A well-run cloud migration is an anticlimax. People leave on Friday, come back on Monday, and the only difference is that things work a little better. That calm Monday is the result of weeks of preparation: the work that makes a cutover uneventful all happens before the cutover.
1. Know exactly what you are moving
List every application, every shared folder, every mailbox and every user — and, just as important, what depends on what. The surprises are usually small things: a scanner that emails documents into a server folder, an accounting package that expects a local database, a label printer that only one person knows how to set up. Each one missed becomes a Monday-morning problem.
2. Decide what happens to each workload
- Move it as it is when it works well and simply needs to run somewhere more reliable.
- Replace it with a cloud service when a modern equivalent does the job better, such as moving file shares to SharePoint or Google Drive.
- Rebuild it when it needs changes to work properly in the cloud.
- Retire it when nobody really uses it anymore. Every migration finds a few of these.
3. Get accounts and security right first
Set up user accounts, licences and multi-factor authentication before any data moves. Migrating into a cloud environment with weak sign-in security simply moves your risk somewhere more exposed.
4. Check your internet connection
Once your files and email live in the cloud, your office is only as productive as its internet link. For most Kenyan businesses that means a reliable primary connection and a backup — a second provider or a 4G/5G failover — so a single fibre cut does not stop work.
5. Pilot, then copy ahead of time
Move a small group first and let them use the new setup for real work. Meanwhile, copy the bulk of your data across well before cutover day, so the final switch only needs to move what changed since.
6. Cut over outside business hours, with a way back
Schedule the switch for an evening or weekend, and lower settings such as DNS timings a few days beforehand so email changes take effect quickly. Most importantly, have a written rollback plan: what you will do, and by when, if something does not work.
7. Be there on day one
Have someone available — ideally on site — first thing on the first working day, to help people sign in, reconnect printers and answer questions. Small issues fixed in minutes never become complaints.
After the move
- Switch off and securely wipe the old servers once everything is confirmed working.
- Review cloud costs after the first month; unused licences and oversized resources add up.
- Back up your cloud data — the provider keeps it available, but that is not the same as a backup.
- Check where your data is stored and how that fits your obligations under the Kenya Data Protection Act.
Planning a move? Our cloud migration service covers the readiness assessment, the plan with a rollback at every stage, the cutover and the clean-up afterwards.