Why Surrey migrations get planned locally
Surrey clients prefer in-person discovery workshops — most of the planning failure modes in migration projects come from remote-only requirements gathering. Our Surrey HQ means we can run the discovery workshop at your office over coffee, surface the real dependencies before we quote.
VMware → Nutanix for Surrey regulated estates
Broadcom's VMware pricing has made the platform untenable for many Surrey pharma + finance + professional-services customers. We run VMware → Nutanix AHV (most common in regulated estates), VMware → vSAN ESA (VMware-loyal), and VMware → Azure Stack HCI (Microsoft-centric public sector).
Cisco → Fortinet for multi-site SCC + district estates
Surrey multi-site customers (SCC, district councils, multi-branch retail) consolidating ageing Cisco Catalyst / Meraki / ASA onto Fortinet single-pane — typically driven by SD-WAN refresh and TCO pressure across multi-site Surrey + Hampshire estates.
On-prem → AWS / Azure UK
Surrey-based scale-ups and pharma clients lift-and-shifting from local DC footprint to AWS eu-west-2 or Azure UK-South — with regulator-aware outsourcing documentation prepared as part of the engagement.
Exchange-on-prem → M365 for Surrey schools + councils
Frequent second-wave for Surrey schools and councils — on-prem Exchange to M365 GCC, on-prem PBX to Teams Voice, integrated with the customer's existing identity + security baseline.
What a Surrey migration delivers
In-person discovery workshop
For Surrey customers, week-1 discovery happens at your office (or ours) — application-owner interviews, infrastructure walk-through, dependency mapping. Surfaces the real failure modes that get missed in remote-only discovery.
Bill-of-quantities + sized design
Complete picture of the current estate turned into a migration BoQ you can defend at CFO/CTO review, with target architecture sized for the destination platform — Nutanix cluster, vSAN ESA, AWS landing zone, FortiGate topology.
Pilot environment with on-site testing
Non-production pilot built on the new platform — for Surrey customers, the soak testing happens with the customer's ops team on-site, which surfaces operational issues earlier than remote-only soak.
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.
Sector-aware cutover windows
For Surrey customers, cutover windows planned around the sector calendar — pharma batch releases, school holidays, aviation maintenance, defence audit windows. Engineers on-site from Fetcham for the full window.
Old-platform decommission + ITAD
Once the new platform has run clean, we decommission the legacy estate from your Surrey site — chain-of-custody collection, NCSC-aligned wipe, certified disposal, residual value credit.
Surrey migration engagements we run
- ▸Pharma off VMware to NutanixEpsom / Cobham pharma with 80–300 VMs moving from vSphere to Nutanix AHV — typically 10–14 weeks with regulated workload migrated last under QA sign-off.
- ▸Multi-site SCC Cisco → FortinetSCC + district councils consolidating Cisco ASA + Meraki branch onto FortiGate + FortiSwitch — driven by SD-WAN refresh trigger.
- ▸Surrey scale-ups on-prem → AWSGuildford / Woking scale-ups moving Series B/C on-prem footprint to AWS eu-west-2 — with FCA / ISO 27001 / SOC 2 evidence prepared as part of the migration.
- ▸Defence-supplier consolidationFarnborough defence-supply customers consolidating multi-site IT onto Nutanix or vSAN — NCSC-aligned, MOD-aware change processes, SC-cleared engineer attendance.
- ▸Schools to M365 + AzureSurrey independent + grammar school network migrating Exchange-on-prem + on-prem file servers to M365 + SharePoint + OneDrive — scheduled in summer holidays.
- ▸Professional services PMS to vendor cloudGuildford / Woking law firms migrating practice-management (3E, Elite, Aderant) from on-prem to vendor cloud — coordinated with outsourcing-policy committee.
How a Surrey migration runs week-by-week
Weeks 1–2 — in-person discovery
Discovery workshop at your office or ours, automated discovery tooling (RVTools / vRealize / Lansweeper) running alongside, application-owner interviews. Surrey proximity makes in-person practical.
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 for soak.
Weeks 5–8 — wave migrations
Production workloads migrated in 4–6 waves, each validated for performance, integration and security before next. Customer change board signs off each wave.
Weeks 9–10 — soak + decom
New platform runs clean for the agreed soak (2–4 weeks). Once signed off, decommission begins — chain-of-custody from your Surrey site, wipe, dispose, certify.
Surrey vendor migrations — common questions
We're a Surrey pharma with 100 VMs on vSphere — Broadcom has tripled our bill. What's right?
For most Surrey pharma estates with that footprint, Nutanix AHV is the typical destination — regulated workload-friendly, predictable per-node pricing, AHV included. We model 3-year TCO including migration cost — typical Nutanix payback is 14–22 months on a 100-VM estate. The validated environment migration takes longer than non-regulated work because of QA sign-off cycles.
Can you run the discovery workshop at our Surrey office?
Yes — for Surrey customers we strongly prefer in-person discovery. We can come to your office for a 2-day workshop or you can come to ours at Fetcham. Either way, in-person surfaces issues that remote discovery misses.
How do you handle the FCA outsourcing materiality memo for a Surrey cloud migration?
For FCA-authorised customers we produce the technical input — which Important Business Services touch the migrated platform, what the destination region's resilience looks like, exit plan if the cloud provider becomes unavailable. Your compliance team writes the final memo; we provide technical evidence.
Can you do a Cisco → Fortinet migration across SCC + district council sites 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 / data-centre switching, a brief weekend window is unavoidable but we plan for sub-2-hour outage.
How long does a 100-VM VMware → Nutanix migration take in Surrey?
Discovery → final-VM-on-new-platform is typically 8–12 weeks for a 100-VM estate. Actual migration work is shorter (4–6 weeks); the rest is discovery, design and soak. Surrey proximity speeds up discovery + soak phases.
Can you do a school migration to M365 in the summer holidays?
Yes — Surrey schools are a regular engagement for us. Discovery + design in May / June, pilot in early July, full migration during the 6-week summer holiday, staff training in early August, fully live for September intake.
Other services we deliver in Surrey
Facing a VMware bill, Cisco EOL or cloud migration in Surrey?
Drop us a line — we can come to your Surrey office for the discovery workshop, scope the work, and come back with a TCO model on the new platform.
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