How to Ensure Success in Teradata Migration to the Cloud
The two most common refrains in Teradata migration, especially when moving to a cloud system, are that it’s taking far too long, and it costs more than ever projected. You can find horror stories for every platform and warehouse, new cloud system, and more, but still face the need to scale within your business.
So, how do you avoid cost and time overruns?
When it comes to Teradata migration, it’s all about respecting the complexity of your existing operations, data, and customization. We’ve put together four focal points that can help you understand the process, properly prepare, and limit your risk when moving terabytes of data, hundreds or thousands of tables, proprietary code, and much more.
Match cloud platform to data needs
Not all cloud systems are created equal, especially when it comes to Teradata support. Solutions and capabilities will vary based on the cloud platform and the apps you use to perform your migration. Start by building a list of what you need from Teradata and what should be maintained, as well as where you’re flexible.
While we often see a Teradata migration to the cloud, some companies may take smaller jumps in the near term and then create a roadmap to adopting cloud. Typically, you’re moving to a more flexible option for business operations. Don’t hamstring that by choosing a cloud platform that is too large or too restricted for your needs.
If you’re still wondering about Cloud vs. on-premise, here’s a quick, recorded webinar that can help you understand workloads, road-maps, and benefits of each.
Understand and emphasize proprietary elements
Custom, complex logic in your business application and intelligence tools makes a significant impact on your operations. You don’t want to lose it or spend hours re-writing or optimizing it. Instead, before your Teradata migration, review the complex and custom code elements in your applications to ensure that the data warehouse you move to can support them.
Sometimes, safety here starts with converting business logic to equivalent cloud compatible code automatically so that risks can be avoided and time to market can be minimized.
Your migration partner should be able to help with this decision or offer tools that make it easy to convert custom logic and scripts. After that conversion, test, test, and test again to ensure things are working correctly before a go-live.
Overall modernization is a great opportunity to optimize
It can be tempting to use a Teradata migration as an opportunity to address the many changes and new requirements for your different business units. We see everything from every department having its cleanup tasks to significant, mission-critical changes that impact how the organization itself operates.
Blending these modernization efforts with a Teradata migration can quickly become a significant value addition for any team. Although, it should be time-boxed and scoped appropriately so that the desired milestones are achieved within the targeted timeline.
If you’re going to modernize overall operations and technical code (scripts, business logic), be selective, in the sense, go phase-wise and start the assessment process before you plan your migration. It’ll ensure both operations are more likely to succeed.
Automation is the only way forward
Teradata migration can feel overwhelming, especially when you’re moving analytics processing to an unfamiliar platform or jumping to the Cloud for the first time. If you find yourself in that situation, it’s time to reach out for help.
While vendors and partners will offer various functionality and support, your best option is almost always to work with someone who offers an end-to-end automated migration solution. You’ll be getting a process that’s proven to be reliable and minimize coding, while also providing faster validation and testing.
Automation not only removes many chances for human error in your Teradata migration, but also frees up your team and vendor experts so they can spend more time on assessment, validation, and review of scripts and results.
It’s a proven methodology for smaller enterprises looking to gain a competitive advantage and large Fortune 500's with immense data requirements and a need for 100% accuracy. That said, no two migrations are the same. Impetus offers automation and support systems that we customize for each case, so you’re never reliant on an old script with an outdated understanding of data or systems.
We all know seeing is believing, so schedule a free demo and get a live walk-through with experts who understand what you’re trying to accomplish and the challenges you face.
