The Top 6 Benefits of Data Center Migration

Many forward-thinking businesses are considering how they can transfer and deploy their current data center’s infrastructure to a new operating environment. This could include moving an existing data center to a new physical location or migrating from on-premises to cloud platforms.

With promises of cost savings, better efficiency and the elimination of data redundancies, it’s understandable that a significant number of organizations have data center migration top of mind. Here, we will explore the key benefits of data migration and the best data center migration solutions for IT managers.

What Are the Benefits of Data Center Migration?

Whatever the size of your company, migrating your data center — whether to a new on-premise, hybrid cloud or fully managed service solution — involves a great deal of thought and effort. However daunting it sounds, the following benefits of data center migration make it worth the effort:

1. Modernized Hardware and Software

A data center migration presents a great opportunity to update hardware and software. Newer equipment will have fewer unplanned maintenance needs, greater energy efficiency and can also reduce company liability.

For example, more modern servers offer faster processing speeds, while newer software can provide better security and compatibility.

Advancements in technology tend to make data center hardware and software obsolete more quickly than in other industries. If you have been maintaining older equipment, a migration is the perfect time to assess how newer hardware and software can streamline operations and enhance efficiency.

As you prepare for the migration, consider conducting an IT asset audit to determine the capabilities of your current equipment. This process can help you identify the priority areas where your data center needs updates.

2. Cost Savings

From renting space and training personnel to maintaining equipment and paying energy bills, data centers aren’t cheap.

Although data center migration involves an initial investment, once it is complete, data centers can benefit from substantial and ongoing cost savings. Performing a data center migration allows you to spot and address everything from data redundancies to wasteful processes. Depending on the solution a business chooses, savings can range from a reduction in servers to the elimination of on-premise equipment and the associated maintenance costs.

Furthermore, equipment upgrades with data migrations can significantly improve energy consumption. The United States Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that data centers consumed 176 terawatt-hours in 2023 and will account for up to 12% of the total U.S. electricity usage by 2028. Optimizing energy utilization can net long-term cost savings for data centers.

3. Increased Efficiency

When companies grow faster than their planned data centers’ capacities, the result is data sprawl — a series of temporary fixes that can act as a patchwork for inefficient processes. The opposite of data sprawl is the consolidation of data management systems — this is a key benefit of data migration.

A well-implemented migration can vastly improve a company’s operating environment — the efficiencies your data center gains will have a positive impact on its day-to-day productivity. Along with reductions in energy usage, data center migrations promote the most efficient storage and handling of companies’ data.

4. Better Security

Security is paramount for data centers. Migrating to a new location or upgrading existing hardware allows you to improve your security threat posture. Whether you’re integrating new threat detection and prevention strategies or upgrading to more robust and secure equipment, data migration can enhance your security by:

• Protecting against malware attacks.
• Implementing stronger data encryption.
• Restricting unauthorized access through more granular access control policies.
• Meeting evolving regulatory compliance and industry standards.

Having a plan to protect your assets is also important, as the data center migration process can expose vulnerabilities in your network. A third-party data center services provider can provide extra support and protection to ensure a successful migration.

5. Scalability

Keeping up with increasing demands is a constant challenge for data centers, and planning for scalability is vital when considering a migration. Migrating to the cloud or a larger on-premises location facilitates scalability for organizations that need to expand operations past their current capacity.

A new data center architecture can more easily scale up or down to meet evolving demands better than a legacy system. Cloud and hybrid data center migrations, for example, provide greater flexibility to optimize performance.

6. Clearer Operational Vision

While the thorough research and careful planning that go into a successful migration may sound more like requirements of the process, they are benefits in themselves. A data center migration forces a business to review how its current technologies and data structures stand up to newer versions. This close inspection will help you gain a clearer vision of your data center’s future operational capabilities. It also builds awareness of the opportunities new forms of data management offer — ones that might otherwise be missed or overlooked.

The data migration process can inform a new and improved data management policy for your entire organization. With a well-thought-out migration, your organization can benefit from better methods of data management that improve operations. As you build your vision of where you want to be, an established plan and a coordinated team are critical parts of the process.

Achieve Streamlined Data Migration With DataSpan

As the top data center migration experts for IT management, DataSpan can help optimize your strategy to ensure cost-efficiency, security and long-term success. We provide vendor-agnostic advice and support for streamlined, cost-effective data migration, as well as a range of other data center IT services.

With more than half of the Fortune 1000 on our pleased client list, our knowledgeable consultants have the expertise to help your business select the solution that meets your needs. For more information, contact DataSpan today.