Migrating from an on-premises solution to the Hyland Cloud

Ready to make the move?

Through numerous customer migrations, Hyland has fine-tuned our migration process to make the process as smooth as possible.

We're making a few assumptions about your solution when we talk about this general migration process.

We assume:

• All of the modules you are expecting to use in the Hyland Cloud work as expected

• You are using Microsoft SQL Server as your database platform

• Your solutions' versions are supported in the Hyland Cloud

If any of these three things don’t apply to your solution, it’s not a problem.

We might just need a different discussion about how best to customize your migration.

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Step 1: Deliver a copy of your solution to Hyland

Make sure to include:

• A backup of your database

• Your disk groups

• Any other files needed for the solution

Remember what you shared with Hyland, especially with disk groups. You don’t want to send duplicate data during updates before “go live.” Avoid this by promoting them all just prior to database backup.

Once Hyland has the data, we’ll start setting up its new home in our cloud.

Step 2: Testing, testing, testing

Your cloud solution is ready for testing, so get in there and test away. Track your changes and we’ll track ours, then together we will apply those changes during “go live.”

But wait, there's more

While we’re testing the solution, you can upload data, i.e. disk groups, as you continue to use your on-premises solution. And we want you to. This helps ensure the smallest amount of final data possible when it’s time to “go live.” Keeping disk groups up-to-date in the Hyland Cloud will greatly benefit the “go live” schedule.

Step 3: It's a date

Once all testing is complete and the solution is working as expected, we’ll schedule the “go live” date. Note that during the “go live” process, your production solution will need to be offline.

Hyland will try to accommodate the most convenient time for you when we schedule the “go live” — including nights and weekends — to minimize day-to-day disruptions.

Patience is a virtue

We know you’re excited to launch your solution; or you might believe that setting a deadline will help motivate the team to complete work faster. Experience has taught us to recommend that you wait until testing is complete before setting a “go live” date. This avoids schedule changes due to unforeseen delays.

Step 4: Ready to launch

There are a couple of things we need to do before we can go live.

• First: Stop all on-premises solution work. A clean cutover from on-premises to cloud-hosted is best, so tell your users to avoid transaction creation in the on-premises solution during the final migration.

• Second: Remember that parallel project we talked about? Now is the time to upload a fresh database backup and that remaining disk group data. Its size is generally the largest time constraint in the “go live” timeline.

Step 5: Let's test that one more time

The data’s received, the final disk groups are in place, the database is restored and we’ve made all the changes noted during the initial testing phase. Before we go live, this is a good time to give the solution one last look.

Let’s give the solution one last round of testing to make sure everything is operating as expected.

Step 6: It's live

We did it. We went through all the steps necessary to make the move from an on-premises solution to one hosted in the Hyland Cloud. Now you can reap all the benefits of this strategic decision:

• Secure: Strict security protocols provide superior security than most customers could provide themselves

• Supported: A team of credentialed cloud services professionals provide 24/7/365 support

• Reliable: Since the inception of our cloud, customers’ data has been available with 99.99 percent uptime

• Local: Complete transparency means customers choose the country in which all copies of their content is stored

• Compliant: Accommodates demanding SLAs and compliance/ regulatory requirements

Checklist

A quick overview of the Hyland cloud migration process for your reference:

• Make a complete backup of the system

• Promote all disk groups just prior to the database backup

• Hyland receives the solution data, deploys the solution for testing and tracks all changes

• Test the released solution and track all changes

• Send disk group deltas during the testing process, making the final data needed at “go live” as small as possible

• Complete testing

• Determine a “go live” schedule

• At the start of “go live,” turn off on-premises production solution

• Send a full database backup and any remaining disk group data

• Hyland restores the database and puts the final disk groups in place

• Hyland makes all needed changes to allow the solution to be hosted

• Make needed changes to allow the solution to be hosted

• Solution released for final testing

• Solution is live in the Hyland Cloud