Cloud Migration Services

Cloud migration services move your servers, applications, databases and data from on-premises hardware or a hosting provider to Azure, AWS or Google Cloud, without a long outage and without a surprise on the first bill. PS3G plans and runs migrations for organizations of every size: a founder moving a first product off a single rented server, an operations lead whose server room is due for a hardware refresh, or an IT director with a few hundred virtual machines and a disaster-recovery gap. The engineering is the same in each case. We inventory what you run, decide workload by workload what should move and how, build the cloud foundation, migrate in waves, validate, and tune cost once you are there.

Migrate what should move, the way it should move

Most migration problems start with one assumption: that everything moves the same way. In practice an inventory always contains systems to retire, a few to leave alone, several better replaced with a subscription product, and a core that deserves real engineering. Treating them all as a lift-and-shift produces a cloud bill that looks like the old hardware bill plus a markup.

Our cloud migration consulting starts with a decision per workload. A file server moves differently from a vendor-supported line-of-business application, and both move differently from a custom .NET application nobody has touched in years. That last one may belong with our application modernization or .NET migration work rather than a server copy. Migration sits within our cloud consulting practice and the rest of our services.

When to migrate

There is rarely a perfect moment, but there are clear triggers.

• Hardware refresh. Servers or storage are out of warranty and a replacement quote is on your desk.
• License renewals. Windows Server, SQL Server or VMware licensing is up for renewal. Azure Hybrid Benefit and license mobility change the math; run the numbers before you sign.
• Disaster-recovery gaps. One data center, backups nobody has restored, a plan nobody has tested. Cloud regions and managed backup put a real DR plan within reach without a second site.
• Growth. Seasonal peaks, a new product line, an acquisition. Scaling a rack is a purchase order; scaling a cloud workload is a setting.
• End of support. An operating system or database version is leaving support; check the vendor’s lifecycle page.

Reasons not to move a system (a depreciated application with no change planned, a latency-sensitive factory workload, a vendor that will not support a cloud VM) become “retain” decisions with a review date.

Our method

The same six steps apply whether the scope is one application or a data center.

1. Discovery and inventory

We run discovery tooling against your environment: the Azure Migrate appliance for VMware, Hyper-V and physical servers, AWS Application Discovery Service and Migration Hub for AWS-bound estates, Google Cloud Migration Center where Google is the target. These collect utilization over a few weeks and map which servers talk to which, so dependencies are discovered rather than guessed. We add owners, licensing, data classification and compliance scope.

2. Strategy per workload

Each workload gets one of six treatments: rehost (move the server as is), re-platform (move to a managed service, such as Azure SQL Managed Instance or Amazon RDS), refactor (change the code to use the platform properly), replace (retire it in favor of a SaaS product), retire (switch it off) or retain (leave it for now). Our guide to the 6 Rs of cloud migration strategy explains the trade-offs. The result is a cloud migration strategy a finance team can read: a target architecture, a run-cost model from the vendor’s pricing calculators, and a list of what will not move.

3. Plan and landing zone

A landing zone is the foundation your workloads land in: subscription or account structure, identity (Microsoft Entra ID or AWS IAM Identity Center), hub-and-spoke networking, policies, logging, backup and cost tagging, built first. We follow the Azure Cloud Adoption Framework landing-zone guidance or AWS Control Tower, and our DevOps team writes it as Terraform or Bicep code so it can be reviewed and repeated. The cloud migration plan then groups workloads into waves by dependency and risk, with a low-risk pilot wave first.

4. Migrate in waves

Servers replicate continuously with Azure Migrate, AWS Application Migration Service or Google’s Migrate to Virtual Machines, so the cutover is a short switch rather than a long copy. Databases move through the Azure or AWS database migration service, online where downtime matters. Large data sets travel over a dedicated link or an offline appliance such as Azure Data Box or AWS Snow Family. Every wave has a test cutover, a production window, a lowered DNS TTL and a written rollback plan.

5. Validate

Application owners run their acceptance checks. We compare performance against the discovery baseline, reconcile data with row counts and checksums, restore a backup to prove it works, confirm that alerts fire, and review security against the standard. Hypercare with a named engineer follows each wave.

6. Optimize

After a few weeks of real metrics we right-size, add reservations or savings plans for the steady-state footprint, move cold data to lower-cost tiers, shut down non-production out of hours, and decommission the source hardware and licenses. The runbooks go to your team or to our managed services group.

Ask for a migration assessment and we will tell you what should move and in what order.

Applications, databases and data: specifics

Applications

Web applications have two good paths: a VM rehost for speed, or a re-platform onto Azure App Service, AWS Elastic Beanstalk or a container service so patching and scaling become the platform’s job. Applications that depend on Active Directory need a domain plan (Microsoft Entra Domain Services, domain controllers on VMs, or AWS Managed Microsoft AD) first. File shares go to Azure Files or Amazon FSx; scheduled jobs, SMTP relays and hard-coded IP addresses are tracked so nothing breaks at cutover.

Databases

Our database migration services cover SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL and MongoDB. For SQL Server the choice is between Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance (near-complete compatibility, including SQL Agent and cross-database queries), SQL Server on a VM or Amazon RDS. We assess compatibility with the Azure SQL migration tooling or the AWS Schema Conversion Tool, choose between an offline cutover and online replication, and rehearse before it counts.

Data

Cloud data migration covers file servers, archives, backups and analytics platforms. Volume and link speed decide the method: a terabyte over a 100 Mbps connection takes about a day, so large archives often go by appliance. Warehouses and reporting stacks are a project of their own; our data engineering team moves them to Azure Synapse, Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake, Databricks or BigQuery.

