Cloud Migration

Cloud Migration: Moving Off On-Premise Without the Drama

Cloud migration is not a single project — it is a series of decisions about which workloads to move, how to move them, and what the target architecture should look like. Get the strategy wrong and you end up with a more expensive version of your on-premise setup running in someone else's data centre. Get it right and you gain the scalability, reliability, and operational flexibility that cloud platforms are designed to provide. The difference between the two outcomes is almost entirely in the planning.

We help businesses move from on-premise infrastructure to cloud — whether that means a straightforward lift-and-shift to get off ageing hardware quickly, a re-architecture to take advantage of cloud-native services, or a hybrid approach where some workloads move and others stay. We also help businesses that are already in the cloud but paying too much — optimising costs, improving observability, and implementing the infrastructure automation they skipped during the initial migration.

Our Cloud Migration Framework

Every migration starts with an honest assessment of what you have, what it costs, and what the realistic options are.

1. Migration Assessment: We inventory your on-premise workloads — servers, applications, databases, storage, network dependencies — and assess each for cloud readiness. Every workload gets a recommendation: lift-and-shift (move as-is), re-platform (minor modifications for cloud compatibility), re-architecture (redesign for cloud-native), or retain (keep on-premise). This assessment also produces a realistic cost comparison — what you are spending now versus what cloud will cost, including the migration itself.
2. Migration Planning: We sequence the migration to manage risk — starting with lower-risk workloads to build confidence and migration expertise, then moving to business-critical systems. Each workload gets a migration plan with defined steps, rollback procedures, testing criteria, and cutover timing.
3. Migration Execution: We execute the migration using the appropriate tools for each workload — AWS Application Migration Service, Azure Migrate, database replication for live database migration, or manual migration for workloads that require it. Each workload is tested in the cloud environment before cutover, and rollback procedures are verified before the on-premise system is decommissioned.
4. Optimisation and Observability: After migration, we implement monitoring (Grafana, Datadog, or cloud-native tools), set up cost dashboards and budget alerts, right-size instances based on actual usage data, and implement the infrastructure-as-code that should have been there from the start.

What You Will Receive

A completed cloud migration with your workloads running reliably in the cloud, properly monitored, and with costs under control.

• Migration assessment report with workload-by-workload recommendation and cost analysis
• Sequenced migration plan with risk-managed ordering and rollback procedures
• Cloud infrastructure defined in Terraform with environment parity
• Monitoring and observability stack — dashboards, alerting, and log aggregation
• Cost optimisation report with right-sizing recommendations and reserved instance analysis

Common Migration Scenarios

End-of-life hardware: Your on-premise servers are approaching end-of-life and the capital expenditure for replacement is significant. A lift-and-shift migration gets your workloads off ageing hardware quickly, converting CapEx to OpEx, with cloud-native optimisation planned as a follow-up phase.

Cost optimisation for existing cloud: You migrated to cloud two years ago but costs have grown faster than expected. Nobody has reviewed instance sizes since the initial setup, you are running dev environments 24/7, and your storage costs are climbing because nothing gets archived. We conduct a systematic cost review and implement the changes that typically save 25-40%.

Hybrid cloud strategy: Some workloads cannot move to public cloud — regulatory requirements, latency constraints, or data sovereignty obligations keep them on-premise. We design hybrid architectures with secure connectivity between on-premise and cloud, consistent identity management, and monitoring that spans both environments.

Why Software Development Solutions

We have migrated businesses from on-premise Windows Server environments, Linux-based hosting, co-located infrastructure, and managed hosting providers to AWS, Azure, and GCP. We understand that migration decisions are as much about business context as technology — the hardware refresh cycle, the IT team's cloud expertise, the compliance requirements, and the tolerance for operational disruption all shape the right approach. We provide honest advice about what to migrate, how to migrate it, and what it will realistically cost — because surprises during a migration are the most expensive kind.

Planning a cloud migration or looking to optimise your existing cloud costs? Book a free consultation to discuss your situation.