Why Birmingham is in the middle of every current migration cycle
Birmingham concentrates firms feeling current migration triggers — VMware Broadcom on Colmore finance VMware estates, Cisco end-of-life across multi-site Midlands branch networks, NHS BSol cloud-shift programmes, JLR-supply consolidation onto Nutanix, and the steady on-prem-to-cloud move across Birmingham scale-ups.
VMware → Nutanix for West Midlands regulated estates
Broadcom's VMware pricing is forcing the question on Colmore finance + NHS BSol customers. We run VMware → Nutanix AHV (most common in regulated estates), VMware → vSAN ESA, VMware → Azure Stack HCI.
Cisco → Fortinet for WMCA + JLR-supply branch
West Midlands multi-site customers (WMCA estate, JLR-supply factories) consolidating ageing Cisco onto Fortinet single-pane — typically driven by SD-WAN refresh and TCO pressure.
On-prem → Azure UK / AWS eu-west-2
Birmingham scale-ups and JLR-supply customers lift-and-shifting from Midlands DC footprint to AWS eu-west-2 or Azure UK-South — FCA-aware migrations for finance customers, JLR-supply-aware for automotive.
Exchange-on-prem → M365 for BCC + WMCA
Frequent second-wave for Birmingham public-sector — Exchange-on-prem to M365 GCC, on-prem PBX to Teams Voice, integrated with the council's existing identity + security stack.
What a Servnet Birmingham migration delivers
Discovery + bill-of-quantities
Complete picture of the current estate — every VM, every switch, every firewall rule, every dependency — turned into a migration BoQ you can defend at CFO/CTO review.
Target architecture design
Reference architecture for the destination — Nutanix cluster sizing, vSAN ESA tier, AWS landing zone, FortiGate topology. Capacity, HA, resilience tier, network integration all costed.
Pilot environment in week 3-4
Non-production pilot built on the new platform — typically two weeks of soak with customer's actual workload patterns, performance benchmarks, failure-mode validation before sign-off to production migration.
Wave-based migration with parallel-run
Production workloads migrated in waves — low-criticality first, then BAU, then customer-facing systems last. Old platform stays live throughout so any wave can roll back.
Weekend cutover windows
For Colmore and JLR-supply customers, cutover happens Friday-evening onwards with engineers on-site through the weekend. Soak through Sunday, post-mortem Monday morning, support warm for two weeks.
Old-platform decommission + ITAD
Once the new platform has run clean for the agreed soak, we decommission the legacy estate — chain-of-custody, NCSC-aligned wipe, certified disposal, residual value credit.
Birmingham migration engagements we run
- ▸Colmore finance off VMware to NutanixB2 / B3 asset managers and accountants with 100–500 VMs moving from vSphere to Nutanix AHV — typically 8–14 weeks discovery-to-decom.
- ▸Multi-site WMCA Cisco → FortinetWMCA estate with multi-site Cisco ASA + Meraki branch consolidating onto FortiGate + FortiSwitch — driven by SD-WAN refresh trigger.
- ▸Birmingham fintech on-prem → cloudJewellery Quarter / Digbeth Series B–D scale-ups moving Midlands DC footprint to AWS eu-west-2 — with FCA outsourcing-materiality memo prepared.
- ▸NHS BSol trusts to Crown Hosting / AzureBSol-affiliated trusts migrating off ageing on-prem to Crown Hosting or Azure UK-South — DSP Toolkit + HSCN alignment retained.
- ▸JLR-supply consolidation onto HCISolihull / Coventry / Wolverhampton suppliers consolidating multi-site IT (often from acquisitions) onto a single Nutanix or vSAN platform with consistent security baseline.
- ▸Law firms — on-prem PMS to vendor cloudB2 / B3 law firms migrating practice-management (3E, Elite, Aderant) from on-prem to vendor cloud — coordinated with outsourcing-policy committee.
How a Birmingham migration runs week-by-week
Weeks 1–2 — discovery + estate map
Automated discovery + interviews with application owners. Produces migration BoQ and risk register.
Weeks 3–4 — target design + pilot build
Target architecture signed off by customer architecture board. Pilot environment built — 3-node cluster, target SAN, target network — and non-critical workload landed.
Weeks 5–8 — wave migrations
Production workloads migrated in 4–6 waves, each wave validated before next. Customer change board signs off each wave.
Weeks 9–10 — soak + decom
New platform runs clean for agreed soak (2–4 weeks). Once signed off, decommission begins — chain-of-custody, wipe, dispose, certify.
Birmingham vendor migrations — common questions
We're a Birmingham firm with 150 VMs on vSphere — Broadcom has doubled our bill. What's right?
For most Birmingham firms with that footprint, Nutanix AHV (regulated, predictable per-node pricing, AHV included) or vSAN ESA (staying VMware but losing dedicated SAN). We do both. Model 3-year TCO including migration cost — typical Nutanix payback is 14–22 months on a 150-VM estate.
Can you migrate without taking down our Colmore trading floor?
Yes — point of parallel-run. Build the new platform alongside the old, migrate trading-floor systems last, validate every market data feed and OMS during pre-open hours, only cut over once customer's trading-tech team signs off. Old platform stays warm 2 weeks for rollback.
How do you handle FCA outsourcing materiality for a Birmingham cloud migration?
For FCA-authorised customers we produce the technical input — which IBS touch the migrated platform, what the destination region's resilience looks like, exit plan if the cloud becomes unavailable. Your compliance team writes the final memo; we provide technical evidence.
Can you do Cisco → Fortinet across WMCA + 6 councils with no downtime?
In most cases yes — install Fortinet in parallel, migrate sites one at a time over evening windows with rollback ready, decommission Cisco only after all sites stabilise. For core / DC switching, brief weekend window unavoidable but we plan for sub-2-hour outage.
How long does a 150-VM VMware → Nutanix migration take in Birmingham?
Discovery → final-VM-on-new-platform is typically 10–14 weeks for a 150-VM estate. Actual migration work is shorter (4–6 weeks); rest is discovery, design and soak.
We're a JLR Tier 1 supplier wanting to consolidate inherited multi-site IT — can you do it?
Yes — frequent engagement for West Midlands automotive customers post-acquisition. Discovery across the inherited estates, target design (typically Nutanix HCI), consolidated migration with consistent security + change processes, decommission of redundant estates. Typically 6–9 months end-to-end.
Other services we deliver in Birmingham
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