Data migration projects are something that all IT departments are familiar with, however they are also some of the most time intensive tasks that IT has to deal with. Technology moves fast and most businesses try to keep up with it by having regular updates to both hardware and software every few years. Typically businesses these technology refresh cycles occur every three years.
While new technologies may bring new business efficiencies there is no denying that the actual process of implementing the new technology can be time and resource intensive. In terms of migrating to a new device such as a laptop or desktop, or upgrading to a new operating system. This is usually done manually with IT taking over the computer so that they can manually backup all the data stored on the machine to an external drive and then manually move it to the new device. This kind of backup can result in data loss due to human error. Copying data across device like this can take anywhere from 20 minutes for a lightly used machines to 4 hours for a computer that has a lot of data stored on it.
Let’s look at the numbers:
Your scheduled technology refresh cycle period has arrived for laptop users, there are 1000 of them in your business. You have allocated one IT technician to implement the project.
- 1 technician at $35 an hour
- An average of three hours for one user
That means the migration cost is $105 dollars per device every three years, not taking into account the downtime the user has while their computer is replaced nor the device cost.
When you look at a breakdown of the costs you begin to see that technology refresh projects cost far more than just the new technology itself. If your business has 1000 users you will be losing $10 5000 every three years or $35 000 per year.
What could your business do with $35 000 per year or what more important project would you rather have IT focusing on for those 3000 hours or 375 working days?
Apart from how expensive it is to manually do these refresh projects another disadvantage is that the data is not stored in the same places that it was on the old computer, making it difficult for users to find their documents or get back to work quickly.
However, data migration projects do not have to be time intensive or halt productivity. Certain software packages like Cibecs allow IT managers to backup data from endpoint devices like laptops and desktops without the user ever having to stop working. They can then use this backup to migrate files to a new device into the exact same locations they were store in on the old device, regardless of operating system. These automated migration projects can be done at the touch of a button, allowing IT to focus on more important work and users to continue working till their new device is ready.
About Cibecs
Cibecs is a complete endpoint data backup and protection software solution designed with business in mind. The Cibecs solution not only protects data it also lowers infrastructure loads and costs, and makes data migration simple.
Discover a complete endpoint data security at www.cibecs.com
Click here to watch the video on how Cibecs works.
