Before Moving Data to the Cloud: Important Questions to Address

Before moving data to the Cloud, it’s important to position your business to have the most cost-effective migration as possible. At the same time, you’ll want to make sure you have very high data integrity for the data that goes with you. According to an Oracle presentation, when figuring out which data to take with you to the Cloud, there are four main considerations:

• Data quality
• Historical data
• Reporting
• Business process optimization

Data Quality

For PeopleSoft customers have used the product for as many as 20 years, they’ve probably acquired data from various sources over the years. There’s potential that some of this data arrived from mergers and acquisitions. It’s also possible that their business processes have changed since the old data stacked up, and that data no longer fits the format or purpose of the business.

In thinking about your data, there’s several important questions to ask.  Do you really need all of the data in the Cloud? How old is the data? Is it still serving your business processes?

Additionally, is your data standardized, or do you need to take measures to standardize it before moving it to the Cloud? Look at the departments that are in your PeopleSoft system. Do you want them all to move to the Cloud?

Above all else, you’ll want to ensure that the data that moves with you to the Cloud with is accurate. It should be clean and standardized. Cloud Manager 11 equips you with tools to cross-check and validate your data. This can be helpful in cleaning your data.

Historical Data

As mentioned, many PeopleSoft customers have a multi-year history—if not multi-decade history—of running PeopleSoft for their business. That’s millions of rows of data. Does all of that data need to come with you to the future?

It’s against best practices to simply move all your data to the Cloud. Moving unnecessary data can drive your Cloud costs up with no real benefit. In general, the more you move to the Cloud, the higher the cost.

To make cost-effective decisions, you’ll want to determine which data is truly necessary for migration, and how far back your Cloud data should stretch.

Keep in mind that the further back you go, the dirtier the data will be. It is more difficult to map older data and to get it into a sensible format that the Cloud understands.

If regulations require you keep a certain number of years’ worth of data, you’ll still need to determine if you’ll migrate even older data. For instance, you may be required to be able to access seven years of data for regulatory reasons, but should you keep 12 years of data? These are important questions to consider.

Data integrity is crucial and needs to be maintained through the historical data you bring to the Cloud.

Reporting

Before moving your data to the Cloud, it’s important to understand that reporting and historical data are interconnected.

Let’s say legal or procedural specifications require your business to keep seven years of data, as discussed above. If your business prioritizes only three years of historical data, then you have options for where to keep the remaining four years of data.

One option is to move all seven years of data to the Cloud.

Another option—which is probably more cost-effective—is to migrate the three years of data and move the remaining four years to a data organizing system. You’ll also need an analytics solution that can pull data from both the Cloud and the organizational system to give you a concerted report to meet regulatory requirements.

You’ll want to compare the cost benefits of both options to see what works best for your business.

Business Process Optimization

Another question to consider before moving data to the Cloud: Are you running legacy processes that you haven’t had time to change upgrade, or enhance?

As you consider which data to migrate to the Cloud, it could be a good opportunity to take another look at your business processes. You may want to part ways with the processes that are no longer valid and bring over to the Cloud only the ones that provide value for your business as it stands today.

Cloud is set up for standard processes and best practices. Do yours fit this description?

Spend time optimizing your business processes and adapting them to standard practices in order to get the most out of your Cloud migration. This will minimize customizations.

If you need to move data that doesn’t meet standard practice requirements over to the Cloud, there are some flexible options for getting custom data into the Cloud.

Key Takeaway

Each of these considerations equips you to make smart decisions about your data migration before moving to the Cloud by taking a critical look at what you need—and what you don’t. To learn more about data management when moving to the Cloud check out this video: Data management – what happens to your PeopleSoft HCM data when you transition to the Cloud?.

For additional information on moving to Oracle Cloud HCM, check out the Quest Content Library.   

To connect with other customers who may be considering a move to the Cloud, consider joining the Move to Cloud for PeopleSoft Special Interest Group or the Move to Cloud for JD Edwards Special Interest Group.