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How can firms migrate historical eComms data to the cloud?

Moving historical electronic communications from an on-premise archive to the cloud requires more than transferring files from one system to another. Firms need to understand what data they hold, where it should be stored, how it will be converted and validated, and how ongoing communications capture will work once the migration is complete.

Global Relay’s guide sets out an eight-step pathway for planning, transferring, validating, and signing off a migration while preserving the historical data needed for legal, compliance, supervision, and business purposes.

To learn more about how Global Relay solutions are built security-first to protect your data, operations, reputation, and peace of mind, download the PDF or read our security strategy.

Eight steps for a successful eComms archive migration

1. Define your business requirements

Start by identifying what legal, compliance, HR, IT, and business users need from the future archive. Requirements may include eDiscovery and legal hold, regulatory recordkeeping and supervision, employee monitoring, data security, and continued access to historical records.

Defining these requirements before selecting or configuring a cloud archive helps ensure the migration supports the teams that will rely on the data after the project is complete.

2. Determine where your data will be stored

Firms should understand where archived communications will reside and who may be able to access them. Data location, privacy obligations, security controls, and jurisdictional requirements can all influence the choice of cloud provider and hosting environment.

3. Collaborate with your cloud provider

A successful migration depends on clear coordination between the firm and its archiving provider. Before work begins, both sides should agree timelines, migration priorities, responsibilities, data sets, validation requirements, and project sign-off processes.

Internal IT teams are particularly important because they understand the source systems, historical archive structure, and business requirements surrounding the data being moved.

4. Select and transfer the data that needs to be migrated

A migration provides an opportunity to assess historical repositories and determine which information still serves a business, legal, or regulatory purpose. Firms should confirm the date range, structure, file types, and formats of the data selected for import before transfer begins.

The guide also recommends protecting data during transfer, including using encryption and appropriate controls for files or physical media sent to the archive provider.

5. Review data conversion and resolve errors

Historical archives can contain corrupt files, unsupported formats, incomplete date information, malformed messages, or other conversion issues. Before import, firms should review the provider’s conversion results and address failed or problematic data where possible.

A clear conversion report gives the firm a record of what was successfully processed and what still requires attention before migration continues.

6. Verify that historical data migrated successfully

Once the import is complete, the migrated archive should be checked against the original source data. The guide recommends comparing message counts and volumes, reviewing representative samples, checking different data types, and confirming any failed or deduplicated items.

This validation step helps demonstrate that the historical record has been transferred completely and accurately.

7. Provide final project sign-off

After validation is complete, the firm can formally approve the migration. Any physical media used during the transfer should then be returned or securely destroyed in line with the organization’s data-handling requirements.

8. Confirm ongoing capture and archive functionality

Migration does not end when historical data arrives in the cloud. Firms should confirm that current communications are continuing to be captured from source systems and preserved alongside the migrated records.

Authorized teams should also have the access and functionality they need for search, supervision, retention, eDiscovery, legal hold, analytics, and ongoing audit or compliance activity.

What should firms check before migrating an eComms archive?

• Which historical data still needs to be retained?
• What formats and data sources are included in the migration?
• Where will the data be stored and who can access it?
• How will data be encrypted and transferred?
• How will conversion errors and failed records be reported?
• How will the migrated archive be reconciled with the source system?
• Who is responsible for approving each stage of the project?
• How will ongoing communications capture be validated after migration?

Why does migration validation matter?

For regulated communications, a migration needs to preserve more than access to old messages. Firms may need to demonstrate that historical records remain complete, searchable, and available for supervision, investigations, legal requests, or regulatory production.

Documenting conversion results, reconciling message counts, validating representative samples, and confirming ongoing capture can help create a clearer audit trail around the migration process.

Explore the full guide

Read the full Eight Simple Steps to Migrating eComms Data to the Cloud guide for a deeper comparison of cloud and on-premise archiving, including cost, deployment, resilience, scalability, security, access, and the practical migration process.