What You Need to Know About Intelligent Data Migration

What You Need to Know About Intelligent Data Migration

Data migration is one of those things—you know that it has to happen, but you never want to do it. Migrations offer up a whole host of problems, from potential downtime to the struggle of learning a new system. As with many headaches in the business world, someone thought to themselves, “There has to be a better way!”

That person created intelligent data migration, and you’re probably going to be very happy they did. Let’s take a look at the old way of doing things and the reasons this new version is far better. Here’s what you need to know about intelligent data migration.

Lifting and Shifting

Data migration hasn’t always had the opportunity to be “intelligent.” The data migration you’re used to probably makes use of the “lift and shift” method, which is exactly what it sounds like. Essentially, your teams take data from one system, pick it up, and move it to the new system. This is obviously a bit reductive, but it provides you with a good idea of what goes on during the migration process.

To dive a little deeper, your teams have pored over your data to find the fat that you can trim and sought to improve organization during the migration. However, there’s only so much that humans can do when it comes to categorizing and sorting petabytes of data.

Big Bang vs. Trickle Migration

We can further break down the “lift and shift” method into two main types of data migration: big bang and trickle migration. With big bang migration, the entire process happens in one go—you push a button, and migration begins. That migration doesn’t stop until you port over all your data to the new system.

The main drawback of big bang migration is that it renders your systems useless during the process—all your computing power goes into migration. Unless you can afford days or weeks of downtime, it’s usually better to choose trickle migration.

Trickle migration, on the other hand, has a “slow and steady wins the race” mentality. Your teams will come up with the optimal order to transfer data to your new system, moving forward one piece at a time. With trickle migration, you don’t need to worry about downtime—your old system is still functional during the shift.

While both of these types of migration do the job, they require a lot of brainpower from your team and are likely to leave you with problems in your new system. This isn’t the fault of your team, but it’s because different systems work differently. You never know when a particular piece of data won’t sit right in a new system.

Fortunately, these problems are annoying but correctable. And, even more fortunately, intelligent data migration can help you avoid these problems altogether.

What Is Intelligent Data Migration?

As with many other “smart” processes, the difference between regular and intelligent data migration is the addition of artificial intelligence. AI will discover your data—it will look for all the different types of data at use in your business.

Artificial intelligence then classifies that information based on how critical it is. The determining factors include both the importance to your company and its importance in the data privacy regulations hierarchy.

The main idea of intelligent data migration is to use insights generated at fast speeds to sort and organize data efficiently. Once the artificial intelligence has delineated where the data is going, you can perform a low-risk migration at the optimal speed.

How Does That Work?

It’s all well and good to say, “Artificial intelligence makes magic happen,” but what is really going on behind the scenes? In a way, the actual action that your AI is taking isn’t any different from what a human would do to organize data. However, AI can do it much faster.

Essentially, the AI looks over metadata to find out what type of document it’s dealing with, how old the document is, the file size, and who has access to the document. Using all this metadata, the AI can determine where the data needs to go—either ported into your new system or left behind if the information is unnecessary.

Why You Should Use Intelligent Data Migration

You know that AI can help you speed through data migration, but why else should you use intelligent migration? We’ve made a list below of all the benefits of incorporating this technology into your strategy.

Reduced Storage Costs

One of the biggest benefits of using these data migration tools is that you can save money on data storage. Intelligent migration will find a ton of redundant information that you can leave behind—and with each piece you leave, you free up more storage space. By the time the AI looks over everything, you may need a lot less storage space than you assumed.

There’s no need to pay a premium to keep obsolete information on hand. Open up your IT budget and breathe easier when you see the bottom line.

Reduced Migration Costs

Data migration isn’t cheap, but when you migrate fewer documents, the process takes less time. In addition to saving storage money, you’ll also be able to make use of your new system sooner. On top of that, many AIs require training before you can use them. Luckily, intelligent migration AI comes pre-trained, so you don’t need to spend any time doing that.

Better Productivity

Once everything is in the new system, your employees will be able to work more efficiently with less unnecessary information clogging up the system. It’s far more difficult to get things done when you need to sift through old files before you can begin.

