Report: Almost Half of IT Migrations Doomed to Fail

A new report finds that 44 percent of organizations have experienced some form of IT migration failure.

The 2016 State of Resilience report, released by software provider Vision Solutions, further suggests 70 percent of the more than 2,000 global IT executives surveyed were not adequately prepared for unexpected downtimes and other costs associated with migration issues. Even when downtimes are planned, nearly half the time systems are down longer than folks in the C-suite had expected.

As the government embarks on several high-profile IT migrations this year, including the Pentagon’s ambitious goal to upgrade 4 million devices to Windows 10, successful migrations are likely to play a large role in the perceived success or  failure of modernization efforts across the federal landscape.

Complex IT migrations, much like a house of cards, can crumble when a single weak link – hardware, legacy software and applications or a poor choice of cloud vendor – throws the system out of whack.

“Even one imbalance in the IT system – which includes data, applications, hardware, networks, external vendor software and partners – can be the tipping point between an organization’s success and failure,” said Alan Arnold, Vision Solutions executive vice president and chief technology officer, in a statement. “In a world where data insights lead business growth, it’s essential that IT leaders take a close look and identify the best tools and solutions to ensure resilience.”

Preparation is perhaps the largest weak point revealed in the report. Globally, 85 percent of the IT professionals surveyed either didn’t have a recovery plan or were not confident it was replaced.

Coupled with the data suggesting most IT professionals don’t have a grasp on the cost associated with migration downtimes, and it sounds like a significant percentage of IT migrations are like shots in the dark.

Evolving technologies, continued proliferation of data and an increased emphasis on IT modernization appear to be factors in increasing the migration challenge. The percentage of organizations that experienced a migration failure has increased by more than 20 percent since 2014, and respondents reported more data loss this year than the previous year, attributing some of the blame to databases that grow without accompanying disaster response plans.

(Image via Genialbaron/Shutterstock.com)