China is a crucial and growing market for many multinational companies, with unique opportunities but also particular market requirements. With the general availability of Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud in December 2023, businesses can now roll out core CRM capabilities of Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Salesforce Platform.
Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud also includes features exclusive to mainland China, including the CXG (Connected Experience Gateway) with key social platforms such as AliPay and WeChat, essential for doing business in China.
Migration challenges
Migrating your existing org will be non-trivial. Some challenges that you’ll need to navigate may be familiar, but others are specific to your migration to Alibaba Cloud.
You’ll need to start by understanding your existing Salesforce environment as it is today. It will be a significant undertaking to analyze your existing org, and identify the core parts of it that you want to migrate to Alibaba Cloud. This is where a comparison tool can be helpful to allow you to analyse your metadata and its dependencies.
Not everything can be migrated, so it’s not a case of copying over the entire org and then removing parts of it post-migration — your approach will always need to be additive.
Not all of the metadata you’re currently using in your org is guaranteed to be supported in a Salesforce environment on Alibaba Cloud, so this should be factored into your analysis of your metadata. You should also factor in your definition of the “core” that you want to begin your migration with. For example:
- Not all “standard” fields are standard in both, and if a field can’t be migrated functionality that references it may need to be rebuilt.
- Some platform components (Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, CPQ, Field Service Lightning) or ISV packages might not be available on Alibaba Cloud at the point you’re making your migration.
Data migration will be another major challenge. One of the key reasons you may be setting up a new org on Alibaba Cloud is to be compliant with data residency regulations as laid out in the PIPL (Personal Information Protection Law), so there will be a process where existing records are transferred to the new org and removed from the original. You need to understand the history of the data in your existing org, and define whether any of those existing records need to be migrated, and then later removed from the original orgs.
Metadata and data need to be migrated in the correct order, as the container metadata for the data needs to be present ahead of the records to be successful.
How does Gearset integrate with Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud?
Using a custom client connection, Gearset is able to connect to orgs hosted on Alibaba Cloud. This allows Gearset users to compare the metadata contained within their orgs (regardless of whether they’re hosted on Alibaba Cloud or not) with a high level of detail, and to deploy across those environments. So you can use Gearset to migrate metadata to Salesforce orgs on Alibaba Cloud, and post-migration continue to develop those orgs.
Preparing to deploy to a Salesforce org on Alibaba Cloud
As you plan your first deployment, you should identify characteristics of your existing org that form the “core” of your business’s data model. This core data model will be what you need to migrate to your new org hosted on Alibaba Cloud.
Preparing for your migration is crucial. You’ll need a deep understanding of your current Salesforce environment(s) before committing to the process of extracting the core data model. Gearset can help you achieve this with its detailed dependency analysis and comparison engine.
There are other important factors to take into account when going through your preparation phase, such as compliance, local user needs, and your own business requirements.
Planning your long-term DevOps strategy
Planning a long-term DevOps strategy is also essential. After migrating the metadata and data necessary for your new org’s function, you’ll need to develop it according to the needs of the overall business, as well as local market requirements.
Ongoing development
You should consider the implications of needing to update and maintain your core data model as part of the continuous development of your Salesforce landscape. As your business continues to evolve, there will be metadata requirements common to both orgs, so ensure that you have a process in place to deploy core changes without overwriting the org-specific development unique to each org.
Because many of the components of your org hosted on Alibaba Cloud are unique to the mainland China market, you will also need a process to develop and deploy these components without interfering with updates to your core data model.
Following the DevOps best practice of deploying small slices of work as often as possible, and automating quality gates for code quality and security will allow both orgs to be developed quickly. Continuous, high-quality peer review and feedback will be key to the creation of a robust DevOps process. If you’re not sure where to start check out this webinar on getting started with DevOps.
Team structure and security
Visibility is essential for multi-org architecture with a shared data model. As the team planning and designing the migration of the metadata from your original org you will have a high level of understanding when it comes to the metadata that is and isn’t being migrated to your new org hosted on Alibaba Cloud.
Maintaining that visibility over time can fall down the list of priorities post-migration, but we have found that teams who invest in maintaining that visibility and control are more successful in the long term.
One of the best ways to do this sustainably is to plan your long-term team structure — we recommend looking at a RACI matrix. A RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) Matrix is a key component in project management that allows clear separation and visibility into key tasks, roles and responsibilities across your team.
The matrix helps outline the tasks within your team, and flags who may be involved with key elements, so you know where you need to make technical enforcements of capabilities.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Do we want a central change management board?
- Do we have a central review team for core changes vs local review teams for org-specific changes?
- How can we communicate most effectively to make sure the core data model of both orgs doesn’t drift?
The answers to these questions will be unique to your business, and we encourage thinking about those deeply as part of your long-term planning.
Org localization
There will be some fundamental differences in the org hosted on Alibaba Cloud. For example, some standard fields might not be standard to both your original org and your org hosted on Alibaba Cloud. Being aware of these nuances will help you plan your long-term DevOps strategy.
Being precise about the metadata you’re deploying will help your team be successful in the long term. Clearly defining what the proposed set of changes will affect, and whether they’re specific to one org or both, will accelerate review and shorten the feedback loop.
There may be a lot of your original org’s functionality that you’ll need to rebuild to be compatible with the integrations only available in your org hosted on Alibaba Cloud, which may well be unfamiliar. Using a robust DevOps strategy which allows you to make small, rapid updates with lots of feedback will enhance this experience.
Rolling out Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud?
Migrating the core data model from your existing Salesforce org to a new org on Alibaba Cloud, and managing ongoing deployments is no mean feat. If you’d like to find out more about how Gearset will help you roll out Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud, get in touch via the live chat or by booking a call to discuss joining our pilot.
