Data migration services explained: Choosing the right solution for your business

CloudM’s data migration tool is designed to be user-friendly and to give customers the best experience if they decide to tackle migrations on their own. However, there are many circumstances in which your migration needs a higher level of expert support, and that’s where our white-glove data migration services come in. Craig Fegan, CloudM’s Professional Services Manager, answers some common questions about serviced migrations.

What types of organizations usually opt for CloudM’s migration services?

Serviced migrations are ideal for any scale of business. At one end, there are small businesses that don’t have IT teams, confidence or technical expertise. These businesses are mindful of their budget, but while managing their own migration may save money, it risks complications which could prove costly in the long run.

At the other end of the scale are larger companies which may well have in-house teams. However, if they’re migrating a lot of data and a lot of users, that opens up more risk because there are so many moving parts and technical nuances that could impact end user experience, from their chosen cloud platform to an unavoidable API, which could impact end user experience. They understand they need our expert help with this.

Are there specific circumstances when it’s advisable to opt for serviced migration?

While Migrate is a user-friendly tool and we offer detailed guides in our knowledge base, data migrations are typically more complex than copying a file from A to B, especially when it comes to details such as sharing permissions, version control, platform behaviours and more.There are lots of factors to consider before starting a migration, including whether to go for a delta-first or traditional approach, and how to handle large users. Unless you have significant experience in carrying out migrations or you are very confident of your technical ability to manage a third-party tool, choosing our data migration services is always a good call. A serviced migration is also ideal in the case of more complex migration scenarios, for example if you’re migrating from legacy platforms or even a Google-to-Google domain switch.

Can self-managed migrations go wrong?

It’s not uncommon to encounter errors and failures within a migration, but these can generally be worked out. However, in large or complex migrations, or when you don’t have the right skillset, there are risks. In the worst case scenario , a badly handled data migration can be catastrophic. In 2022, British Lender TSB was fined nearly £49 million for a problematic migration in 2018 which locked millions of customers out of their account. This is an extreme scenario, but there are always hidden pitfalls to look out for that could derail your migration.

What are some of the pitfalls of trying to take on data migration alone or in-house?

One of the biggest pitfalls is lack of knowledge about bespoke features within CloudM’s migration tool which are either turned on or off by default – to give the best possible outcomes in the broadest range of situations –  but might in some cases be beneficial to be changed. A prime example of this is the migration of comments on documents. Comments will always be migrated  in a Microsoft migration, and while they can be on or off in Google migrations, it does require extra care – which is why this function is not generally enabled by default.

If you want to migrate comments, it’s important to have expert advice, as even in Google-to-Google migrations the behaviour of the migration and the APIs, combined with the Google workspace environment means that if you don’t understand how comments migrate, it could potentially have detrimental repercussions. This is generally due to Google’s API limitation. However, with CloudM Migrate, there are ways to reduce the impact and mitigate unwanted ‘noise’.

Our data migration services experts can talk customers through the pros and cons of migrating comments. We can’t migrate comments retrospectively, so it’s important to get it right before you start the process.

Are there any other challenges that come to mind? 

Yes, another pitfall we see frequently is error codes. It’s very rare – especially if you’re carrying out a large migration – to not come across some errors and failures. Our development team tries to make error messages as clear as possible, but some of the errors thrown up can still be quite generic because we have to pass on the codes that Google or Microsoft give to us. If the client uses the tool alone and doesn’t have a dedicated team in-house that is managing the migration, then failures or high error rates could be missed. Ultimately this will slow down the whole process, or mean that critical data might be missed from the migration. However, if you’ve opted for a serviced migration, you’ve got somebody who is monitoring the migration on a day-to-day basis. We can quickly advise you on a fix and get things back on track.

Does migrated data appear exactly as it was in the source environment?

Not in all cases, and that can be another pitfall of trying to manage the migration yourself. The way in which we migrate data means it doesn’t necessarily look exactly the same as it did in the source, and that’s when issues which have previously been hidden can be exposed.

An example of this is permissions on documents. We have seen issues arise around sensitive data such as sickness records, payslips and other highly sensitive data. The user may not fully realise who has access to their documents prior to migration, due to the way in which the sharing has been set up on both the tenant admin console, or even locally on the folder/files themselves. In the migrated data, a ‘shared with me’ list does not appear in the same order as it did in the source, and so suddenly another user may realise they have access to documents they weren’t aware of, and shouldn’t be able to see. This was already an issue, but the migration brought it to light.

If you carry out data migration on your own, you’re responsible for everything end to end, including troubleshooting and assessing the root cause of any issues. As part of our data migration services, we offer a troubleshooting window at the end of a migration, during which we can help customers to understand what’s happened and how they could have potentially mitigated against this. In some cases, we can work to help customers remedy those issues.

Can the data migration services team carry out any work before migration to make sure it runs smoothly?

Absolutely. There’s a huge piece of work to be done before you actually touch any files and move them across. Prevention is better than cure. We can help with the troubleshooting afterwards, but ideally we wouldn’t need to as we’d have checked things before the migration started.

Apart from avoiding the risks and pitfalls we’ve already discussed, what are the other benefits of having a serviced migration?

We combine industry best practices, product knowledge, and experience from other customers. We’re proactive, so we drive the migration forward and don’t just wait to react to issues. In a serviced migration you can add in a project manager, and this person helps steer timelines, reports on risks of migrations and makes sure they’re managed effectively. With our data migration services, clients get a better overall experience.