Migration of MagentaCLOUD to Nextcloud by T-Systems

Executive summary

Deutsche Telekom migrated millions of MagentaCLOUD users from a third-party platform to a fully sovereign, open-source Nextcloud environment hosted on T-Systems’ Open Telekom Cloud (OTC). With Nextcloud, Telekom gained complete control over data protection, security, and compliance while delivering a modern, seamless and feature-rich collaboration platform.

The six-month live migration, powered by T-Systems’ Vamosa Migration Architect and closely coordinated with Nextcloud – ensured continuous service, compatibility handling, and full validation of all data. The project was finished ahead of schedule and resulted in an a resilient, high-performance architecture built on EU-hosted, open-source technology.

With Nextcloud at its core, MagentaCLOUD now provides advance collaboration tools, integrated online office capabilities, and GDPR-compliant hosting in Germany. This foundation enables Deutsche Telekom to innovate independently and continue to deliver a seamless user experience for millions of customers.

About Deutsche Telekom & T-Systems

Deutsche Telekom is the largest telecommunications provider in Europe. They operate several subsidiaries worldwide including T-Mobile in the U.S.A.

T-Systems is Deutsche Telekom’s business-customer IT affiliate and a digital transformation specialist with operations in 20 countries worldwide. With a focus on intelligent and scalable data migrations, T-Systems has been delivering large and complex data migration projects using Vamosa software and services since 2010. T-Systems also operates the Open Telekom Cloud (OTC) which is a scalable and secure public cloud platform.

Telekom and Nextcloud have partnered up to provide an open source, 100% EU hosted, transparent and privacy respecting cloud platform.

Deutsche Telekom chooses to deploy Nextcloud for its MagentaCLOUD

It all started with the decision of Telekom to develop MagentaCLOUD according to its own ideas in the future. For years, Deutsche Telekom used a third-party platform to manage its cloud. However, the need for an advanced, modern solution with unmatched data protection standards, high flexibility and additional functionalities grew.

A Nextcloud solution for Deutsche Telekom’s MagentaCLOUD meant that all their data would be entirely hosted on their Open Telekom Cloud (OTC) infrastructure in Germany. As such, it would conform to strict German and European data protection laws and regulations, including the GDPR. Both the Open Telekom Cloud (OTC) and Nextcloud software are open-source, fusing together the strengths of all participants to ensure high scalability, security and rapid innovations.

Overall, Deutsche Telekom’s goal is to provide its customers with the best user experience possible. New functionalities for users like  collaborating on documents in real time, advanced sharing capabilities and improved security measures all were possible with Nextcloud.

The Implementation: Migration phase with T-Systems

Over the span of six months, T-Systems migrated MagentaCLOUD’s data from the third-party to the Telekom hosted Nextcloud solution within the Open Telekom Cloud (OTC). They deployed their Migration Architect software in the OTC, alongside the Nextcloud solution.

For the millions of Deutsche Telekom users, it was critical that the platform stay active during the entirety of the migration. The migration thus had to be a ‘live’ process where data was first copied over and then kept in sync during the migration period. To achieve that, T-Systems had to address a series of challenges as both systems had different capabilities and features. Issues that showed up during the migration had to be addressed immediately and automatically, for example by ensuring that any non-compliant file names or paths would be addressed immediately.

Requirements

• Bring full platform on-premise
• Implement migration while source platform can still be used
• Limit migration duration
• Expand MagentaCLOUD with attractive new functionalities for users
• High flexibility for users
• Achieve seamless integration with their other products

The Challenge: Moving large volumes of data

Background

Moving large volumes of data has always been a challenge. If the data is moving to a new data center or cloud platform with no changes, then it’s relatively simple occurring over a dedicated data line or physical move on portable storage devices. However, when the data is moving to a different platform or storage system (for example, a third party file sharing solution) the complexities become much greater. Typically, there will be compatibility issues and a requirement for the data to be cleansed or transformed in some way before being loaded to the new platform. In these situations, achieving a successful migration using a traditional scripted approach will not be straightforward.

Solution

The T-Systems‘ Vamosa team deployed their Migration Architect software in Open Telekom Cloud (OTC), alongside the Nextcloud solution. Access to the source data was over a dedicated 10Gbps data line through the source of the third party’s system API.

The combination of a fully featured and scalable cloud platform along with the flexible Vamosa software allowed for the design of a powerful and customizable migration solution sharing common message queues to ensure that work was distributed evenly and without the risk of conflict.

The Vamosa software is well known for its capability to migrate from any source to any target and in this configuration the additional scalability of the cloud platform allowed us to easily achieve the maximum transfer speed allowed by the fixed data line – upwards of 70TB per day.

Working closely with the Nextcloud team throughout the migration allowed them to fine tune both platforms to maximize performance and resolve any issues impacting migration.

Other benefits came through the ability to run parallel streams of activity focused on data quality and reporting. This allowed us to provide dynamic tracking of current progress and performance. This was a major benefit to business users keen to check the migration status on a regular basis. We could also carry out detailed validation of every migrated item to guarantee that all data had been migrated successfully.

Successful migration

The actual data migration was completed ahead of schedule with very good results. There were only a handful of issues raised for investigation. Typically, these were related to some very unusual file formats or invalid file names.

The cloud deployment model has heavily influenced the development of our new software to be released mid-2023. This is a fully cloud native solution with a user-friendly web interface to allow large scale data migrations from any source to any target to be executed directly by customers and partners without a detailed knowledge of the underlying technologies involved. The software can also run as a cloud service post migration to ensure that data remains compliant integrated with other customers’ systems to provide reporting and automation services.

The result: A brand new MagentaCLOUD

MagentaCLOUD’s online storage is now safely in their own Open Telekom Cloud Infrastructure. Since MagentaCLOUD’s successful migration to Nextcloud, users can benefit from hundreds of collaboration functionalities within Nextcloud Hub. Instead of just storing files, users instantly have access to a browser-based Content Collaboration Platform with a full Online Office suite, integrated sharing capabilities and more security than ever before. For instance, users can encrypt files on their devices and upload them to MagentaCLOUD due to end-to-end encryption.

Due to Nextcloud’s open source nature that allows for self-hosting capabilities, MagentaCLOUD has full control over its own data center. All user data is stored in Deustche Telekom’s data centers in Germany and protected by strict German and European data privacy protection laws and regulations like the GDPR.

The flexibility and scalability of the Nextcloud platform allowed T-Systems to deploy their Vamosa Migration Architect toolset alongside Nextcloud to maximize performance while retaining governance and a full audit trail during migration.

Future outlook

As Luciano Oliveira, SVP Consumer Fixed Business, Telekom Deutschland GmbH, explains, “Our goal is to offer our customers an ever better user experience. Having full control over data protection and data security by operating MagentaCLOUD on our own Open Telekom Cloud platform, the ongoing expansion of MagentaCLOUD with attractive functionalities and the seamless interaction with our other products are important foundations for us.”

Nextcloud laid a strong foundation for MagentaCLOUD, which can be built upon and customized year after year. Since Deutsche Telekom now relies on their own data center and infrastructure, they can now rest assured their data and their customers data is secure and steer their focus towards customer-centric topics like additional functionality and integrations. Users can look forward to further enhancements to MagentaCLOUD.