Here's an article related to this that you might find helpful:

Data Migration Adapting to the Cloud
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/community/features/articles/blog/data-m...

"The cloud has been invariably called an expanded data tier, an extension of the virtual environment and an entirely new, infinitely scalable data center infrastructure.

But no matter how you describe it, the fact is that the cloud represents a wealth of newly provisioned resources waiting to be filled with all the data and applications currently housed in your bricks-and-mortar data center. And in that sense, the cloud requires a lot in the way of plain old data migration - the same task that already gives you fits when it involves a new server deployment or storage array, except more of it.

Unfortunately, migrating data and applications to the cloud requires a different process from traditional hardware-to-hardware solutions. The cloud is a much more fluid environment - like a big bowl of soup on a wobbly bistro table. Once data hits the bowl, it's awfully hard to keep track of it.

That's one of the reasons the front office is still not entirely sold on the cloud even as IT salivates over all that additional capacity. According to a survey by Symantec, less than half of CEOS are willing to entrust mission-critical applications to the cloud, citing reliability, security and performance as their top concerns. The cloud represents significant improvements in both capital and operating costs, particularly as enterprises struggle to maintain control of increasingly large and complex data loads. However, the transition from traditional data center infrastructure to the cloud can be extremely disruptive if not handled properly."