Using the cloud for data migration: practical issues and legal implications

The hype about cloud computing is everywhere so it is important to distinguish between the perceived benefits, actual benefits and associated risks.

Cloud computing has been around for years, albeit in different guises, but the technology has now allowed it to gather sufficient momentum to allow greater flexibility and versatility – a fact echoed by Guy Mucklow, the managing director of Postcode Anywhere.

Postcode Anywhere, which offers web services and software to look up UK and international addresses, has been using the cloud for several years in its service offerings and its latest use is its MyServices suite of cloud service offerings, which can be used to facilitate data migration between legacy and replacement systems through the cloud.

"The internet provides an ideal medium for managing data between distributed systems compared to traditional EDI [electronic data interchange] methods. This allows data to be more easily moved between different systems and platforms at a much lower cost than has historically been the case," says Mucklow.

"We've seen the cloud evolve over the last 10 years and realised from an early stage that the use of web technologies makes it easier to access different systems. One of our core focuses has always been delivering data anywhere – to any software on any device anywhere in the world. We started with postal data but we realised that the same technology can be used by our customers to make their own data available anywhere and, crucially, make it easy to share and move it around."

Using the cloud for data migration

Traditionally, one-off batch cleansing jobs have been used to move data from one system to another, in what can be complex and expensive tasks. However, this is starting to change. With communication historically at the heart of internet technologies, the cloud offers a convenient way to connect systems together. In particular, it allows a phased, rather than "big bang" approach to data migration, which can be achieved incrementally and in near real-time.

So what are the other benefits of using the cloud for data migration?

First, it is far easier to manage data across physically different customer sites – even across the globe. Second, the cloud bridges the gap where systems are different. For example, migrating data from an onsite premises CRM system to Salesforce.com.

In reality, the future of cloud data management is in data virtualisation, enabling "migrations" to become more agile and responsive than traditional methods. This can involve, for instance, allowing accounts to be accessed through Salesforce.com, while keeping the data in Sage. This avoids uploading all the data in a one-off operation, by allowing the data to reside in Sage, while virtualising it in Salesforce.com, to provide real-time benefits and liberate the data.

Postcode Anywhere, for example, says its MyServices technologies enable customers to move data into and out of Salesforce CRM instantly. It says this makes it easier to share information across systems without the risk of multiple copies getting out of date.

Database managers need to do more than transfer data from yesterday's silo to today's. In this context, Sage data for example, when used by an accounts team, can be accessed in real-time by the support team through their CRM system, while engineers can also access it through their iPhones and synchronise it offline. The cloud offers true flexibility in this respect.

Cloud-based data platforms allow a more comprehensive view of data, which addresses a requirement of users wanting more data in more places than before. As the adoption of cloud technologies increases, we will start to see a plethora of mobile, handheld, office, home, and leisure devices hooked into central repositories of data stored securely in the cloud and served out virtualised. In this sense, it's a misnomer to refer to data migration in the cloud – it's really data ubiquity.

Legal and business considerations

It is important to be alive to the legal and business risks of cloud computing in the context of data migration. Without considering and addressing the implications of these, the cloud strategy of a business will be seriously flawed. So what are some of the key legal and business issues?