What to Settle Before You Switch IT Providers
Changing technology providers is not difficult, but it has to be done in the right order. Most of the pain businesses experience in a switch comes from settling questions of ownership and access after the relationship has already soured, when nobody is inclined to be helpful.
Establish who owns what — in writing
Before you sign with anyone, confirm four things: who owns the documentation of your environment, who is the registrant of your domain, who holds the administrative credentials, and whose name the software licences and cloud tenants are in. The answer to all four should be you. If it is not, get it changed before you give notice, while the current provider still has a reason to cooperate.
Ask for an inventory
Request a list of what you are running and what each item costs. A provider who manages your environment can produce this in an afternoon. A provider who cannot produce it has not been managing it. Either way, the list is what your next provider will need on day one, and it is far easier to obtain before notice than after.
Give notice properly, and keep paying
Give notice in writing, in the form the contract specifies. Then keep paying through the end of the term. An unpaid invoice is leverage, and a provider holding your credentials with leverage over you is the situation this whole article exists to avoid. The cost of a month’s fees is small next to the cost of an argument about access.
Hand over on a supervised call
Credential handover should happen on a call with the outgoing provider, the incoming provider and you present, working through a list. Not by email, not in a document, and not over several days. Every account is confirmed, every password is changed by the incoming provider during the call, and the outgoing provider’s access is removed while everyone watches. This is standard practice among reputable providers and no one should object to it.
Change everything afterwards
However amicable the parting, change every shared credential once the handover is complete — administrator passwords, router and firewall logins, cloud consoles, vendor portals. Not because the outgoing provider is dishonest, but because you cannot know who on their side ever had those passwords, or where they were written down.
In order
- Confirm ownership of documentation, domain, credentials and licences — before notice
- Obtain an inventory of what you run and what it costs
- Give written notice; pay through the end of the term
- Hand over on a supervised call with both providers present
- Change every shared credential afterwards
If you are considering a change and would like to know what a clean transition looks like from the receiving side, we are happy to walk you through it — whether or not we end up being the provider you move to.