Every business must have a proper data migration timeline plan when leaving the source storage and moving to a new storage system. Working with a proper timeline helps businesses of all sizes save time as well as cost that goes into making the data migration project a success story.
Here are some of the primary and indispensable approaches businesses can take to plan a proper data migration timeline:
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Perform a Pre-migration Assessment
It becomes possible for businesses to plan a proper data migration timeline only by having a proper scope of work in place. And performing a pre-migration assessment is crucial to coming up with a proper scope of work.
When performing a pre-migration assessment, businesses need to decide the number of users and the data size to migrate to the destination environment. Businesses also need to take a deep dive into understanding whether to move the company data along with permissions, metadata, versions, external shares, embedded links, and shared links.
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Does the Source Storage Need To Be Decommissioned on Time?
One of the major factors that can influence how businesses plan the data migration timeline is understanding whether the source storage environment needs to be decommissioned on time. In many cases, the primary reason businesses migrate from the source to the destination environment (e.g., Google Drive to OneDrive) can be to lower operational expenses.
Having a structured data migration timeline that streamlines the entire migration process helps businesses complete the project on time and therefore decommission the source environment on time to avoid plan renewal.
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Adhering to the Merger or Acquisition Timeline
Businesses also need to adhere to a specific data migration timeline if the primary reason for the migration is a merger or an acquisition activity. In a merger, both merging companies may plan a unified migration timeline.
In most acquisitions, the acquirer guides the target company during the acquisition processes, which can also include setting up a specific timeline to complete the entire data migration.
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Adhering to a User Onboarding Strategy
Certain companies take a strategic approach to transition end-users from the source environment to the destination in a certain time period, such as the end of the fourth quarter of the financial year. If your company is planning to take a similar approach, it is a must that your IT team has full clarity over the user onboarding time period.
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Meeting the Customer’s Migration Requirements
Planning a proper data migration timeline can be a bit different for managed service providers (MSPs) as they have to work with the customers’ requirements. When planning the data migration project, MSPs must really understand the migration project end date that the customer wants to set.
