What Are the Chief Benefits of Data Center Migration?
Whatever the size of your company, migrating your data centre — whether to a new on-premise, hybrid cloud or fully managed service solution — involves a great deal of thought and effort. Yet however daunting it sounds, the following benefits make data center migration worth the effort.
Research and Plan
While they may sound more like requirements of the process, the thorough researching and careful planning that go into a successful migration are benefits in themselves. Because data center migration forces a business to review both its current and future technologies and data structures, it increases awareness of the opportunities new forms of data management offer — chances that might otherwise be missed or overlooked.
Also, as a vision becomes clear where a business wants to be based on its data center migration, it’s critical to establish a plan to get there and a team to coordinate the process. Such a team typically goes beyond IT staff and — for proper buy-in — can even involve project managers and senior management. The result is that a well thought out migration compels a business to both research and plan the best data management method.
It’s also important to remember that since data centre migrations can significantly improve companies data management, solid research and planning are as many benefits as signs of effective migrations.
Cost Savings
Although there are costs involved in data center migrations, the fact remains that they often result in ongoing — and sometimes substantial — cost savings once they’re completed. From renting space and training personnel to maintaining equipment and paying energy bills, data centers aren’t cheap. By some estimates, the average data center consumes 100 times more energy than a typical office space of equal size.
During a data center migration, everything from data redundancies to wasteful processes can be spotted and addressed. Depending on the solution a business chooses, savings can range from a reduction in servers to eliminating on-premise equipment — and the associated maintenance costs.
Increased Efficiency
When companies grow faster than their planned data centers capacities, the result can be known as data sprawl — a series of temporary fixes that can act as patchwork for inefficient processes. The opposite of data sprawl is the consolidation of data management systems that migrations work hard to implement. Along with reductions in energy usage, data canter migrations promote the most efficient storage and handling of companies’ data.
Since a well-implemented migration can vastly improve a company’s operating environment, the efficiencies that are gained can positively impact its day-to-day productivity.
