Seamlessly migrating 15 clients and their 677TB of data in only 7 months

Summary

NTT DATA embarked on a challenging cloud transformation and migration project when their Johannesburg Managed Cloud Platform was discontinued. Fifteen clients had to be migrated to different solutions that would meet their individual needs. These solutions could involve Azure, virtual data centers or on-premises setups. Meticulous planning and execution ensured the migration of 672 servers 30% faster than projected, all the while maintaining 99.9% uptime and meeting SLAs, resulting in optimized performance and scalability for clients.

Sunsetting a platform sets a complex migration in motion

NTT DATA’s decision to discontinue their Managed Cloud Platform kicked off an enormous and complex cloud transformation and migration project. In Africa, this involved moving 15 clients’ environments from the Johannesburg Managed Cloud Platform to each client’s preferred solution.

While the general recommendation was to migrate clients to Microsoft Azure, we had to engage with each client to understand their IT strategy and, if needed, identify alternative approaches. Depending on the client’s needs, the migration could be to Microsoft Azure, virtual data centers or even an on-premises environment.

With 672 servers to migrate, the scale of the project was daunting. In addition to meeting each client’s unique needs, the cloud technical team had to migrate our clients’ critical systems to the cloud while continuing to offer their usual support for daily operations. Users had to experience consistent and uninterrupted access to services. And the migration had to be completed fast.

Planning is key to making the process run smoothly

We believe that each person can make a significant difference. So, for our cloud transformation and migration project, we added only one person to our cloud technical team. Since the team wasn’t as big as the project, the secret to migrating 672 servers without downtime – or any interruption to business as usual – had to be meticulous planning and following the plan to the letter.

We approached the migrations as one project, but the planning had to consider each of the 15 client environments, their system dependencies and specific requirements such as complying with regulations for processing personal information. The planning and migration itself involved close collaboration between different departments, and between experts in different fields. This was key to migrating the environments while keeping them operational and offering support.

Our proactive risk management strategy played a pivotal role in maintaining stability. By identifying potential challenges in advance, we could implement mitigations swiftly, guaranteeing that any unforeseen issues had minimal impact on our operations.

Massive migration without downtime or disruptions

Our careful planning and agile approach to migrating clients from our Managed Cloud Platform allowed us to migrate 15 clients’ environments in only seven months, 30% faster than projected. With 99.9% uptime throughout the migration process, users experienced consistent and uninterrupted access to services.

Taming complex migrations

Our skilled team collaborated closely to analyze variables and carefully consider the complexities of each migration. Their technical finesse ensured that clients experienced the process as a simple migration, as we handled the complexity in the background.

Service that goes above and beyond

Despite the complexity of migrating systems, our team consistently met or outperformed 98% of service-level agreements (SLAs) throughout the project lifecycle.

Optimized performance and scalability

Our systems can now handle increased workloads, and our clients can continue business as usual, knowing that their environment has been migrated to a to a solution that fulfills their business needs.