Cloud migration: a practical checklist for small and mid-sized businesses
Moving to the cloud rarely fails on technology. It fails on the things nobody wrote down beforehand.
Whether you are moving email to Microsoft 365, shifting a line-of-business application to Azure or AWS, or retiring an ageing on-site server, the same handful of preparation steps determine whether the migration is quiet or painful.
Before you start
- Know what you are moving. Data volumes, user counts, mailbox sizes and application dependencies. Vague estimates become long weekends.
- Decide what you are not moving. Old shared drives are full of files nobody needs. Archive them separately rather than paying to host them forever.
- Check licences. Some software cannot legally run in the cloud on its existing licence. Find this out before the cut-over date.
- Confirm connectivity. A cloud-first business depends on its internet connection. Check bandwidth, and consider a backup line.
During the migration
- Move in phases. Pilot with a small, patient group first. Fix what they find, then move everyone else.
- Keep a rollback point. Until the new environment has been in daily use for a week, keep the old one available in a read-only state.
- Communicate constantly. Tell people what will change, when, and who to contact. Repeat it. Most "migration problems" are unannounced changes.
After you switch
- Review security settings. Multi-factor authentication, conditional access and sharing controls should be on from day one, not added later.
- Test backups. Cloud platforms are resilient, but they are not a backup. Set up separate backups and prove you can restore from them.
- Watch the bill. Consumption pricing rewards attention. Review the first three invoices closely and switch off anything that is not earning its keep.
A migration is finished when nobody mentions it anymore, not when the data has copied.
Our cloud and cybersecurity team plans and runs migrations with these steps built in.