Compliance

Proper data storage isn’t only a matter of convenience—there are also state and federal mandates that require you to classify data in a certain way. To avoid fines that come about through human error, let artificial intelligence do all the work!

Now that you understand what you need to know about intelligent data migration, decide whether it’s a tactic you want to employ at your facility the next time a migration needs to happen. There’s nothing better than efficiency, so talk with your teams and figure out if intelligent data migration is right for you.

Data Estate: Building Sophisticated Data Infrastructure Through Modern Technologies

Data Estate: Building Sophisticated Data Infrastructure Through Modern Technologies

Data, pandits say, is now the most valuable resource on the planet. Even more than oil. With the world advancing daily and adopting newer digital technologies with every passing minute, it hardly seems like an exaggeration. Today, data is the most valuable currency a company possesses.

Today’s organizations deal with voluminous data on a daily basis. Whether it’s data generation, storage, or harnessing data to make business decisions, data plays an integral role in multiple operations that are vital to the functioning of these companies. Different teams have access to, handle, and analyze this data on an ongoing basis, making data management a cumbersome task.

What is Data Estate?

Companies are drowning in data coming from heterogeneous sources and struggling to find a solution to structure it all. That’s why a term called Data Estate is trending in the industry nowadays.

Data Estate is nothing but all the data, from all the sources, that a company owns and is usually what needs modernization. It’s simply to build a data infrastructure, through modern technologies to ingest and store all your data with governance and quality protocols in place. This can be developed on-premise or cloud. You can even get the best of both worlds by using a Hybrid approach depending on the business requirements. This helps make organizations proficient in storing, managing, and leveraging your data for analytics including business applications, IoT, departmental data, and more!

How to Get Started:

Before you begin towards building a successful data estate, there are a few key questions that should be answered which will guide you in your journey of implementing an infrastructure.

  1. What is your end goal that you want to achieve?
  2. What are your short term and long term business requirements?
  3. What are your current Business processes and how do they integrate with your current data processes?
  4. Who will have access to the data and which data will these persons have access to?
  5. Would you like to go On-Prem, Cloud or Hybrid? Why?
  6. What will your construction Partners look like?
  7. It is a complex and challenging project. Make a roadmap with smaller tasks to achieve the end goal.

Seems overwhelming? But it’s really not. ChainSys will be able to help you answer all these questions and build the entire infrastructure for you including automation. Our end-to-end data management platform ensures data access in a clean and secure manner while standardizing all data to minimize the risk of data loss, duplication, etc. This ultimately translates into real-time results which harness the true value of your data while saving you money, time, and resources.

How ChainSys Can Help:

With over two decades in the industry, we have helped a plethora of clients from various industries including, energy, aviation, finance, technology, manufacturing, and more! Our data solutions are 360-degree right from the beginning, all the way to the end, some of which include:

  • Migration & Integration
  • Quality, Cleansing & Governance
  • Active Metadata Management
  • Enterprise Data Management
  • Analytics and much more

At ChainSys, our approach is customer-centric. We begin by understanding all the above requirements and build a customized team of experts that are experienced with your industry and uniquely suited to tackle your specific challenges. This team will then dive deep into your business and data processes, and your legacy systems and do all the necessary homework. Following which, we will not only draw out solutions specially designed for you but also build a roadmap to help us achieve your goals together, in a timely fashion. 

If you’re looking to level-up your data management game, get in touch!

To view all the Solutions we offer, click here.

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Top 3 Benefits of Utilizing Data Masking

Top 3 Benefits of Utilizing Data Masking

In many ways, data is the lifeblood of a company. Through the use of customer data and internal information, a business can set themselves up for success and stand apart from the competition. However, that makes data a valuable thing that untrustworthy individuals want to gain access to. Read on to learn the top three benefits of utilizing data masking.

What Is Data Masking?

Data masking transforms information from sensitive information into a nonsensical, non-sensitive string of characters. For instance, “John Smith, 707 Main Street” may become “asdw g54Gep v35 54Yb tw90f.” This keeps the information safe even if it falls into the wrong hands.

