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Migration strategy and site assessment
A paid, independent assessment before you commit to moving anything. You get an audit, a risk register with costs against each risk, and a costed plan with the alternatives set out, including the option of not moving yet.
The expensive decisions on a migration are made before anyone touches a rack. Whether to move at all, whether to consolidate first, whether to go in one window or in waves, and what has to be true at the far end before any of it is safe. Those decisions get made early, often with incomplete information, and everything downstream inherits them.
This is a paid engagement, and that is deliberate. It means the recommendation is not a sales document. We are equally willing to tell you to phase it, to consolidate before you move, or to stay where you are for another year, because we are being paid for the analysis rather than for the outcome. If you do proceed with us, the assessment fee is credited against the move.
The person who does the assessment is the person who would run the move. That matters, because an audit written by someone who has never had to power a room down at 11pm on a Saturday tends to miss the things that actually bite.
What you walk away with
Three documents, written to be used by your team and read by your board, whether or not you move with us.
01
Infrastructure audit
A physical audit of what you actually have, reconciled against whatever register you hold. Cabinets, devices, serial numbers, cabling, cross-connects, power draw, and the things nobody could account for. This is usually the first time the estate has been counted honestly in years.
02
Risk register with costs
Every risk we can see, what it would cost you if it happened, how likely it is, and what would reduce it. Not a generic list. Your single points of failure, your undocumented dependencies, your lease dates, your lead times.
03
Costed plan with options
The recommended approach priced, with the credible alternatives priced beside it, so the choice is a commercial one rather than a technical one. Sequencing, window lengths, what runs in parallel and what cannot.
The recommendations we actually make
Four of these are a move. One of them is not. All five get made.
Move it
The estate is understood, the destination is ready or can be made ready, and the outage tolerance fits a window. This is the straightforward case, and it is less common than people expect.
Phase it
Moved in waves with capacity standing at both ends, because some services cannot take an outage. Costs more and takes longer, and is the right answer more often than a single window is.
Consolidate first
Retire and rationalise before moving, so you are not paying to transport and re-rack equipment that should have been decommissioned two refresh cycles ago. The audit usually pays for itself here.
Fix the destination first
The move is sound but the receiving site is not ready. Power, cooling, containment, seismic restraint or connectivity have to land before a date is worth setting.
Do not move yet
The dependencies are not mapped, the lease has runway, or the business case does not survive the real numbers. We will say so, in writing, with the reasoning.
How the assessment runs
Scoping call
What you are considering and why, what you already know, and what is driving the timing. Usually thirty minutes, and it tells us whether an assessment is even the right next step.
Site visit
On site at the source, and at the destination if one has been chosen. Physical audit, photographs, power readings, access and route survey, and the questions in the checklist asked properly.
Analysis
Reconciling what we found against your register, mapping dependencies, and pricing the options. This is the part that takes the time, and it happens off site.
Presentation
We walk your team through the findings, the risk register and the options, and argue for the recommendation rather than just handing it over.
Your decision
The documents are yours either way. If you proceed with us the fee is credited against the move. If you take the plan to someone else, or nowhere, it still stands on its own.
What the assessment covers
- Physical inventory and reconciliation against your asset register
- Power draw, circuit capacity and redundancy at both ends
- Cooling capacity and containment at the destination
- Rack elevations, floor loading and seismic restraint requirements
- Network and carrier connectivity, including cross-connect lead times
- Application and service dependency mapping, as far as your documentation allows
- Outage tolerance by service, and what that implies for sequencing
- Access, lift, route and delivery constraints at both sites
- Lease dates, make-good obligations and what handback actually requires
- Licensing, warranty and support implications of moving or re-platforming
Common questions
Why would I pay for this rather than take a free assessment?
Because a free assessment is a sales visit, and it will conclude that you should move, with the supplier who gave it to you. Paying for the analysis is what buys you a recommendation that can legitimately be "do not move yet". If you proceed with us the fee is credited against the move, so the honest version costs you nothing extra.
What if the assessment says we should not move?
Then that is what it says, in writing, with the reasoning and the numbers. That is the outcome the fee is protecting. It is also a result you can take to your board, which a supplier's free proposal is not.
Can we use the plan with a different contractor?
Yes. The documents are yours. The audit, the risk register and the costed plan are written to be handed to whoever does the work, including someone else. We would rather be the obvious choice than the only choice.
How long does an assessment take?
For a single room, usually a site visit and about a week of analysis. A multi-site estate takes longer, and we will tell you the timeline after the scoping call rather than before it.
Do we need to have chosen a destination first?
No, and sometimes it is better that you have not. If you are weighing colocation providers or sites, the assessment can compare them against what your estate actually needs instead of against a brochure.
Is there something we can do before engaging you?
Yes. Work through our migration risk checklist. It is the thirty questions we would ask on site, free and ungated. If you can answer all of them you may not need us. If you cannot answer half of them, you know where the risk is.
Considering a move?
Start with the scoping call. Thirty minutes, and you will know whether an assessment is worth doing.
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