Legacy data migration: how to make the transition successfully

As businesses evolve and become increasingly reliant on new technologies, many discover that managing years, if not decades, of data scattered across different systems can create significant roadblocks to success. While these systems may contain useful information, it can be difficult for management and teams across an organization to access the data. This creates inefficiencies, drives up costs, and causes leadership to miss out on key insights. 

That’s where legacy data migration – the process of transferring data from old systems to new solutions – can transform business operations. Legacy data migration enables organizations to modernize their systems, enhance interoperability, and position their data to support future growth and innovation. 

But it isn’t all plain sailing. More than 80% of data migration projects either fail or exceed their budget. Migrating legacy data into a single source of truth isn’t an easy task. 

Fortunately, there are established processes and strategies that can help organizations achieve their data migration goals. In this article, we’ll explore some of the key strategies involved, highlight the top challenges, and offer important considerations to help your own project go smoothly. 

Why is legacy data migration necessary?

Organizations choose the cloud migration process for many reasons. Some want to enable growth or innovation. Others want to reduce costs, and many just want to consolidate their tools and data platforms.

While it would be easier to leave the data where it is in the system or platform, this approach has significant drawbacks:

• Legacy systems may no longer be supported. Historical data may become obsolete and inaccessible.
• They don’t provide a single source of truth, and users would need to access multiple systems or platforms to find all the data they need to develop a complete picture.
• As technology changes, more infrastructure may be required to support the legacy system. 
• It can negatively impact an organization’s reputation if users don’t know where data is located.

Legacy data migration can help resolve each of these problems.

How legacy data migration works

Data migration is a complex, nuanced process. But the methods of delivering it are fairly standard across all industries and sectors. 

If you’re looking to implement your own legacy data migration operations, here are some of the fundamental steps you’ll need to take.

1.  Data assessment

Every piece of data lives somewhere. You’ll need to have a firm understanding of what legacy systems you’re using, what types of data are contained on those systems, and where the data is located. You should determine whether you only need to transfer active data or both active and historical data. Once you’ve collected this information, you can begin the process known as data mapping.

2.  Data mapping

This is the process of matching certain fields from legacy databases onto new, modernized ones. The purpose is to create a blueprint of how data is going to be transferred. Mapping is vital, as it allows businesses to see any inconsistencies in formatting or structure that might make the actual migration process more difficult.

3.  Data cleansing

Legacy systems often contain inconsistent datasets, duplications, and formatting issues, particularly if they include data that has accumulated over time and has been siloed. Data cleansing removes this ‘bad’ data to ensure that only standardized, consistent data is transferred.

4.  Data migration

Once the data is ‘cleaned’ and formatted correctly, it’s migrated onto the new systems. The overall timeframe depends on how much data is being transferred. The execution often takes one of the following forms:

• ETL (extract, transform, load)
• ELT (extract, load, transform)
• Incremental migration
• Parallel migration

Lift-and-shift vs modernization

One of the mistakes that organizations can sometimes make is forcing the new system to look and feel too much like the legacy system.

A lift-and-shift migration, where data is moved to cloud platforms with minimal changes, may seem like a cost-effective approach, but it often costs more in the long run. This is because existing legacy datasets are not optimized to leverage the cloud-native features of the new application and may involve increased data egress costs. 

A lift-and-shift migration is short-sighted. Often, leaders are too focused on delivering what they had in their old system into the new one, and they don’t consider how their business processes may evolve. 

In contrast, with legacy modernization, legacy applications and data are transformed to better leverage the cloud. This may involve transforming data from a collection of individual records into a database, for example.

If the decision is made to transform and modernize the data, it becomes critical to understand the ideal end-state and how the integrity and compliance of the data will be maintained throughout the process.

‍

The biggest challenges of legacy data migration

Moving massive amounts of data and information from older systems to new, complex architectures often presents challenges. This is especially true because most businesses likely have rarely undertaken major migrations, so they don’t have much experience to learn from.

Let’s break down some of the key challenges that many businesses will face.

Data-related challenges

Legacy migration starts with data, and it can be complicated to organize data. As a result, businesses might face various data-related challenges during the transition. Some of these include:

• Inconsistent data quality: Old datasets may be formatted in ways that modern systems can’t easily recognize. They might be full of incomplete or inaccurate information, meaning the overall data quality is poor.
• Poor data mapping: Attempting to align old schemas within databases with fresh ones on a modern cloud service can be frustrating. Data can be misplaced or lost during transfer if there are incompatible field names.
• High data volumes: If data hasn’t been sufficiently cleansed before the migration, it could increase the risk of error and cause performance bottlenecks, particularly if there’s a lot of data to get through.
  

System and infrastructure challenges

During a legacy migration, businesses pull their data from various legacy systems, and each of them works in slightly different ways. This makes standardization more complicated when you’re trying to shift everything under one new roof.

Other common system challenges include:

• Outdated APIs: APIs act as the middlemen in many tech processes; they play a crucial role during migrations by linking one system to another. If the API itself is outdated and incompatible, you may have to explore other custom connector options.
• Complex environmental setup: The new system needs to be set up and tested throughout the entire process. If you discover that the initial infrastructure is misconfigured as data begins to enter, it makes confirming the migration validation much more difficult. 
  

