Moving to the cloud: a step-by-step guide

Moving to the cloud means running your email, files, business apps, servers and phones on a provider’s systems instead of equipment in your office, and reaching them over the internet. Done well, it lets your team work from anywhere and leaves you less hardware to look after.

Done badly, it means lost files, locked-out staff and a monthly bill nobody planned for. The difference is mostly in the planning. Here’s a step-by-step approach for a small or medium business, and the questions to ask a provider before you sign.

What can move to the cloud

A move usually covers some or all of these:

• Email and calendars, to a hosted email service.
• Files, from a server or shared drive in the office to online storage your team can reach from any device.
• Business apps, such as accounts, booking or CRM software (customer relationship management, where you keep customer records), often by switching to the supplier’s online version.
• Servers, moved to a provider’s data centre when an app has to keep running as it does today.
• Phones, with a cloud phone system in place of phone system equipment in the office. With the old phone network closing on 31 January 2027, it’s a good time to look at these too: see what the landline switch-off means for your business.

The benefits and the trade-offs

What you gain:

• Your team can work from the office, from home or on the move.
• There’s less hardware to buy, house and replace.
• It’s easier to add or remove people as the business changes.
• The provider looks after the physical equipment, power and cooling.

What to weigh up:

• Everything depends on your internet connection, so a slow or unreliable line becomes a bigger problem.
• Upfront costs become monthly ones, which grow as you add people and services.
• You have less control over how the service works and when it changes.
• Leaving can be harder than joining, so check how you’d get your data back.
• Security is shared. The provider protects its own systems, but who has access and how the service is set up are still down to you.

How to move to the cloud, step by step

1. Take stock of what you run

List every system: email, files, apps, servers, phones and the devices people use. For each one, note who uses it, what it connects to, which licences and contracts come with it, and what would happen if it stopped for a day. This is where the forgotten things turn up, such as an old server quietly running one important app.

2. Decide what moves, and where

Not everything has to move at once, or at all. For each system, you can:

• move it to a ready-made online service, which is common for email and files
• move it as it is to a hosted server, when an app can’t change yet
• replace it with a newer online app
• leave it where it is for now

Start where the benefit is high and the risk is low.

3. Plan around how you work

Schedule each change for a quiet period, away from month-end, payroll or your busiest season. Tell the people affected early. Keep the old system running until the new one is proven, and agree in advance how you’d switch back if something goes wrong.

4. Protect your data and who can reach it

• Turn on multi-factor authentication, a second check such as a code on your phone, for every account. Our guide to cyber security basics covers this and the other essentials.
• Give people access only to what they need, and keep administrator accounts separate.
• Check what the provider backs up and how you’d restore it. Don’t assume the cloud is your backup.

Data protection law, the UK GDPR, still applies when personal data, such as customer or staff records, moves to the cloud. Where a provider stores that data for you, the ICO says you need a written contract with them. If it will be stored or accessed outside the UK, read the ICO’s guide to international transfers to see whether the transfer rules apply to you.

5. Move in stages

Start with something low-risk, such as one team or one system, and check it works before you move the next. Move the data, check it’s all there, then switch people over. Smaller steps keep any problem small too.

6. Train your team

Show people how to sign in, where their files live now and how multi-factor authentication works. Tell them who to call when something looks wrong. A short session before the switch saves a lot of confusion after it.

7. Keep it managed

The cloud still needs looking after: new starters and leavers, updates, security settings, backups and the monthly bill. Decide who owns each of those, in-house or with a provider, before you go live.

What to ask a cloud provider

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) suggests a lightweight approach to cloud security for smaller organisations, with questions a good service should answer “yes” to. Here they are, adapted, with a few of our own:

• Can you tell us where our data will be stored and processed?
• Is our data encrypted in transit and at rest?
• Can we make 2-step verification compulsory for every user?
• Do you collect security logs, and can we see them?
• Do you have an incident response process, and how would you tell us about a problem?
• How do you apply security updates when issues are reported?
• How do we get our data back if we leave?
• After the move, who looks after us, and who do we call?

If you handle sensitive data or large amounts of personal data, the NCSC points to its fuller cloud security principles instead.

Where to start

Begin with an honest picture of what you run today. A free IT audit from VoIPTech reviews your set-up, security and network and gives you a report to plan from. If you’d like help with the move itself, our cloud migration service plans it around how your business works and looks after your cloud once it’s live.