Moving to the cloud isn’t just about cutting back on servers in the office. It’s about giving your business the agility to adapt and scale at pace. You only pay for the resources you use, so you’re not locked into over-investing in hardware like with on-prem setups. Security is strengthened with enterprise-grade tools and proactive monitoring, while resilience is built in with redundancy and disaster recovery options that most on-prem setups can’t compete with. The cloud also enables modern ways of working: teams can collaborate from anywhere, apps and data are always accessible, and updates are seamless. In short, the cloud makes your infrastructure more cost-efficient, more secure, and more future-proof.

Timelines vary depending on the size and complexity of your environment. Migrating a handful of applications might take a few weeks, while moving an entire infrastructure — especially if it includes legacy workloads or compliance-heavy systems — could take months. The critical part isn’t the speed, it’s the planning. A well-mapped migration reduces downtime, avoids data loss, and ensures your staff can keep working throughout. With careful preparation, even large-scale moves can feel surprisingly seamless.

The process starts with discovery — understanding what you’re running, how your applications connect, and what your users actually need. From there, a migration strategy is designed, whether that means lifting and shifting workloads, re-platforming apps, or fully modernising them. Once the strategy is locked in, workloads are moved in phases, tested for performance, and fine-tuned. The goal is a smooth transition with minimal disruption — and a cloud setup that’s ready to perform from day one.

Lift-and-shift is the simplest way to move to the cloud: you take an application or workload and rehost it exactly as it is, without redesigning or rewriting it. The advantage is speed — you get out of your on-prem environment quickly and start benefiting from cloud infrastructure right away. But it’s usually just a first step. Lifted workloads may not take full advantage of cloud-native features, so businesses often use it as a stepping stone to modernisation further down the line.

Legacy applications are often the most business-critical, but also the most complex to move. Some can be rehosted with minimal changes, while others need re-platforming (tweaks to make them more cloud-friendly) or a full re-architecture. The right approach depends on the app’s age, dependencies, and how it’s used day-to-day. In some cases, replacing the app entirely with a modern cloud-native solution is the smarter move. The key is balancing risk, cost, and performance while ensuring continuity — so you don’t lose functionality while modernising.

Yes — businesses move between clouds all the time, whether that’s to reduce costs, improve performance, or adopt a multi-cloud strategy. Data can be migrated securely from one provider to another, though the complexity depends on factors like how much data you have, how it’s stored, and how it integrates with applications. With the right plan, the move can be done with little to no disruption, ensuring your workloads remain secure and your users stay productive.