The Customer Element

One benefit of using data masking is that it proves to your customers that you are trustworthy. Customers want to know that their private information will stay secure, and they’re willing to go out of their way to ensure that happens. If you don’t have credentials on your website that make potential customers feel safe, they will not want to do business with you.

The Compliance Element

You must meet certain legal requirements when working with sensitive information. Data masking and protection are not always something a company can utilize, but in many cases, they are legally required to maintain compliance.

Self-Protection

Data masking isn’t only capable of protecting customer information—it also protects your company’s sensitive data. Bad actors can seek out a business’s information in the same way they may look for customer social security numbers and credit card numbers.

When you want the best data protection for your company, come to ChainSys. We’re here to answer any questions you may have and will set you up with top-notch data masking software.

Now that you know the top three benefits of utilizing data masking, you can keep your information and that of your customers out of the hands of bad actors. Even if they gain access to the information, data masking will ensure they won’t be able to understand or use it successfully.

3 Ways to Continually Improve Your Data Governance

3 Ways to Continually Improve Your Data Governance

A wise man once said, “with great power, there must also come great responsibility.” While he wasn’t talking about data, he might as well have been! A company’s data is like its lifeblood—you must keep it safe, secure, and well-regulated if the company wants to thrive. Data governance is the responsible path toward data security. Read on to learn three ways to continually improve your data governance.

Defining Data Governance

Data governance is a process, but not one that you undertake just once. Data governance must constantly be in place in your company to ensure data protection. At its simplest, data governance defines the regulations you enact to monitor and control data within your organization.

Establish Your Framework

The first step to improving data governance is to set up your framework—how do you want your data governance to work? It should be simple and easy to see who has access to what data. Also, develop guidelines to show how to measure successful data governance for your company.

Set Up Controls

Once you figure out the big picture, it’s time to dive into the specifics. Data controls are the rules and regulations that dictate which employees have access to certain information. Whenever any employee accesses a piece of data, that moment gets cataloged and recorded for future reference.

Monitor Your Data

That’s where data monitoring comes in. Data pipeline tools help companies keep track of data use in case anyone does something with your data that they aren’t supposed to. When you realize there’s been a breach, it’s simple to work back to find out who accessed that information so you can handle the situation appropriately.

Now that you know these three ways to continually improve your data governance, don’t hesitate to take your business to the next level. Whether you improve data governance and security or data integration and analytics, each change makes you more competitive and viable in an ever-changing business environment.

3 Ways to Leverage Data as a Strategic Asset

3 Ways to Leverage Data as a Strategic Asset

No matter where you turn for business advice, you’ll always hear the same thing: find a way to leverage your data. While that may be a great tip, it’s missing an essential part of the equation: how? Consider these three ways to leverage data as a strategic asset.

Connect With Customers

Customers want personalization, and you can use data to give them just that. Tailor advertisements to individuals and determine which of your products is perfect for them. When a customer feels like a company understands them, they’re much more likely to make a purchase.

Make Data-Based Decisions

Data can help make you smarter. Even if you’re the smartest person on the planet, you still have the potential to make mistakes that numbers simply don’t. Utilize those numbers and data analytics to make decisions driven by hard data. That way, you can set up your company to perform well for years to come.

Optimize Your Website

Did you know you can collect data on how people view your website? Demographics are one thing, but you can actually obtain information that tells you exactly what people are doing when they visit your site. For example, you can see which images people look at the longest, which links they click on, and on which page they decide to close your website.

Using that information, you can start to build a better website. Utilize the pictures your viewers seem to prefer, and figure out why everyone decides to leave your site after reading your “About” page. With an optimized website, you’ll find yourself enjoying more conversions than ever before.

If you’re not sure how to gain any of these benefits, you may want to consider implementing Microsoft data migration to bring your systems to the next level.

Now that you know these three ways to leverage data as a strategic asset, make sure your systems are working for you and not against you. The right master data management system will actively help your business leverage data better; consider a data migration if you find yourself fighting against your current software.