Move to the cloud without stopping work

A cloud migration moves the software your business runs on, with its data and files, from machines you own or old hosting to a cloud provider such as AWS or Google Cloud. It also changes how that software is looked after: backups, updates and monitoring become routines rather than favours.

The move itself is only part of the work. Most of the effort goes into finding everything that needs to move, deciding how each piece should travel, and proving on the other side that nothing was lost. A server that has run for years usually does more than anyone remembers: a nightly export to Tally, a script that emails a sales report, a folder of scanned delivery notes that one team depends on.

Done well, the move is quiet. Your team works on the old system until the agreed night, logs in to the new one the next morning, and finds the same screens and the same data, only faster and safer.

It is time to move when the server has become a risk rather than a tool. The usual signs are easy to spot: a machine in the office that nobody dares restart, backups nobody has tested, a hosting renewal that keeps getting more expensive, or software that slows to a crawl at the busiest time of year.

Other reasons are about how you work now. Teams work from home, from branches and from the road, and a server in one office makes all of them depend on its internet line. Customers in other countries wait for pages served from far away. Rules about where data lives, from the RBI’s payment data rules to the GDPR for European customers, have become questions your auditors ask.

None of these means you must move everything at once. Many businesses start with the one system that worries them most.

We need a list of what you run, access to look at it, and one person who knows how the business uses it. The list does not have to be complete; finding what is missing is part of our job.

Access usually means a read-only look at the servers, the hosting account and the database, plus the passwords stored somewhere safe rather than in a notebook. We also need to know the quiet times in your week, the busy seasons to avoid, and anything the old system does at night.

The person on your side does not need to be technical. They should know which reports matter, who uses which screen, and who must be told when the switch happens. They are also the one who signs off that the new system looks right before the old one is retired.

Not everything should move the same way, and some things should not move at all. For each piece we pick one of four routes.

Some software moves as it is, onto a cloud server that looks much like the old one. This is quick and suits software you cannot or will not change. Some moves and gets tidied on the way: a database you ran yourself becomes a managed database that the provider patches and backs up. A few parts are worth rebuilding for the cloud, usually because they are slow, costly or fragile today. And some things are retired, because a report nobody reads or an old copy of a website is cheaper to switch off than to move.

The order matters as much as the route. We usually start with something useful but low-risk, such as file shares or a staging copy, so the new home is tested before the system that runs your sales moves in.

Pick the provider that fits your software and your rules, then the region closest to your users and your obligations. AWS and Google Cloud both run data centres in India and around the world, and both suit most business software.

In India, the region decides more than speed. Payment data must stay in the country under the RBI’s rules, digital lending data must be stored in India, and CERT-In’s 2022 directions ask for system logs to be kept in India for 180 days. For customers in Europe, the GDPR shapes where personal data may go. Healthcare businesses often want patient data kept close, with HIPAA-style privacy controls even where no law demands them.

We write the choice and the reasons into the plan. The accounts are opened in your company’s name, so the decision stays yours even if you later change who runs them.

The switch is the shortest part of the move, because everything before it is rehearsal. A few days ahead, we shorten how long the internet remembers your old addresses, so the change takes effect quickly. Your data has been syncing to the new home for days or weeks, so only the last few changes are left to copy.

On the night, users get a notice, the old system becomes read-only, the final sync runs and the data checks start. When the checks pass, we point your web address and your users to the new home. Your team’s chosen people log in and try the tasks they do every day: raise an invoice, find a customer, print a report.

At every step there is a decision point. If anything looks wrong, we point everyone back to the old system, which has not changed, and try again another night.

We prove the data arrived before anyone relies on it. For each table we compare row counts between old and new. For money, we compare totals: invoice values, GST amounts and outstanding balances for the year must match to the paisa or the cent.

Files are counted and checked by fingerprint, so a damaged scan is caught. Your team opens a handful of records they know well, such as a big customer’s ledger or last month’s sales report, and confirms they look right.

Connections get the same care. Payment gateway callbacks, SMS and WhatsApp messages, emails, the export to Tally and any device that sends data, such as a biometric attendance machine, are each tested from the new home before the switch is called done.

A cloud account is only as safe as the way it is set up. The top-level account belongs to your company and is locked away, with two-step sign-in, and used only in an emergency.

Everyone else, including us, signs in with their own account and only the permissions their job needs. Software gets its own service accounts, so a leaked key opens one door, not all of them. Databases are never left open to the internet, passwords and keys live in a secrets store rather than in files, and data is encrypted on the move and at rest.

Every sign-in and change is logged. When someone leaves, their access is removed in one place, and the log shows that it was.

The cloud only saves money if someone watches it. The first month on the new home shows the real load, and we resize servers to match it instead of guessing.

Testing and staging copies switch off at night and at weekends. Steady workloads use reserved capacity, which costs less than paying by the hour. Old backups and files move to cheaper storage tiers. Every resource is tagged by project, so the bill can be read by team or by product.

You get a monthly cost report with the total, what changed and why. If a cost jumps, an alert reaches us before the invoice reaches you.

A migration ends when the old server is switched off and the new set-up runs smoothly on its own. For the first weeks we watch closely, tune alerts, and fix anything the move uncovered. The old system stays ready until you agree it can go, then it is backed up one last time and retired.

From then on, the work is routine: updates applied on a schedule, backups restored in tests, certificates renewed, alerts answered and the cost report sent. We can run all of it for you every month, or hand it to your team with written instructions for every routine job and stay on call for the rest.