A Step-By-Step Guide To Legacy Migration

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Introduction

Data is the most treasured resource for any brand or company, especially when the data has been collected over the years. Some data even track back to the inception of the company’s foundation, something that is extremely valuable to the organization.

But, the drawback of such data collected over a long period of time is that they are stored in outdated CMS systems and servers. The complete IT system of a company that is crucial to its daily operation is called Legacy System. While a legacy system is the most important resource for a company, they are usually built on outdated technology that can no longer keep up with modern standards and technology. A legacy system can deliver when it comes to daily production, but with time and new technological innovations, it starts to become a liability to a company’s growth and productivity.

In the digital age with new innovative technologies, the key to increased efficiency lies in utilizing the latest SaaS technology. For companies battling a competitive environment, their legacy system needs a desperate migration to new technology and systems. This particular type of migration is known as Legacy Migration. Legacy migration is important for a website's efficiency, data security, and more. Read further to dive deep into legacy migration, ways to implement it, and the step-by-step process for legacy migration.

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What Is Legacy Migration?

The process of migrating a legacy system, including all the technology, software, hardware, etc., to a newer system with updated technology is known as Legacy Migration. Legacy Migration is crucial for a company when its IT technology becomes outdated or downright obsolete.

Leaving behind your data in the old Legacy System could affect the growth of a company, but then again, shifting to a new system from scratch with empty data is something that can affect their operations. Utilizing their old data in a new updated form of technology can reap many benefits for a company, which is why Legacy Migration becomes an essential step towards their business evolution.

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Importance Of Legacy Migration

Discussing the various benefits that companies can receive with Legacy Migration:

• ‍Increased Efficiency

The primary aspect of legacy migration to a new system is that it opens up a new way to utilize your data more efficiently and productively. With the new SaaS technology, you can clearly understand your business operations and consumer behavior which will help you plan your future strategies with little room for error.

• Cost Management

Since legacy systems are technically outdated, their maintenance cost becomes rather expensive for a company. With legacy migration to a newer updated system, the company can save money with deflated maintenance costs.

• Technical Upgrades

The biggest reason behind legacy migration is moving on from outdated technology that inadvertently affects a company’s performance. With legacy migration, you will work with the latest SaaS technologies that will positively impact your business’s overall operation.

• Better Data Security

Legacy systems are heavily vulnerable to data breaches and security hacks. Legacy systems also don’t provide the service of a coherent data backup and recovery; losing their crucial data is something an organization cannot afford to compromise. But with legacy migration, the newer systems will provide them with rigid security protocols, safeguarding their data and providing them with instant backup & recovery.

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Steps To Do Legacy Migration

A step-by-step guide to doing Legacy Migration;

• Analyze Your Business Goals And Prepare A Strategy

Legacy Migration is a complex process and requires to be implemented as a separate project. It is challenging and takes a lot of time; hence you need to plan out your entire process from the start to ensure it is implemented smoothly.

You must start by analyzing your business goals and deducing why legacy migration is essential for you. Conducting a SWOT analysis will help you as you can figure out how your business can benefit from legacy migration. As a result, you can lay out the entire step-by-step blueprint for migration, the best approach, and the challenges you may face.

• Estimate Your Project Cost

Legacy Migration is a separate project in itself, and it is something that requires a dedicated budget in itself. The entire point of legacy migration is saving the company’s money and use of resources, so it is helpful that you have a clear idea of your total project cost.

• Choose A Migration Plan

When you have planned your entire migration blueprint, it is time to choose the ideal migration plan for your business.

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There are two ways you can implement the legacy strategy:

        1. One-Shot Migration: In this process, the entire legacy system, every software, and every data are migrated at once in one phase. One-shot migration is ideal for a company with a monotonous work process like a telecom company.

        2. Parallel Migration: This migration is executed in multiple phases where limited resources are migrated at different intervals and times. This is ideal for companies with a diverse range of infrastructure and operations.

Choose a migration plan best suited to your company and, more importantly, which can be implemented without hindering your business operations.

• Make A Data Backup

Legacy Migration is a complex process that could take a good bunch of time to complete. As a result, the possibility of a technical error cannot be ruled out; some errors could even put critical company data at risk. To ensure that your data remains safe and secure, we recommend you make a backup that you can recover if something goes awry.

• Prepare Your Cloud Architecture

When you’re all set to begin your migration according to a specific plan, it’s time to select the component to be migrated first. Components vital to a business operation must always be migrated initially, followed by secondary ones. So, you must decide the ideal migration order most efficiently, whether it is specific software, application, database, or the entire legacy system.

• Migrate Your Legacy System Components

This process involves transferring the entire Legacy System components to the new system without any unhinged error. Make sure your data backup is ready in case something goes wrong in migration so that you can revert to the original data in case of a mistake.

• Do An Audit

When you have finally completed your legacy migration, it’s time to do an audit or mapping analysis of the system. This process involves whether the applications or software you migrated are cloud-friendly or whether your applications are co-dependent with each other. This can also help you identify if any software does not hold any value to your business anymore; if not, you have the choice to eliminate it.

• Test Your Migration Components

Now that your entire legacy system is migrated and audited, it’s time to do a pilot run of the new system. Try to test your components on a test environment instead of the actual one, as it can help you identify and fix any possible errors.

Testing might be a bit time-consuming, but it is essential because it can help you ensure that your new system does not affect your daily business operations when it is run in a real-time environment.

• Manage Your New System Infrastructure

Congratulations! Your legacy migration is finally completed, audited, tested, and ready to operate in your daily system. But your work doesn’t end here. To ensure that your new system infrastructure is conducted without any hassle, you must have a dedicated person or team to monitor it consistently to look out for any possible errors and provide a quick fix. Monitoring can also help provide crucial data analysis that can give you a proper insight into your business operations.

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Hire An Expert Provider To Do Legacy Migration For You

We believe you have a clear understanding of the idea and importance behind legacy migration and what makes it so complex. There are plenty of parameters for consideration before proceeding, and a lack of knowledge or expertise can compromise your plans. Most companies either need to gain an understanding of legacy migration and the ones who do, need help knowing where to start. This is why it is recommended that you hire a professional with the required knowledge, expertise, experience, and skills to understand your business requirements, choose the ideal migration plan, and successfully implement legacy migration without any errors.

An expert will not only understand your needs but also advise you on the correct migration plan for you, deduce what software and applications are the best for your institution, and provide training to your team on how to use the new system software.

The right expert will also provide monitoring services to ensure that your new system runs fluently without any errors.

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Choose Exemplifi To Begin Your Legacy Migration Journey

Are you looking for the ideal partner to help you with legacy migration and cloud automation? Exemplifi has been at the forefront of migrating and upgrading legacy systems to the latest standards. Our team has worked across the board with multiple CMS like Drupal, WordPress, Adobe and more for organizations that span multiple industries and website complexity. To know know more, drop us an email below.