Migration resources

How to Migrate Efficiently and Free Internal Resources

As previous blogs in this series have shown, effective data center migration is critical to business success and technical efficiency. However, migration is time-consuming and can disrupt normal business processes. Omitting any stage of migration or taking shortcuts can have a negative effect on project success. The emphasis must be on fast, efficient migration with minimal downtime.

Internal Resource Challenges

While many organizations use in-house staff to carry out migration, this can create its own problems. Internal teams may be focused on keeping existing systems running or tackling strategic service developments and they may not be able to divert adequate resources to migration. Maximizing uptime is a priority for IT teams as they strive to meet the demands of the digital business — keeping the level of user and customer experience high is a must.

So for many IT teams, the reality is that just keeping the lights on is the norm. And, as migrations typically occur outside business hours, internal staff may be reluctant to take on additional work. The result is likely to be project delay or risk of disruption.

IT Recruitment Problems

Migration also requires specific skills in planning, discovery and analysis and project management.  These skills may not be available in the internal team and it may be difficult to recruit the personnel needed for effective migration. Currently, unemployment is generally low in the US economy but there are specific challenges in the IT sector.

According to a 2018 report, the number of technology-related jobs in the United States had grown by 200,000 since 2010 to approximately 11.5 million and there appeared to be no signs of the technology employment boom stopping. The trends are also impacted by the number of jobs created due to retirements and career-shifts. Overall, there is a demand and supply mismatch with more jobs than qualified applicants currently available.

Migration Outsourcing Options

With staff costs representing around 40 percent of IT management expenditure, it pays to make the most efficient use of those resources. As a result, many organizations consider outsourcing migration to specialists. The aim is to reduce the burden on IT teams and enable maximum uptime while maintaining the pace of migration.

Migration specialists employ skilled, experienced technicians equipped with sophisticated automation tools to handle each stage of migration. Migration is their only business and they work to agreed standards and industry best practice to maintain uptime and deliver effective results.

Accelerating Migration

VTG has found through experience and customer feedback that working with migration specialists using automation tools and best practices can help reduce migration times by 30 to 40 percent compared to traditional in-house methods and lower costs by up to 25 percent.

By speeding up migration, businesses can minimize downtime and reduce the pressure on busy IT staff. It also ensures that the business can gain the planned benefits faster creating a data center that is more efficient, easier to maintain and more responsive to the demands of digital transformation.

Find Out More

If you would like to know more about data center migration, please check out the articles and infographics on our website.