Cloud Data Warehouse

Database Migration to the Cloud: Things You Should Consider

Teresa Wingfield

December 29, 2021

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Did you know that 63% of organizations are actively migrating data from on-premises databases to the cloud? So says an IDC survey, and another 29% are planning to start a database migration within 3 years.

Carl Olofson, IDC’s Vice President of Research specializing in data management software, recently participated as a guest speaker in an Actian webinar where he discussed survey results, including the wide-ranging benefits that companies are realizing from their database migration to the cloud. The benefits include higher availability, improved security, better scalability, and much more.

At the same time, he cautioned that moving mission-critical databases to the cloud is not a decision to be taken lightly and shared great advice on determining whether you should continue with the technology that you know or try something different. Then, if you are ready to try something different, there are other questions to ask. Key among them: whether the database that drives your enterprise will be well-supported in the cloud.

Here’s his list of requirements that you need to look for in a managed database cloud service:

  • Provides transparent maintenance of database software.
  • Ensures uninterrupted operation with even performance.
  • Enables easy spin-up of database instances (this is key for development projects).
  • Provides data security policies that align with your data security policies.
  • Grows and shrinks database resources as needed.
  • Database infrastructure maintained by experienced trained professionals who are experts in the database technology in question.
  • Provides the capability for dynamic failover and disaster recovery and may include multi-region failover support.

The webinar at which Carl Olofson spoke is available on demand. You can hear Carl discuss these requirements and other factors you should take into account before shifting to the cloud. If you’re an Ingres or OpenROAD customer, I would encourage you to stay to the webinar’s end when Emma McGrattan, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Actian, discusses Ingres NeXt, Actian’s strategy for shifting to the cloud with virtually no conversion pain.

About Teresa Wingfield

Teresa Wingfield is Director of Product Marketing at Actian where she is responsible for communicating the unique value that the Actian Data Platform delivers, including proven data integration, data management and data analytics. She brings a 20-year track record of increasing revenue and awareness for analytics, security, and cloud solutions. Prior to Actian, Teresa managed product marketing at industry-leading companies such as Cisco, McAfee, and VMware.