This is the seventh post in a series (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) on the challenges organisations face as they move from having online content and tools hosted firmly on their estate to renting space in the cloud. We will help you to consider the options and guide on the steps you need to take.
Starting from our first post we have covered different aspects you need to consider as you take each step including information structure and how it is managed using Office 365 and SharePoint as a technology example. Planning for migration.
Do not even think about moving into the cloud apartment without a proper cleaning of the content buckets. Moving from an architected household to a rented place, taxes a structured audit. Clean out all redundant, outdated and trivial matter (ROT). The very same habit you have cleaning up the attic when moving out from your old house.
It is also a good idea to decorate and add any features to your new cloud apartment before the content furniture is there. It means the content will fit with any new design and adapt to any extra functionality with new features like windows and doors. This can be done by reviewing and updating your publishing templates at the same time. This will save time in the future.
Leaning upon the information governance standards, it should be easy to address the cleaning before moving, for all content owners who have been appointed to a set of collections or habitats. Most organisations could use a content vacuum cleaner, or rather use the search facilities and metric means to deliver up to date reports on:
- Active / in-Active habitats
- No clear ownership or the owner has left the building
- Metadata and link quality to content and collections to be moved across to the cloud apartments.
- Review publishing templates and update features or design to be used in the Cloud
When all active habitats and qualified content buckets have been revisited by their set of curators and information owners. The preparation and use of moving boxes, should be applied.
All moving boxes do need proper tagging, so that any moving company will be able to sort out where about the stuff should be placed in the new house, or building. For collections, and habitats, this means using the very same set of questions stated for adding a new habitat or collection to the cloud apartment house. Who, why, where and so forth, through the use of a structured workflow and form. When this first cleaning steps have been addressed, there should be automatic metadata enhancement, aligned with the information management processes to be used in the new cloud.
With decent resource descriptions and cleaned up content through the audit (ROT), this last step will auto-tag content based upon the business rules applied for the collection or habitat. Then been loaded into the content moving truck, or loading dock. Ready to added to the cloud.
All content that neither have proper assigned information ownership, or are in such a shape that migration can’t be done should persist on the estate or be archived or purged. This means that all metadata and links to either content bucket or habitat that won’t be moved in the first instances, should at least have correct and unique uri:s, address, to this content. And in the case a bucket or habitat have been run down by a demolition firm, purged. All inter-linkage to that piece of content or collection have to be changed.
This is typically a perfect quality report, to the information owners and content editors, that they need to work through prior to actually loading the content on the content dock.
Finally when all rotten data, deserted habitats and unmanageable buckets have been weeded out. It is time to prepare the moving truck, sending the content into its new destination.
Our final thread will cover how will the organisation and it habitants will be able to find content in this mix of clouds, and things left behind on the old estate? Cloud Search and Enterprise Search, seamless or a nightmare?
Please join our Live Stream on YouTube the 20th November 8.30AM – 10AM Central European Time
Fredric Landqvist research blog
Mark Morell intranet-pioneer