Cloud — Migration
Cloud migration services for New York businesses
Copying the data is the easy part. Stedholm runs migrations as engineering projects: discovery that finds the dependencies nobody documented, cutovers staged out of business hours, and a rollback path at every step.
Migrations fail in the details, not in the data copy
Mailbox moves and file transfers are solved problems. What goes wrong is everything around them: the scanner that emails invoices through the old server, the line-of-business app authenticating against a domain nobody mentioned, permissions that flatten in transit, the DNS record with a day-long TTL discovered an hour before cutover. Migration failures are almost always discovery failures wearing a different name.
So we spend the unglamorous time up front. Every mailbox, share, permission, integration, and device that touches the old environment goes in the inventory; success criteria are written down before anything moves; and the old environment is decommissioned only when nothing references it — not when the project plan says it should be safe.
Migration is the front door to our cloud practice. Most projects land in Microsoft 365 administration or Azure managed services afterward — but the project stands on its own, with its own deliverables, if that is all you need.
Rollback thinking, from the first step
Every stage of a Stedholm migration has a written way back: coexistence kept alive until the new environment proves itself, DNS TTLs lowered days in advance so changes reverse in minutes, batches sized so a problem strands a pilot group rather than the whole firm, and a go/no-go checkpoint before each irreversible step. We do not burn bridges mid-crossing.
This is also why we insist on a hypercare window after cutover: a short, intense feedback loop while the environment is new, so the punch list is closed deliberately instead of leaking into ticket queues for a quarter.
Common projects
On-premises Exchange to Exchange Online
File servers to SharePoint, OneDrive, or Azure Files
Tenant-to-tenant moves for mergers and spin-offs
Google Workspace to Microsoft 365
Server workloads to Azure
How we run a migration
Discovery
Inventory of mailboxes, shares, permissions, integrations, and devices; identification of the dependencies nobody documented; written success criteria and a risk register you can read.
Design and pilot
Target architecture, coexistence plan, and a pilot group cutover that is treated as an experiment — what the pilot finds gets fixed before anyone else moves.
Staged cutover
Batches scheduled out of business hours, communications sent before users notice anything, DNS prepared in advance, and a go/no-go decision with a rollback path at each stage.
Hypercare and closeout
A defined stabilization window with fast response, then documentation handoff and decommissioning of the old environment — only once nothing references it.
Common questions
How long does a migration take?
It scales with mailbox count, data volume, and how much coexistence the business needs — a twenty-person firm and a two-hundred-person firm are different projects. You get a written timeline after discovery, and we would rather tell you an honest number then than a flattering one now.
Will we have downtime?
The plan states exactly what will be unavailable, for whom, and when — and cutovers are scheduled so most of it happens while the office is empty. For most users the visible event is a sign-in prompt on Monday morning, and the plan is written to keep it that way.
Can you migrate our document management system?
Firm-specific platforms — legal DMS, practice management, EHR-adjacent stores — need their own assessment, because vendor migration paths vary widely in quality. We scope them explicitly rather than discovering them in week three. Our law firm and healthcare pages cover the vertical context.
What happens after cutover — are you gone?
Hypercare is part of every project, and the documentation is yours regardless. If you want ongoing administration afterward, that is Microsoft 365 administration or managed IT — a separate decision we will not pressure you into during a migration.
Move once, deliberately.
Tell an engineer what you are moving from and to — you will get a straight answer about effort, risk, and sequence.