Migration Change Management Made Easy With File Migration Simulation
Any and all enterprise projects that impact business users are going to require some level of change management activities. It’s that simple. But how can DryvIQ directly accelerate my migration project and ease my change management processes all at the same time? The answer lies in true file migration simulation.
Enterprise Content Analysis
True File Migration Simulations
DryvIQ has unique content analysis capabilities that gather a wide array of file statistics and visualizes the data into easy-to-read, configurable dashboards. But the analysis doesn’t stop there. It also provides true file migration simulations. By making live API calls to the source and destination systems, DryvIQ accurately simulates the data transfer without moving data. This simulation will identify files that may cause transfer issues and automatically flag, group, and report them to system administrators. You can click through and export all graphs and data to CSV format for additional Excel-based analysis and reporting. Then, you can disseminate that to business users for modified communications/change management activities.
DryvIQ simulation automatically categorizes content into four main buckets:
- Succeeded – content that will transfer with no issues or remediation required
- Ignored – content that DryvIQ will ‘ignore’ based on applied filtering rules
- Revised – content that DryvIQ has automatically remediated. For example, an invalid character.
- Flagged – content that DryvIQ simply cannot transfer, most commonly due to platform limitations. For instance, content larger than 15GB not supported by Office 365. Provides the root cause for the flag, as well as recommendations on how to repair the file
So let’s dig into these file migration simulation categories to see how we can enhance and ease our change management strategy.
File Migration Job Simulations
Ignored
We can configure DryvIQ to ‘ignore’ certain content attributes during the migration, like created/modified dates, extension, file type, etc.
Let’s say that your organization has implemented a retention schedule. The retention schedule states that content that hasn’t been modified within three years shouldn’t be migrated to the new platform. DryvIQ has already completed a file migration simulation, so we can easily identify and report on content that would fall into this retention policy (or other applied filters). Therefore, it will be ‘ignored’ by DryvIQ during the actual migration. As part of your migration change management initiative, you can now generate reports for your business users. Additionally, you can proactively provide awareness on what is not going to migrate to the new platform.
No more unnecessary complaints and tickets to the support team about, “why didn’t my 7-year-old recipe for margaritas I had stored on my home drive get migrated?” This also enables business users with the insight to notice any content that shouldn’t be ignored but migrated.
Revised in Transfer
Each and every platform has different rules or limitations on what they’ll accept. Such as certain file types that aren’t supported, certain characters restricted in file or folder names, or filename/path character limits. During the file migration simulation process, DryvIQ has the ability to simulate the remediation of many of these friction points. Sometimes this will result in a slightly different file name. And other times it may result in a different file type or path.
These changes, however minimal at times, can cause confusion and disrupt your business users. Think of a scenario when you are moving from a non-metadata-rich platform (Network File Servers for instance) and your business users have added important metadata to their filenames. Let’s say an invoice number. If a file name is changed, but your users aren’t made aware, this could greatly impact user adoption rates. You may even hear the “This new system sucks, I liked the old way of doing things,” word of mouth revolt. Reporting on and providing awareness of upcoming changes will drastically reduce the potential for this mutiny. And it will also empower your business to feel like they are part of the migration change management process.
Flagged
Ok, there are simply some steadfast platform limitations that DryvIQ (nor any other solution provider) can auto-remediate or overcome.
A good example of this is the maximum file size. If DryvIQ cannot transfer an item, typically due to a hard platform limitation, for instance, the item will become flagged. Like the previous examples, wouldn’t it be nice to know this ahead of time? So you can communicate this with your user base as part of the migration change management process? Now you can see more than just the rocks on the road. You can also plan on how to move them, without ever transferring even a byte of content.
Maybe your organization has many really big files out there that are better served by a different destination platform. With this flexible approach, you can now plan for potential multiple destinations, each the best solution for your content needs.
Sharing
That’s all well and good. I love it. But what about my user’s sharing habits?
As part of DryvIQ’s analysis and file migration simulation capabilities, we gather statistics on a wide variety of sharing attributes as well. We can show who’s sharing internally versus externally. Who’s generating internal and public links to content. Or, on the other hand, who’s not sharing anything at all. Who is content being shared to, and what are the most shared folders and files. These are all data points that aid in the migration change management process and ease your transition to new platforms.
Armed with this information, you can now make intelligent decisions to potentially not carry over external sharing for specific users or content. Or, alternatively, to group-specific users into migration waves that perform a lot of sharing.
Anything you can do to ensure your users and content land in the destination system with the exact data and attributes you desire will make your job easier. Not to mention decrease support desk costs, and make business users happy.
The bottom line is this – migrations are complex. When going on vacation, do you like to have your reservations made, your route planned, and your schedule locked in? Or, do you want to wander around aimlessly and lost in a foreign place? Your family is upset that there’s nothing to do and nowhere to stay. And the whole trip just ends up in complaints and dissatisfaction.
This is basically a migration without DryvIQ.