Operational and business challenges

A full-scale, legacy systems migration is likely to be a stressful process for everyone associated with the business, as it can often interfere with day-to-day operations and affect an employee’s ability to do their job.

Other key operational and business challenges include:

• Downtime and disruption: There may be an impact on business operations during a migration period. Data might not be available during this time, meaning that certain functions might be unavailable. And if the migration is complex, a business might end up facing significant downtime.
• Stakeholder alignment: All key stakeholders must agree on the main goals and priorities of the migration. Otherwise, you could end up with misaligned objectives and fractured operations.
• Cost overruns: If a business underestimates the level of migration required (due to poor planning), the cost to complete the task may increase significantly. 
  

Security and compliance challenges

Data is a critical and sensitive commodity for all businesses, which is why it must be protected with advanced security protocols. Data is most vulnerable, however, during a large-scale migration.

Some of the key security and compliance challenges include:

• Data breaches: Data can be lost during the migration process. This puts the company and its customers at risk if it falls into the hands of negative actors. 
• Regulatory compliance: All data activities must comply with strict rules and regulations, such as GDPR and HIPAA. If the migration isn’t executed correctly, a business may fall short of these standards post-migration.
• Auditability and logging: Businesses can sometimes fail to create detailed audit trails during migration, which can make it more difficult to prove compliance or trace issues at a later date.
  

Key considerations for a successful legacy system migration strategy

Data migration requires patience to ensure all the stakeholders are engaged, onboard, and ready for the road ahead. Stakeholders need to rethink the status quo and clearly map out the process to ensure success. Digital transformation isn’t just about upgrading systems. It’s also about building capability, empowering workers, and enabling communication.

Regardless of whether the migration strategy is to lift and shift or to modernize the data, the three data migration project phases are the same. Here are the top questions to consider to ensure your project is a success.

Planning

• Who in the organization will be involved in the project?
• Will the migration implementation be conducted in-house, through a consultancy, or through a third party?
• What resources will be needed for the project?
• Which data will be migrated, historical or active?
• Where will the data reside?
• Will your organization require data sovereignty?
  

Migration

• Who will be able to access the data once the migration has occurred?
• Who will build the migration checklist?
• Who will be involved in the data extraction?
• Which migration tools will be used?
• When will the migration take place, and when will any backups be made?
• How will the data be managed in its new location?
  

Post-migration

• Who is the responsible owner of the system post-migration?
• What testing will occur post-migration to ensure the data migration is a complete success?
• Is the required metadata present?
• Which legal and compliance standards need to be satisfied?
  

Legacy data migration best practices

The data migration process isn’t something to take lightly. Your data is precious, so you need to ensure it’s safe before, during, and after the migration.

Fortunately, we’ve created some key considerations for an effective data migration strategy to help facilitate a smooth transition.

Set clear migration goals

Before starting, your business should have a clear understanding of why it’s committing to this migration process. Many businesses want to reduce costs by having a single source of truth for all their data. Others may want to tighten up their compliance approach.

It’s often quite a lengthy and complex process, so make sure you’re justified in doing it.

Establish staging and testing environments

You’ll want to make sure that your new cloud-based environment is ready to receive your data. You can do this by testing the process using decoy data (or historical data that you know won’t need anymore). The more stringent your testing, the higher the chances of a smooth, successful migration.

Encrypt data

Should the worst happen and your data goes missing during the migration, you’ll want to have the necessary security features in place to reduce the chances of the data becoming compromised. You should make sure that your data is encrypted both at rest and during transition.

Document everything

Your data should be thoroughly documented throughout every stage of its journey. Not only is this good for your own record keeping and accountability, but many compliance standards and regulations require it. 

How RecordPoint can help

Legacy data migration is something that all businesses will likely have to go through at some point. It can be a stressful experience, particularly if your business has large swathes of historical and active data to handle. 

However, the long-term benefits it delivers to the business will often make the effort worthwhile. Moving your data onto cloud-based platforms will guarantee long-term stability and scalability, and it will provide a single source of truth for all employees to access. It will also help you standardize legacy data, making retrieval and organization far more straightforward. And it will ensure that your business remains compliant with all relevant regulations.

For over 15 years, RecordPoint has been helping organizations discover, govern, and control their data, no matter the complexity. We know exactly what it takes to pull off a successful legacy data migration, and we’re looking forward to helping you out.

Take a tour or book a demo today to unify and migrate your data with confidence.

FAQs

Why is data migration from legacy systems necessary?

Legacy systems are generally expensive to maintain and often ineffective at dealing with the demands of modern business data. They often rely on formatting that is incompatible with advanced datasets, and they often don’t have the necessary security features to counter sophisticated cyberattacks or satisfy compliance standards.

How long does a legacy data migration take?

This depends on a number of factors, such as the number of dispersed sources, the complexity and breadth of the data, and the testing rigor. Small migrations can take a few days, while large-scale operations can take months to complete.

Should legacy data be archived or deleted?

This will depend on each company’s retention policy. Customers have the right to access data about themselves at any time. However, if it’s clearly stated in a retention policy that data will be deleted after a certain amount of time, then the business is protected.