In June, we launched the Data Migration Approach survey in conjunction with ITWeb. The survey ran online over two weeks from late May into early June and the results are now out. We had over 100 respondents and the results make very interesting, and encouraging, reading. We can also announce the winner of our competition – open to everyone who completed the survey.
Data migration is a key issue for everyone
The respondents were from a wide range of businesses. A quarter were from organisations of fewer than 50 people, and a fifth were from organisations with over 10,000 employees. Across the board, over three quarters (76%) of the respondents said that their organisation was planning a data migration within the next 12 to 24 months.
The survey results at a glance
In addition to the overwhelming majority who are planning a data migration, the survey pinpointed their issues and worries in this area:
IT risk
The greatest IT risk of a data migration project was, unsurprisingly, seen to be loss of data – with almost half (47%) citing this as the major concern. Other concerns in this area are:
- application stability: 14%
- downtime: 16%
- increased costs due to project delays: 17% The perceived business risks of data migration came out with three clear winners:
Business risk
- Unhappy customers: 34%
- Loss of productivity: 29%
- Breach of legal requirements: 22%
- Barriers to data migration Respondents were asked to choose all potential barriers to migration.
- Difficulty identifying right data migration tools: 49%
- High learning curve for tools and absence of support: 45%
- Lack of technical skills: 39%
- No in-house knowledge and expertise: 33%Conversely, when asked which factors contribute to the success of data migration, most respondents (64%) chose technical expertise, with migration method and technology a close second (61%).Preferred data migration methodology Fear of downtime and loss of productivity seem to be driving the preferred approach to data migration for many businesses. When asked which is the preferred data migration approach, there is a clear winner:
- Parallel running with no downtime: 49%
- Phased approach by line of business:
- 25%Incremental by business process: 14%
Our competition winner
Our congratulations go to Moagi Mokgatlhe from SLVA Information Security. He won a Samsung Galaxy Tablet E 9.6 – and here is our CEO, Mike Richards, handing over the prize.
Data migration planning is key
One of the most telling results of the survey was that 76% of companies who responded were planning a data migration project in the next 12 – 24 months. If you consider that IT Analyst Gartner has quoted: by 2019, up to 50% of data migration projects will exceed budget and/or result in some form of business disruption due to flawed execution, we could be heading into very turbulent times indeed.
Certainly we’ve seen high profile cases of businesses in trouble due to data migration problems, such as the Australia’ health insurer, Medibank, who received unwanted publicity when they failed to provide annual tax statements to the majority of their 3.8 million members.
JMR’s BITSHIFT data migration solution is designed to remove business and IT risks within the most complex data migration project. BITSHIFT puts a huge emphasis on planning. In fact, it’s at the planning stage that we can give a solid timeframe and fixed price to our clients because it’s now that every small detail is considered. We know that this approach works — in contrast to Gartner’s bleak prediction — we’ve had a 100% success rate with our BITSHIFT migration solution, which is why we offer guaranteed delivery to our clients: we have confidence in our tried and tested method and so should they.