Moving data to the cloud is a strategic business decision; but how you choose to get there can impact on your business success once you arrive. Many cloud technology vendors promise that migrating to the cloud is easy – it’s true that if you are moving small data sets or workloads to a public cloud platform, ‘over wire’ migrations typically require minimal planning and are quick and cost effective. But what if you want to move large amounts of data at one time? As a rapidly growing remote workforce continues to drive ‘anywhere operations’ as the new normal, many enterprises are pushing to migrate hundreds of terabytes of data to the cloud in a short amount of time. Try to move this quantity of data over wire would take months. A successful large-scale cloud migration from a legacy environment requires planning and a significant amount of preparation, knowledge of public cloud services and infrastructures, and, of course, the right automated management and migration tools to get you there smoothly and securely.
Doug Jones is a senior product services manager with NetApp and leads portfolio strategy for Migration Services. He holds an MBA from Duke Fuqua School Business in General Management and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Florida Atlantic University. He lives in the greater Asheville, NC area.