Before you start your migration process, you need to list the assets you currently own that might need to be moved over, retired, or kept on your business property. These lists can be made manually, or you can do it automatically using a software tool a server provider can provide you with.
A data center company such as Electric Kitten, which provides server hosting in Los Angeles, can help the migration process between in-house and third-party hosting run smoothly.
Contractual responsibilities:
Go over any termination agreements and other terms and conditions related to the data center you are leaving.
Hardware inventory:
What hardware does your company own that must be moved to the data center or removed from your premises?
Communications inventory:
List non-tangible items that must be moved, replaced, or sold during migration. Items include your IP, network, contact information, papers on resources you might own, and so on.
Applications inventory:
Create an inventory of all the applications being used by the data center’s hardware, as well as the physical or logical machines and any external servers that are interacting with it or its communication resources. The application inventory gives you a visual representation of how linked your data center is both inside and outside of the company.
For vital documents you have, such as a lease, make sure you copy that data. Keep the copy off the premise of your business to ensure that if data goes missing, you will have a backup somewhere safe.
This process might seem daunting initially, but take one step at a time and double-check that everything is saved before deleting or retiring old files.