How MSPs can help their customers capitalise on transformation and user and content migration

The dispersal of storage environments poses a significant challenge for the modern organisation. A report recently found that 79 per cent of companies store sensitive data in the cloud, use up to 41 cloud services each, and these services are not necessarily vetted by the IT unit. This means that the environment is not simply lacking cohesion, but poses a security risk with many open vectors for attack.

Adding to that complexity is the increasing need for organisations to enable work from home policies. It is now incumbent on organisations to have a robust storage environment that will enable maximum productivity and collaboration among teams when they are not able to work together in the same physical environment.

The challenge that enterprises have is in streamlining their content and storage environment so that it is efficient, robust, scalable, and secure. The problem is that migrating to efficient storage environments is challenging, both in terms of technology and strategy. Consequently organisations of all sizes are turning to MSPs to manage the design of a new, efficient environment, and manage the migration to it.

The challenge with cloud migrations

The key challenges that many MSPs will face in taking disparate, 40+ storage location environments and restructuring towards a new level of efficiency include:

• It is labour-intensive – manually taking data and copying it across platforms can be time-consuming work, particularly if the datasets are large.
• The risk of human error – if key data sets, files, or folders are overlooked, it can become difficult to track them down. This is especially true with any archived or back-up data. If something has gone wrong, it might not be noticeable for weeks or months, at which point it is too late.
• Regulatory issues involved – many organisations need to be cognizant of where their content moves and is stored, and have a regulatory requirement that data does not pass through or spend time stored in datacentres that are not within the country.
• Addressing security concerns – content in transit within the cloud is a potential security risk, and organisations need ensure that the end solution and mix of storage environments are protected with enterprise-class security.

These challenges can make the movement of data sets or environments complex, time consuming, and expensive for the MSP. This is where Movebot comes in. Movebot has been designed as a simple tool that an MSP can leverage to both their benefit and their clients, by making the migration of content and users across clouds automated, time-efficient, and cost effective.

With the ability to move up to hundreds of terabytes of content and user information per migration, Movebot is an automated service, and simple in execution – you point the tool at the content, user profiles, and anything else stored in one location that you wish to migrate, and direct it to the end destination. An email is sent once the migration is completed. This immediately eliminates the labour-intensive nature of migration work, but also the risk of human error, and provides security peace of mind as Movebot leverages best-of-breed security protocols to protect the data in transit. Finally, the tool supports all leading brands of online storage, allowing MSPs to maintain their client’s regulatory requirements around the storage of data and user information.

Another key benefit of the Movebot solution is that it maintains the security environment without the risk of anything being overlooked. Movebot automates not only the migration of the content and user information, but also all permissions and metadata – there’s no need to restructure or reset, and for the user, the experience following the migration remains completely unchanged.

The benefits of migration

In helping organisations adopt an efficient and consolidated storage environment, MSPs will be able to deliver the following benefits to their clients:

• Cost savings – managing 40+ storage environments is expensive in terms of lost productivity. It also costs a lot in monthly subscriptions to maintain, especially when you consider that with cloud storage it is generally less expensive to scale and add capacity to existing subscriptions than to set up multiple “entry tier” storage environments.
• Better data and user security and continuity – with a consolidated storage environment, everything from data redundancy and backup through to individual user security becomes easier to monitor and maintain.
• Improved collaboration and remote working capabilities – when teams are all sharing documents and content from the one source, it becomes possible to work on documents in real time and minimise version control issues that often occur when teams rely on email. It also becomes possible to work seamlessly with partners and overseas offices, broadening the organisation’s access to talent.

Any MSP looking to provide clients with a seamless cloud-based environment should look at content and user migration as a foundation for improving that organisation’s productivity and efficiency. For the MSP itself, though, finding the right tools to assist with migration can be a challenge. After all, this is a project that only needs to be undertaken infrequently; once at the start, and then only occasionally to “tidy” storage environments up. Many migration tools are sold on a subscription basis where there will be long periods in which they are not being utilised. With Movebot, MSPs only pay when they undertake migrations, leading to long-term cost-savings and helping the MSP itself run the most efficient business possible for its clients.

Traditionally the migrations of data, content and users has been a major IT project, requiring planning, analysing and trialling before execution. It has also been a highly disruptive process for both the organisation, its users, and ultimately its customers. Movebot’s solution eliminates this by adopting a “copy and paste” approach to migration that allows for the seamless shift to a new wholesale shift to a new environment. For MSPs, this becomes a major value-add in allowing their customers to maintain seamless, dynamic, and efficient environments without needing to undertake a change management project each time they want to capitalise on a new opportunity. With “agile” being the keyword that organisations are looking for from their IT environments, Movebot ensures that the data – the content, user profiles, and security – is fully primed for a genuine agile environment.

For more information on the Movebot solution for data migration, click here.