Why Edinburgh is in the middle of every current migration cycle
Edinburgh concentrates firms feeling current migration triggers — VMware Broadcom on New Town finance VMware estates, Cisco end-of-life across multi-site Scottish council networks, NHS Scotland cloud-shift programmes, and steady on-prem-to-cloud move across Edinburgh tech.
VMware → Nutanix for Scottish regulated estates
Broadcom's VMware pricing is forcing the question on New Town finance + NHS Scotland customers. We run VMware → Nutanix AHV (most common in regulated estates), VMware → vSAN ESA, VMware → Azure Stack HCI.
Cisco → Fortinet for Scottish councils + multi-site
Scottish multi-site customers (Scottish Gov, councils, multi-branch retail) consolidating ageing Cisco onto Fortinet single-pane — driven by SD-WAN refresh and TCO pressure.
On-prem → Azure UK / AWS eu-west-2
Edinburgh tech businesses and FCA-regulated firms lift-and-shifting from Scottish DC footprint to AWS eu-west-2 or Azure UK-South — FCA-aware migrations with regulator documentation prepared.
Exchange-on-prem → M365 for Scottish Gov + universities
Frequent second-wave for Scottish public-sector — Exchange-on-prem to M365 GCC, on-prem PBX to Teams Voice, integrated with the customer's existing identity stack.
What a Servnet Edinburgh migration delivers
Discovery + bill-of-quantities
Complete picture of the current estate 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.
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.
Wave-based migration with parallel-run
Production workloads migrated in waves — low-criticality first, then BAU, then customer-facing systems last.
Weekend cutover windows
For New Town finance customers, cutover Friday-evening onwards with engineers on-site through the weekend. Soak through Sunday, post-mortem Monday.
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.
Edinburgh migration engagements we run
- ▸New Town finance off VMware to NutanixNatWest, Standard Life-class firms with 200–800 VMs moving from vSphere to Nutanix AHV — typically 10–14 weeks discovery-to-decom, regulated workload migrated last.
- ▸Multi-site Scottish councils Cisco → FortinetCEC + Lothian councils with multi-site Cisco ASA + Meraki consolidating onto FortiGate + FortiSwitch.
- ▸Edinburgh tech on-prem → cloudFreeAgent / Float / Administrate-class Edinburgh tech moving Scottish DC footprint to AWS eu-west-2 — with SOC 2 evidence prepared.
- ▸NHS Scotland boards to AzureNHS Lothian + other boards migrating off ageing on-prem to Azure UK-South — NHS Scotland Information Security Policy alignment retained.
- ▸Scottish Gov departments to GovWiFi / Azure GovScottish Gov departments and ALBs migrating off on-prem Exchange and legacy on-prem networking onto M365 GCC and Azure Government.
- ▸Edinburgh law firms — on-prem PMS to vendor cloudBurness Paull, Brodies-class firms migrating practice-management from on-prem to vendor cloud — coordinated with outsourcing-policy committee.
How an Edinburgh 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 and non-critical workload landed.
Weeks 5–8 — wave migrations
Production workloads migrated in 4–6 waves, each 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.
Edinburgh vendor migrations — common questions
We're a New Town firm with 200 VMs on vSphere — Broadcom has tripled our bill. What's right?
For most Edinburgh finance firms with that footprint, Nutanix AHV (regulated-friendly, predictable per-node pricing, AHV included) or vSAN ESA (staying VMware but losing dedicated SAN). Model 3-year TCO including migration cost — typical Nutanix payback is 14–22 months on a 200-VM estate.
Can you migrate without taking down our New Town 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 trading-tech team signs off.
How do you handle FCA outsourcing materiality for an Edinburgh 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 CEC + Lothian 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.
How long does a 200-VM VMware → Nutanix migration take in Edinburgh?
Discovery → final-VM-on-new-platform is typically 10–14 weeks for a 200-VM estate. Actual migration work is shorter (4–6 weeks); rest is discovery, design and soak.
We're an Edinburgh tech business wanting to leave our Scottish DC for AWS — can you do it?
Yes — frequent engagement for Edinburgh tech. AWS landing-zone design (multi-account, SSO, guardrails, networking), application-by-application migration, Scottish DC exit. Typical timeline 3–6 months end-to-end.
Other services we deliver in Edinburgh
Facing a VMware bill, Cisco EOL or cloud migration in Edinburgh?
Send us the platform, the trigger and the timeline. We'll come back with a discovery scope and a TCO model.
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