Assess your infrastructure readiness for Azure migration — workload compatibility, dependency mapping, and migration wave planning.
Migrating to Microsoft Azure requires a thorough assessment of your existing infrastructure to avoid costly surprises. This checklist helps UK businesses evaluate workload compatibility, map dependencies between systems, and plan migration waves in a logical sequence. It ensures your Azure migration project is grounded in a realistic understanding of your current environment, reducing the risk of extended downtime or unexpected costs.
IT directors, infrastructure managers, and cloud architects at UK businesses planning a migration from on-premise infrastructure to Microsoft Azure.
Readiness typically depends on having a full inventory of existing servers and applications, understanding dependencies between systems, and confirming your network bandwidth can support cloud connectivity. Most UK SMEs benefit from a formal assessment phase lasting 2-4 weeks before committing to a migration timeline or budget.
Dependency mapping identifies which applications, databases, and services communicate with each other so they can be migrated together rather than in isolation, avoiding broken connections post-migration. Tools such as Azure Migrate can automate discovery, though most UK IT teams still validate findings manually before finalising migration wave groupings.
Costs vary hugely by scale, but UK SMEs migrating a modest on-premise environment typically budget £5,000-£20,000 in one-off migration and professional services costs, plus ongoing Azure consumption charges that often range from a few hundred to several thousand pounds a month depending on workload size.
A thorough assessment covers workload compatibility with Azure IaaS or PaaS, dependency mapping, network bandwidth requirements, licensing implications, and a prioritised migration wave plan. This checklist sets out each of these steps so nothing is missed before the technical migration work begins.
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