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Cloud and infrastructure

Migration, infrastructure and cost control — including the parts that should stay where they are.

WORKLOADASSESSONE QUESTION PER WORKLOADON-PREMISESCLOUDSTABLE LOADHARDWARE ALREADY PAID FORWORTH MOVINGMOVED IN STAGESAPP AAPP BSTAYSMOVESSAID DURING THE ASSESSMENT, NOT AFTER THE MIGRATION

The situation

Two problems that need opposite answers

In one version, there is a server in an office room running something the business cannot operate without. The hardware is past its service life, the warranty has lapsed, and the backup has been configured but never restored from. Nobody is comfortable with it, and nobody has had a reason urgent enough to deal with it.

In the other, the move to cloud already happened. The monthly bill has grown well beyond what was projected, and nobody internally can map a line on the invoice to a service the business actually uses. Resources are running that were created for a project that ended.

The two situations look alike from the outside and need opposite work. The first is a continuity and resilience problem. The second is an inventory and cost-control problem, and moving more workloads will not fix it.

In both cases the missing piece is the same: an itemised picture of what runs where, what it costs over a full year, and what it would cost in the alternative — established before anything is committed.

The assessment is a deliverable in its own right. If the numbers do not justify moving, you stop there and you still have the inventory.

Deliverables

What you receive

Inventory and cost comparison

What runs where, what it costs now across a full year, and what it would cost after migration — per workload, not as a single figure.

Staged migration

Least critical workload first, each stage verified before the next begins, with rollback available at every stage.

Tested backup and recovery

Verified by performing an actual restore and recording how long it took, not by confirming that a backup job reports success.

Cost baseline and alerts

A recorded baseline with alerting, so growth in the bill becomes visible in the month it happens rather than at year end.

A runbook

Written for your own people: how the environment is structured, how to restore it, and what to do when something fails.

Access and ownership

Accounts, billing and administrative access in your name. The environment is yours, not held inside a supplier's account.

What we do not recommend

Not everything belongs in cloud. A stable application with predictable load, running on hardware that is already paid for, is frequently cheaper and simpler where it is. If that is your situation we will say so, and the work becomes a smaller engagement about backup and continuity instead.

We also do not recommend migrating and re-architecting in the same step. Move it, confirm it works, then improve it. Doing both at once means that when something breaks, you cannot tell which change caused it.

Process

How the engagement runs

Assessment

Inventory of workloads, current full-year cost, and the comparison. Delivered as a standalone document you can act on or shelve.

Decision per workload

Each workload is decided on its own merits: move it, leave it, or retire it. There is no requirement for the answer to be the same for all of them.

Staged move

Each stage runs in parallel with the existing system until verified. Nothing is switched off until its replacement has been running clean.

Handover

Runbook, a restore performed in front of you, cost alerting in place, and administrative access transferred to your own accounts.

Fit

Who this is for

A good fit

Companies with on-premises infrastructure approaching end of life, companies whose cloud spend has grown without a matching growth in usage, and organisations that need documented, tested backup and recovery for compliance or audit purposes.

Not a fit

Ongoing day-to-day administration of your environment once it is running. We hand over a documented environment your own people operate; if you need that run for you permanently, a managed-services provider is the better arrangement.

Next

Where to start

Send a description of what you are running now — servers, applications, where they sit, and what the current arrangement costs. We will come back with what moving it would involve, and with which parts we would leave alone.

Book a call