console.
5. Gain Peace of Mind With Secure Platform – If you are concerned after seeing other companies experience damaging data breaches, and you want to increase security for your on-premises data warehouse. Today, all cloud-service providers, such as AWS, or cloud-integration providers/iPaaS providers, must adhere to the highest security standards in the industry, set by health, financial and government institutions. All cloud-platform providers must obtain certifications, such as SOC2, ISO27001, HIPAA, GDPR and PCI. Further, authentication, authorization, logging, and auditing are also built into all cloud platforms.

How to Select a Data Migration Software

Building data migration tools from scratch and coding them by hand is challenging and incredibly time-consuming. Data tools that simplify migration are more efficient and cost-effective. When you start your search for a software solution, look for these factors in a vendor:

• Connectivity – Does the solution support the systems and software you currently use?
• Scalability – What are the data limits for the software, and will data needs exceed them in the foreseeable future?
• Security – Take time to investigate a software platform’s security measures. Your data is one of your most valuable resources, and it must remain protected.
• Speed – How quickly can processing occur on the platform?

Actian DataConnect is a hybrid data-integration platform that can make the process of data migration much easier and lower the risk of business-disrupting connectivity issues. With DataConnect, instead of managing numerous point-to-point interactions between applications, connections to source systems are managed through the data-connect platform. Implementing a hybrid integration platform, such as Actian DataConnect, can help you accelerate migration timelines, improve effectiveness and improve the likelihood of a clean and successful data migration project. To learn more, visit www.actian.com/dataconnect.

About Actian Corporation

Actian makes data easy. We deliver cloud, hybrid, and on-premises data solutions that simplify how people connect, manage, and analyze data. We transform business by enabling customers to make confident, data-driven decisions that accelerate their organization’s growth. Our data platform integrates seamlessly, performs reliably, and delivers at industry-leading speeds.