Azure, AWS and Google Cloud: how we choose

We are vendor-neutral and work in all three. The choice usually follows what you already run and who will operate it.

Signal in your environment	Leans toward	Why
Windows Server, SQL Server, Microsoft 365, Entra ID	Azure	Hybrid Benefit reuses licenses, identity is already there, SQL Managed Instance fits SQL Server estates
Linux-heavy stacks, existing AWS skills	AWS	Widest service catalog, mature migration tooling
Analytics-first workloads, Google Workspace, Kubernetes-centered teams	Google Cloud	BigQuery for analytics, GKE for container platforms
A contract or regulation naming a provider	That provider	Customer contracts and vendor support policies sometimes decide; we design within them

Azure migration services and AWS migration services use the same method with us. Multi-cloud is a deliberate choice for a specific reason, never a default; two clouds mean two sets of skills, tooling and bills.

Security, compliance and cost control during and after

A migration changes who can reach your systems and from where, so security is designed into the landing zone rather than reviewed afterwards: multi-factor authentication and least-privilege roles on every console, no public RDP or SSH, private endpoints for databases and storage, keys in Azure Key Vault or AWS KMS, and central logging watched by Microsoft Defender for Cloud or AWS Security Hub.

For regulated workloads we map the controls you already owe to the cloud configuration: a business associate agreement with the cloud vendor and the encryption, logging and backup settings HIPAA expects; evidence for SOC 2; policy as code (Azure Policy, AWS Config rules) so drift is caught automatically. This is general information, not legal advice.

Cost control starts on day one: a tagging standard so every resource has an owner, budgets with alerts, shutdown schedules for development and test, and a reservation review once usage settles. Our guide to cloud cost optimization lists the techniques we apply after a migration.

What you get from our cloud migration services

• An inventory with owners, dependencies and utilization profiles, and a per-workload strategy with a target architecture and run-cost model.
• A landing zone delivered as Terraform or Bicep code: identity, network, policy, logging, backup and tagging.
• A wave plan with cutover windows and a rollback plan per wave, migrated workloads with validation evidence, and runbooks for monitoring, backup and disaster recovery.
• A post-migration optimization report, a budget with alerts, and decommissioning of the source environment.

Engagement models

Cloud migration for small business and for a division of a large company uses the same steps; only the scope and cadence change.

• Fixed-scope project. A defined set of workloads, a defined target and a fixed price. The usual fit for a first migration.
• Dedicated team or staff augmentation. Our migration engineers work inside your team month to month, scaling up for the waves and down after.
• Managed services. We migrate and then run the environment under defined SLAs: patching, monitoring, backups and cost reviews.
• Advisory. An assessment and roadmap you execute yourself, with design reviews from our architects.

How we start: a first conversation, a short assessment, a written proposal. If the answer is “not yet”, we say so.

Why PS3G for cloud migration

We have been building and running software for more than ten years, from our headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware and our delivery center in India. We operate our own cloud products, including our HIPAA-compliant EHR and telehealth platform, DocVilla, so we carry the pager for the same kind of environment we build for you. Our engineers hold Microsoft and open-source certifications, our testing center of excellence validates each wave, and the people who migrate a workload can modernize it next.

Related services

• Cloud consulting and solutions: strategy, architecture and managed cloud.
• DevOps consulting: landing zones, pipelines and infrastructure as code.
• Application modernization: for workloads that deserve a refactor rather than a copy.
• .NET migration and modernization: .NET Framework applications moved to modern .NET.
• Managed IT services: we run the environment afterwards under defined SLAs.
• Big data and data engineering: warehouses and pipelines migrated and rebuilt.

Guides on this topic

• Cloud Migration Checklist: 45 Steps from Inventory to Decommission
• Cloud Migration Strategy: The 6 Rs Explained with Examples

Frequently asked questions

How long does a cloud migration take?

It depends on the number of workloads, how tangled their dependencies are, how much data has to move and how many cutover windows the business can give you. A single application can be a matter of weeks; a full data center is a program of waves over months. The proposal carries a wave plan with dates, revised after the pilot wave.

What does cloud migration cost?

There are two bills: the one-time migration effort and the ongoing cloud run cost. The first is driven by workload count, how much re-platforming you choose and the cutover constraints. The second by right-sizing, reservations, storage tiers and licensing. We model both before you commit and quote the migration work as a fixed scope wherever the inventory allows.

Is cloud migration worth it for a small business?

Usually yes, when a hardware refresh, a license renewal or a backup scare is the trigger. A small environment often migrates in one or two waves, replaces its server room with managed services, and gains a tested disaster-recovery plan it never had. We advise waiting when a stable, paid-off system has no change coming.

Should we choose Azure or AWS?

Choose the platform your existing estate and your future operators fit best. Microsoft-centered environments usually land well on Azure because of licensing benefits and identity integration. Linux-heavy stacks and teams with AWS experience usually choose AWS. We work on both and on Google Cloud, and show you the run-cost model for each first.

Will there be downtime during the migration?

Continuous replication means most servers cut over in minutes, and online database migration keeps source and target in sync until the switch. Some systems still need a maintenance window: a database that cannot replicate or a vendor product with a manual install. We schedule those with you, rehearse each one, and keep a rollback path open until sign-off.

Can you migrate our SQL Server or Oracle databases?

Yes. We assess compatibility first, then choose the target: Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, SQL Server on a VM, Amazon RDS, or managed PostgreSQL or MySQL when a move off Oracle is the goal. The migration runs through the Azure or AWS database migration service, offline or online depending on the downtime you can accept, and is rehearsed first.