Cloud Solutions

The server in the corner of the office handles shared folders, one business application and perhaps email. It was bought a long time ago, the warranty has run out, and the backup goes to an external disk sitting right next to it. When staff work from home or out in the field, they connect over a slow VPN or not at all. A fire, a flood or a break-in would take the server and the backup in one go.

First we list what actually runs on the server and who uses it. Some things move easily: shared folders to SharePoint or OneDrive, email to Exchange Online. Others do not: an older business application that needs a local database is often better left on a smaller local machine or a cloud virtual server than rewritten.

• We choose EU data centres, which makes GDPR compliance easier
• We measure your internet connection, because it becomes the bottleneck for everything that moves
• We migrate in phases, with a pilot group of users before everyone else
• We estimate the monthly cost in advance and set up spending alerts

Before the move we also agree what happens to the licences and the hardware that stays, so you do not pay for the old and the new system longer than necessary. The old server is switched off only once all the data has been verified on the other side.

You reach your files from anywhere with multi-factor sign-in, and one broken computer no longer means lost documents. The cloud does not change the 3-2-1 rule, though: three copies of the data, on two kinds of media, one of them off site.

The provider is responsible for keeping its infrastructure running, while your data, accidentally deleted files and ransomware are your responsibility. This is called the shared responsibility model, and it is why we set up a separate backup alongside Microsoft 365.