The Challenges & Importance of Enterprise IT Migrations
In DeepDive we worked with many companies and completed different tasks. We created new platforms and security systems, built infrastructure, did cloud migrations, and a lot of other things.
As a company that helps its customers to be digital, DeepDive often deals with technological transformation and data migration. And while some companies do not need big changes, others must change everything. Sometimes complete infrastructure migration must be done and old systems replaced with new. Or perhaps to put it simply…it means moving all products, processes and data from one place to another.
Let’s determine the main tasks of such mission. They include:
- Infrastructure engineering
- Data restoring (ensuring nothing gets lost)
- Migration process
All of this is never a simple task, especially when we’re talking about obsolete software. One of our company’s most proud projects was simply that. They used a lot of their business-driven ecosystem and were getting a really limited amount of resources from it. For example, they were left struggling with 2 gigabytes mailboxes! Every 1-2 weeks they received notifications to delete certain stuff…which is particularly annoying when you are in the middle of something or waiting for an important letter. And now apply this situation to other processes to understand what it was like to work when everything is slow, limited, and uncomfortable.
This particular client spent two years trying to find somebody to help them migrate to the cloud. Somehow we were in a meeting room with these guys, saying: we can do it, we have our own development that will help us to complete this task. They heard this speech before, and they didn’t believe us. After some strong convincing, and with some bold guarantees, we got the project.
Getting to work, we knew what we had to deal with, and we knew what challenges were waiting for us. The most significant being:
- Not all apps were compatible with the new system
- Many duplicates must be found and deleted
- Business must continue to work during the real-time migration process
Applications compatibility. The easiest way to deal with old applications is to replace them with new. All the more, one new program combines features of a few old ones. And if there is a need, you can always create a compatible app yourself.
Duplicates. Every company has a huge amount of data. And some of it repeats in different apps and on different devices. After migration, this data must be stored in one place, and that means duplicates must all be deleted.
Years ago we dealt with such matter for the first time. We created a solution to analyze information and eliminate repetitions. Now data migration and eliminating duplicate records has become a core competency for us.
Business never stops. Probably, this is the most challenging thing about migration. You can’t just halt the work, move everything, and then have people continue. Everything and everyone must be able to continue to do their tasks. And you have to work in a coexistence scenario, migrating data part by part, having two ecosystems working alongside until all is in the cloud. It is difficult not to stop any of the many processes, yet we managed to move multiple terabytes of data with 2,500 people not even knowing they were being migrated in the first place. Computers, laptops, mobile phones, all end-users devices automatically reconfigured themselves, and re-connected to the new cloud ecosystem, with zero interference from the end-user side. We developed the tools and mechanisms and procedures to create this kind of solution.
Was it easy for us? No; truly said, it was a huge challenge. There was no product to solve this problem before we created one. Actually, we use the same principles and same technique, and even same pieces of code that was developed during this project on many other projects which followed.
Challenges aside, DeepDive Technology Group embraces challenges as part of our DNA. The six month project was completed 2 months early, with zero downtime, and we’re happy to share the following customer results:
- faster system performance
- more stable infrastructure
- more resources (ex. from 2 to 50 GB mailboxes)
- reduced operating costs
It cannot be said that we saved this company from collapse. However, considering this company was unable to resolve their migration headache for 2 years before we arrived, and considering that multiple tech giant vendors chose to walk away rather than help, it both highlights the challenges that enterprise migrations can bring, and the undeniable benefits it brings when system migrations are done & done right.
