By Tosin Vaithilingam, senior solution architect at BitTitan

In the complex landscape of divestitures, untangling the parent company's data to transfer to the newly formed entity can be difficult.

That's why CIOs often bring in MSPs since these providers have the specialized knowledge and expertise required to handle the complex process. Having the MSP take on the responsibility of planning and implementing the data transfer needed for the divested company to operate independently can relieve the burden on the CIO and allow them to focus on other critical day-to-day operations.

To help ensure successful migration during a divestiture, MSPs can follow the list of best practices outlined below.

Best Practices for Successful Data Migration

Assessing Project Scope Before Migration

Start by evaluating the project's scope, considering staffing requirements, timeline, cost, and data volume to migrate. A clear understanding of these aspects is essential before starting the migration process, especially when dealing with divestitures that may have legally mandated deadlines.

MSPs need to ask more probing questions throughout the process, but especially at the beginning of the migration, to avoid surprises or "scope creep." Gaining a clear understanding of the factors listed below allows MSPs to plan the cost and staffing requirements needed to execute the migration.

Here are a few factors that can affect the migration's success:

• Understanding the Types of Data Migration: With any data migration, MSPs need to consider if the customer is storing data on the cloud or on-premises, the intended destination for the data, the data size, and the types of data. Asking questions and meticulously reviewing the data can ensure the MSP understands the full scope.

• Identifying Involved Environments: MSPs must identify whether it is more suitable to move data to an existing environment or create a new one. In a greenfield scenario, MSPs must build everything from scratch. In contrast, in an existing environment, MSPs match the data to the new company's security parameters, licensing schemes, and other factors.

• Addressing Security Concerns: In any environment, it's essential to protect sensitive data, ensure compliance with regulations, and maintain consistency across organizations. With a greenfield environment, it's important to match the existing parent company's security parameters and licensing schemes. In existing environments, security challenges are more complex, as there might be variations in security policies and ITIL frameworks. Additionally, MSPs transferring data from one region to another need to examine regional restrictions and legal considerations.
  

Involving Customer Success Engineers Early On

Another important consideration is involving a customer success engineer early in the process, ideally as soon as the pre-sale is complete. So often, the handoff from sales to customer success doesn't happen smoothly, causing customers to get frustrated when their concerns and questions go unanswered.

Customer success teams are engaged from the beginning and provide specialized knowledge to ensure a migration is successful, including assessing the data and determining what needs to be migrated, planning and strategizing, and providing an overview of what the migration will look like once it's begun.

Inviting the customer success engineers at an early stage in the migration process can help prevent customer frustration and migration mishaps, allowing the representative to mitigate their concerns, ensure customers feel informed throughout the migration and prevent mistakes from happening.

Using a Migration Tool

Employing a migration tool to simplify the process and provide predictability for cost and licensing is often a go-to strategy for MSPs. Migration tools can benefit larger enterprise customers who may not know how many assets they have-customers may see the number of sites they have, but sites often carry numerous document libraries. Other assets that may be harder to see include Microsoft Team groups, where, in many cases, IT admins struggle to keep track of the number of Teams groups created since owners can create new ones daily.

Using data migration software can alleviate some of the work by doing the heavy lifting; however, MSPs still need to check the migration closely and keep a close eye on timestamps. Don't rely solely on the migration tool's completion notification. Sometimes files may not have migrated, causing issues for end-users and project delays. Instead, MSPs should investigate each transfer, such as comparing the file sizes, to see that each item moved over successfully. While it can be time-consuming, especially in the face of deadlines, doing this due diligence upfront can save time and customer frustration in the long run.

Post-Migration Customer Support and Training

Providing post-migration support to employees is an effective measure that MSPs can use to ensure a successful migration outcome. It's not uncommon for employees to struggle to adapt to the new system initially. Offering employees training sessions can help them become familiar with the new system, answer questions and concerns, and ensure everyone can collaborate effortlessly. And if employees feel more confident and proficient with the new system, this can provide a smooth transition and improve overall customer satisfaction.

Successful data migrations during divestitures require careful planning, a thorough understanding of the involved data and environments, and ongoing communication between MSPs and their customers. By following the best practices outlined above, MSPs can effectively navigate the complexities of divestitures, minimize risks, and deliver a seamless data migration experience to their customers.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tosin Vaithilingam is a senior solution architect at BitTitan, where he works on the Customer Success Team dedicated to providing customers with essential migration services such as project scoping, planning and proof-of-concept. Tosin works closely with BitTitan's customers to identify their migration needs, address complexities and develop effective migration plans. His areas of expertise include migrations, solution architecture, mobile device management (MDM), system/server installations and technology sales.