Bachelor's Thesis Joschka Fischer

Motivation

Today, an increasing number of corporations of any size tries to move their data away from dedicated in-house databases to third party off-site platforms.

This migration "to the cloud" is motivated by different factors: Organizationally, less in-house expertise to maintain both hardware storage and software running on top of it is required. Economically, the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the off-site solution is expected to be lower due synergy effects the providing cloud company passes down to their customers. Also, most of the pricing of today's cloud storage services is dynamic so companies only pay for what they really use, eliminating the need to keep extra capacities for rare peak scenarios. 

However, the process of one-time migration to cloud databases, its details, benefits and specific aspects (such as data security and data throughput) are only sparsely researched until now. This bachelor's thesis explores on the topic by means of a comprehensive literature research. 

Content

The key aspects to be researched include:  

• Generic characteristics linked to Cloud Computing and their impacts on data migration to the cloud as a delicate process
• Databases offerings (both relational and NoSQL types) in the cloud, their technology, tool and migration support as well as business model
• Current scientific literature in the field of data migration to off-site storage services
• Migration providers (both Migration-as-a-Service and pure consulting) and their specific offerings, target market and best practices
• Discuss and compare findings of the prior aspects

Approach

1. Research concerning (traditional) data migration in general and cloud computing specifics
2. Study of cloud database vendors (using original research, secondary data and direct contact if possible)
3. Study of migration service providers (using original research, secondary data and direct contact if possible)
4. Generate Survey to assess today's perception of 'data migration to the cloud‘ as viewed by people in the industry  
5. Assemble, analyse and compare findings (data patterns)

Literature

• Mainly online, search engines; 

• Morris, J. (2006). Practical Data Migration (3rd ed., p. 228). Swindon, United Kingdom: British Informatics Society Ltd.
• Papers published mainly since 2010