Managing data growth is one of the top IT priorities, according to a recent survey by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). Rapid data growth, spiraling hardware and staff costs are driving storage to the cloud and that puts the emphasis on efficient data migration.

However, according to CIO Magazine, organizations see the problems of data migration as a greater barrier to cloud migration than the more familiar concerns about security.

Traditional manual methods are slow and prone to error, creating the risk of significant downtime. In a business environment, where customer and user experience are critical metrics, maximizing uptime is essential. As a result, IT teams are turning to automation tools to reduce migration times and eliminate human error.

Changing Data Storage Demands

Around two-thirds of the respondents to the ESC survey reported that data volumes were growing at a rate of 20 percent or more, putting pressure on traditional storage infrastructure. And, changing workloads demanded faster access to data and increasingly complex dependencies.

Increasing on-premise capacity is one option for IT. However, the delay and cost of procuring and installing new data center infrastructure and the potential waste of deploying surplus capacity can impact total cost of ownership.

Cloud is therefore seen as the more flexible alternative. It provides scalable capacity on demand, keeping storage in line with current needs, and it provides users with fast anywhere, anytime access to data.

Moving storage to the cloud gives IT the opportunity to reduce CAPEX and move infrastructure costs to a predictable OPEX budget. It can also free staff from time-consuming management and upgrade tasks.

Downtime Remains an Issue

While businesses recognize the potential benefits of cloud storage, concerns about downtime can act as a barrier. According to the Vision Solutions 2017 State of Resilience Report, 66 percent of respondents claimed to have postponed a migration because of downtime risks.

Downtime doesn’t just affect users; it can impact IT staff productivity and damage corporate reputation if services are not available. For mission critical applications and services, downtime can be even more damaging.

Automation Essential

To speed up the process and ensure successful transition, many IT teams have turned to data center migration automation tools that reduce risk, minimize disruption and lower costs.

Migration tools like VTG’s ZENfra^TM reduce the complexity of data capture and avoid the risk of human error by automating the collection of data from log files. The log files are uploaded quickly and easily to ZENfra^TM and the tool keeps multiple data-points for comparison based on date and time.

These tools can carry out vendor-specific log file analysis or customize data collection to meet specific migration requirements. ZENfra™ processes the log file and creates a database with the required information. The database can be easily modified to add additional data fields.

Key to Digital Transformation

Efficient data migration is essential to digital transformation. It gives IT the opportunity to meet business demands while reducing storage costs, simplifying infrastructure and freeing staff to focus on strategic initiatives.

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