Migration & Upgrades
Move forward without losing momentum.
Overview
Migration is one of the most complex exercises an organisation can undertake. From legacy systems to modern cloud platforms, we'll be with you during the whole journey: planning, execution, validation and beyond.
The audit comes before the plan
Migrations fail on dependencies nobody documented. A reporting tool authenticating against an old service account, a scanner that only knows one path, an integration set up by someone who left years ago. We map those before anything moves, because finding them at cutover turns a weekend into a fortnight.
The audit produces a dependency map, a risk register, a downtime estimate per system and a proposed sequence. If a system should be replaced rather than migrated, that is in the document too.
Cutover and rollback
Every migration we run has a documented rollback at each milestone. A step you cannot reverse has to be the last one, and we do not begin a cutover without knowing how to get back if a validation check fails.
Validation is defined up front and signed off by you rather than declared complete by us, against a named list of systems, integrations and user journeys that have to work before the old environment is decommissioned.
Timing the work around your calendar
For schools the calendar is the binding constraint, with four short change windows a year. A refresh needing eight weeks of hardware lead time has to be ordered during the preceding term, not during the break it is meant to land in. We plan backwards from the window.
For professional services firms the constraint is end of financial year, reporting deadlines or client delivery peaks. Same discipline, different dates.
Common migrations we run
Microsoft 365 tenant migrations, including tenant to tenant after a merger. On premises Exchange and file server decommissioning. Server operating system upgrades off out of support baselines. VMware and Hyper-V host refreshes. Storage migrations onto HPE Alletra and Nimble. Line of business application replatforming where the vendor supports it.
What's included
Pre-migration Audits
Map dependencies, risks, and downtime windows before anything moves.
Server & Data Migration
Physical, virtual or cloud workloads moved with zero data loss.
Microsoft 365 Tenants
Mail, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, moved cleanly with users intact.
Application Modernisation
Replatform legacy apps onto sustainable, supported frameworks.
OS & Infrastructure Upgrades
Out-of-support? Let's get you onto a supported, secure baseline.
Cutover & Rollback Plans
Documented, tested, and reversible at every milestone.
What you get
- Minimal user disruption
- Documented rollback at every step
- Senior engineers, not contractors
Common questions
How much downtime should we expect?
For most migrations, none during business hours. Mail and file data are seeded and synchronised in advance, so the cutover itself is a switch rather than a copy. Where downtime is genuinely unavoidable, such as a storage controller swap, it is scheduled and quantified before you approve the plan.
What if something goes wrong mid migration?
Every milestone has a documented and tested rollback. We do not proceed past a checkpoint until its validation criteria pass. Irreversible steps, such as decommissioning the source environment, are deliberately sequenced last and only happen after you sign off.
Can you migrate during school holidays?
Yes, and for schools that is usually the only sensible window. The constraint is lead time rather than availability. Hardware and licensing need to be ordered during the preceding term, so planning a summer cutover realistically starts in term three.
We are on an out of support server operating system. How urgent is that?
Urgent. Out of support means no security patches, which fails Essential Eight patching controls, and it is increasingly a question on cyber insurance renewals. It is also a dependency for other work, since newer applications and security agents progressively drop support for old baselines.
Who actually does the work?
Our own senior engineers, under the direction of our technical director. We do not subcontract migration delivery. The person who scoped your environment is the person who is there at cutover.
