Discover
Interview business and application owners, export infrastructure and identity inventories, review utilisation and backup evidence, and document constraints. Group technical components into business services so dependencies are visible.
Illustrative Solution Scenario
Illustrative Solution Scenario: Planning a Cloud Migration for a Growing Business
Illustrative only—not a completed customer project. This scenario shows how a growing organisation could structure discovery, migration design, controlled waves and operational handover.
This is a planning example, not a completed customer project or outcome claim.Business context
Why the requirement exists.
A growing multi-team business runs a mixture of directory services, file workloads, a customer-facing application, databases and internal business systems on ageing on-premises virtual infrastructure. More employees now work across offices and remote locations, while application owners want faster provisioning for new projects.
The organisation is considering Azure or AWS but has not selected a final placement for every workload. It wants to reduce dependence on a near-term hardware refresh without converting the project into an unstructured move of every server. No customer identity, project date or measured outcome is asserted in this illustrative scenario.
Current documentation is incomplete. Network diagrams and backup reports exist, but service dependencies, data classifications, application support constraints and operating ownership need confirmation. The proposed engagement therefore begins with evidence gathering and a pilot rather than a production cutover promise.
Requirements
What the design must account for.
Create a business-service and workload inventory with named technical and business owners.
Map identity, network, DNS, certificate, database, file, integration and licensing dependencies.
Classify data and identify access, retention, location and encryption requirements.
Compare retain, rehost, replatform, replace and retire options for each workload.
Define availability, recovery time, recovery point and maintenance-window expectations by service.
Produce a cost model that includes compute schedules, storage, backup, connectivity, security, support and data transfer assumptions.
Validate one representative, reversible migration wave before scheduling critical systems.
Define the project handover and any separately agreed ongoing support scope.
Proposed approach
How the work could be sequenced.
Assess
Score workloads for business criticality, technical readiness, data sensitivity, vendor support, recovery requirements and migration complexity. Identify quick wins, blockers and systems that should remain in place for now.
Design
Create a landing-zone and connectivity outline, identity and privileged-access model, network segmentation, logging, backup, recovery and cost-governance design. Select a placement and migration method for each approved workload.
Pilot and implement in waves
Build foundational controls, migrate a representative low-risk service, run agreed tests and refine the runbook. Move later waves only after their prerequisites and acceptance owners are ready, with rollback criteria for each cutover.
Handover and optimise
Provide diagrams, configuration decisions, inventory, runbooks, access records and cost ownership. Review actual performance and consumption after workloads stabilise, then prioritise rightsizing or modernisation actions.
Architecture considerations
Decisions that shape the design.
- A governed cloud account or subscription structure separating production, non-production and shared services.
- Federated workforce identity with multi-factor authentication, role-based access, privileged-role separation and controlled emergency access.
- Site-to-site connectivity sized from measured traffic, with routing, DNS, address space and resilience documented.
- Network segmentation and application access paths based on service needs rather than a flat migrated network.
- Workload-specific compute and managed-service choices, avoiding an assumption that every server must be rehosted.
- Central logging, monitoring, tagging, budgets and ownership aligned to business services.
- Backup and recovery controls for the target environment, with restore testing and retained-system dependencies included.
- A staged data-transfer and cutover method that accounts for data volume, synchronisation, user communication and rollback.
Expected benefits
Potential value—not guaranteed outcomes.
- A traceable placement decision for each workload rather than a one-size-fits-all migration.
- Earlier visibility of identity, network, licensing and application-support blockers.
- A pilot-generated runbook before business-critical cutovers are attempted.
- Clear ownership for platform operations, security events, backup, access and cost review.
- An architecture that can be compared with the cost and risk of retaining or refreshing existing infrastructure.
- A documented backlog for optimisation and modernisation after the initial move.
Validation plan
Evidence before acceptance.
Confirm inventory coverage and dependency maps with business and application owners.
Test identity lifecycle, multi-factor authentication, privileged access and emergency access.
Measure connectivity, latency and application behaviour under representative load.
Run functional, integration, security, backup-restore and recovery tests against agreed acceptance criteria.
Reconcile pilot consumption with the cost model and document any changed assumptions.
Exercise the cutover communication, decision and rollback steps before a critical migration wave.
Obtain service-owner acceptance and complete operational handover before closing each wave.
Plan your own environment