Your business data in the cloud may include customer records, financial information, emails, files, employee records, and years of business history. You probably access that information every day through the software and online tools your company relies on. But have you ever stopped to ask what would happen to it if you decided to stop using one of those tools?
Signing up for new software is usually the easy part. Moving your information somewhere else can be much more complicated.
Some platforms make it relatively simple to export your data. Others may provide only part of it, use file formats that are difficult to move into another system, charge additional fees, or require the provider’s help. You may technically own your data while still having limited control over how easily you can take it somewhere else.
That matters even if you’re perfectly happy with your current technology. Prices change. Companies get acquired. Products change or disappear. Your business grows. A platform that worked well five years ago may no longer fit what you need today.
Knowing how you would get your information out before you need to leave gives your business something valuable: options.
Your Business Data in the Cloud May Be in More Places Than You Realize
You don’t have to consider yourself a “cloud-based business” to rely heavily on cloud technology.
Think about the tools your company uses for accounting, payroll, email, customer management, file storage, scheduling, project management, or industry-specific tasks. If you sign in through a website or app and the provider stores your information for you, chances are at least some of your business data is stored in the cloud.
You may hear these products described as Software as a Service, or SaaS. But you don’t need to remember the acronym. You probably know them simply as the programs and online tools your business uses every day.
These tools offer some significant advantages. Your team can access information from different locations and devices. Updates often happen automatically. Your business also doesn’t have to maintain every application on a server sitting in your office.
The convenience, however, can make it easy to overlook an important question:
If you stopped using one of those systems tomorrow, what could you actually take with you?
Owning Your Data and Being Able to Move It Aren’t the Same Thing
Knowing that your business owns its data is important. But ownership and portability aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Imagine that your company has used the same customer management or industry-specific software for years. You decide it’s time to switch, so you request an export of your information.
You may receive your customer or client records but discover that notes, attachments, or historical activity aren’t included. Or perhaps the provider gives you everything, but some of it arrives in a file format that your new system can’t easily use.
Technically, you got your data back. Practically, moving it may still be a problem.
This is known as data portability: the ability to retrieve your information from one system and use it somewhere else. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) identifies data portability as an important consideration when moving between cloud services. Standard formats can make that transition considerably easier.
The important question isn’t simply, “Can we export our data?”
It’s “Can we export our data in a form that is complete, usable, and can actually move with our business?”
What Should You Know Before You Need to Leave?
You don’t need a detailed exit plan for every online tool your company uses. Start with the systems that hold information your business depends on every day.
For each of those systems, ask a few practical questions:
- What information can we export?
- Is anything excluded from the export?
- What file format will we receive?
- Can another platform actually use those files?
- Are documents, attachments, images, notes, and historical records included?
- Can we export the information ourselves, or does the provider have to do it?
- Is there a fee for a complete export or help with a migration?
- How long would the process take?
- How long can we access our information after canceling the service?
- What happens to our data after the account closes?
You don’t necessarily need perfect answers to every question. Different systems handle data differently, and moving from one platform to another may always require some planning.
The goal is to know where the potential obstacles are before you’re under pressure to make a change.
Cornerstone IT Tip
Test the Exit Before You Need It
Don’t settle for seeing an “Export” button and assuming you’re covered. For your most important systems, consider performing a test export before you actually need one.
Look at what you receive. Are the records complete? Are attachments included? Can you open the files? Would the information make sense to someone who wasn’t looking at it inside the original software?
A test export can reveal a lot more than a vendor’s promise that “your data can be exported.”
An Export Is Not the Same as a Backup
Being able to export information from an online platform doesn’t necessarily mean your business has a reliable backup of that information.
An export is generally designed to let you retrieve data from a system. A backup serves a different purpose: it gives you a way to recover information if something is accidentally deleted, corrupted, compromised, or otherwise unavailable.
The company providing your software may also maintain backups of its systems. However, those backups are primarily designed to keep its service operating. They aren’t necessarily an independent backup created around your business’s recovery needs.
The distinction becomes especially important when you consider two very different situations.
If you decide to change software providers, you need to know whether you can move your information.
If important information disappears or becomes unusable, you need to know whether you can recover it.
Those aren’t the same problem, and they shouldn’t rely on the same solution.
We’ve discussed this before when looking at why immutable backups matter for small businesses. A strong backup strategy protects information from being changed or deleted and gives your business a known path to recovery.
Your technology plan should ultimately be able to answer both questions:
Can we recover our information if something goes wrong?
Can we move our information if we decide to go somewhere else?
If you can’t confidently answer both, there’s a gap worth finding before you need either option.
When Your Business Data in the Cloud Limits Your Choices
Sometimes a business stays with a software provider because the platform continues to be the best choice. Other times, it stays because leaving has become too difficult.
The technology industry calls this vendor lock-in. It happens when changing providers becomes so complicated, expensive, or disruptive that a business feels stuck with the system it already has.
Maybe the price increases significantly. Another platform may offer features that better fit your business. Service may decline, or a product may change after an acquisition. Your company may simply outgrow a system that worked perfectly well when you first chose it.
If moving years of information would require months of work, substantial expense, or the risk of losing important records, those alternatives become much harder to consider.
And that means the real cost of being stuck isn’t necessarily the monthly software bill.
It’s the loss of choice.
Knowing that your information is complete, accessible, and reasonably portable gives your business more flexibility. You can evaluate technology based on what works best for your company rather than what would be hardest to leave behind.
Don’t Wait Until You Need the Exit
The worst time to discover that your business can’t easily retrieve its information is when you’re already under pressure to make a change.
That doesn’t mean you need an elaborate exit strategy for every online tool your company uses. Instead, start with the systems that would create the biggest disruption if your business suddenly couldn’t access them or needed to replace them.
Know what information those systems contain. Understand how you can retrieve it. Find out whether you would need the provider’s help to move it. And make sure someone in your organization knows where that information is documented.
The same thinking should apply when you’re considering new technology. Before committing to a platform that may eventually hold years of important business information, ask about the exit as well as the entrance.
You may never need to use that exit plan.
But knowing it’s there means your business gets to decide when it’s time to stay, when it’s time to change, and what happens to your information along the way.
Your business shouldn’t have to wait for a pricing change, service problem, or urgent technology transition to find out how much control it really has over its information.
A good technology strategy looks beyond whether the tools you’re using today are working. It also considers where your business data in the cloud lives, how it’s protected, how it can be recovered, and what would happen if your business needed to move it somewhere else.
At Cornerstone IT Professionals, we help businesses look at the bigger picture. That includes understanding the technology you rely on today and identifying potential gaps before they become expensive or disruptive problems.
Not sure how easily your business could retrieve or move its critical data? Contact Cornerstone IT Professionals to start the conversation.