Azure migration and modernisation centre
Let's go forward, together. Get resources at every stage of your cloud migration strategy and data modernisation journey, including tools and guidance to help you move, manage, and secure all your workloads.
Do more with less by moving to Azure
Save on cloud costs, increase efficiency, and accelerate growth by adopting a cloud operations–based model on infrastructure as a service (IaaS) technologies. And modernise to drive innovation with fully managed platform as a service (PaaS) offerings.
For detailed guidance on Azure migration, watch these how-to videos.
Migrate and modernise all of your mission-critical workloads to Azure
Virtual desktops
Access your desktop and applications from virtually anywhere. Modernise to Azure Virtual Desktop (formerly Windows Virtual Desktop) in minutes to enable secure remote work.
Servers
Easily move on-premises Windows Server and supported Linux distributions to Azure. Extend your VMware environments to Azure with Azure VMware Solution.
Courses
Documentation
Databases
Migrate SQL Server to Azure Virtual Machines or a fully managed option like Azure SQL Database. Migrate and modernise MySQL and PostgreSQL to fully managed Azure services. Get minimal downtime and built-in HA, monitoring and security.
Videos
Web apps
Spend more time innovating and less time managing infrastructure by modernising your .NET, Java, and PHP web apps with Azure App Service, Azure Spring Apps, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), you're your choice of managed databases.
Mainframe and midrange migration
Modernise with ease and without abandoning the applications you rely on by running your midrange and mainframe applications on Azure.
White paper
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SAP
Bring Azure intelligence, security and reliability to SAP with a simplified migration path and learn about SAP and Microsoft's unique partnership.
Learn More
Development testing (dev/test)
Improve software quality and reduce costs by moving dev/test to Azure. Quickly deploy and manage hundreds of VMs for development and testing.
Storage migration
Migrate terabytes to petabytes of file and object data to Azure with ease to support lift-and-shift and modernisation efforts.
The cloud migration and modernisation continuum
Cloud migration and modernisation is a continuous process with opportunities for innovation and flexibility at every stage. Many organisations begin with an IaaS migration of their workloads to take advantage of cloud benefits right away, while others begin with PaaS offerings to increase agility and developer productivity. No matter which approach you begin with, you will be able to start innovating in new ways right away and you can always adopt new IaaS or PaaS capabilities anytime.
Find out how ready you are to start migrating to the cloud—the SMART way
From business planning to training to security and governance, find out what you need to do to prepare for your Microsoft Azure migration with SMART—the Strategic Migration Assessment and Readiness Tool.
Discover why cloud modernisation is key to long-term cloud success
Migrating workloads is a great first step. Find out why application modernisation boosts your return on investment and security, accelerates speed to market and opens up new opportunities for innovation.
Spend less money and time managing your datacenter
And grow your business by spending more time focusing on higher impact work.
5X
AWS is 5 times more expensive than Azure for Windows Server and SQL Server154%
versus on-premises and up to 30% versus AWS by migrating ASP.NET apps to Azure280%
On Windows Server with Azure Hybrid Benefit and Reserved Instances393%
More energy efficient than traditional enterprise datacentres4Why migrate and modernise with Azure?
Discover the innovation platform for your business—and accelerate migration and modernisation in the cloud with confidence.
Innovate faster on an app and data platform that's optimised for productivity
- Accelerate your time to market by using fully managed Azure services for PaaS, containers, low-code apps, and databases. Discover offerings such as Azure App Service, Azure Spring Apps, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Microsoft Power Apps, Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB.
- Speed up app delivery and boost productivity for developers. Join over 70 million active developers working with the industry-leading developer experience of GitHub and Visual Studio.
- Customers across diverse industries such as healthcare, financial services, retail, and manufacturing are transforming their application portfolios by innovating on Azure.
Enterprise-grade infrastructure to help your business achieve scale and resilience
- Mitigate business disruptions for maximum resilience with built-in high-availability and disaster recovery options.
- Accelerate your sustainability journey and reduce your org's emission footprint as you migrate and modernise with carbon-intelligent solutions from Microsoft.
- Move your mission-critical SAP applications to the cloud platform that's optimised for SAP. Improve business outcomes by extracting real-time, predictive insights when you combine SAP and non-SAP data and apply advanced data services, such as analytics and data visualisation.
- Get unmatched price-performance for Windows Server and SQL Server workloads on Azure, simplified Windows Server VM management with Azure Automanage, and SQL Server compatibility with enterprise-grade SLA with Azure SQL.
Modernise on your terms with hybrid flexibility
- Extend innovation to your on-premises environment using Azure Arc. Enable consistent app development and DevOps practises across hybrid environments by deploying and running your apps on Azure and/or on-premises with Arc-enabled Kubernetes.
- Consistently manage and govern your Linux, Windows, and SQL workloads across on-premises and multi-cloud environments using Azure Arc-enabled infrastructure.
- Get comprehensive cloud security posture management and cloud workload protection for your valuable assets anywhere with Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
- Only on Azure: Get extended security updates for 3 more years at no additional charge on Windows Server 2012 R2 and SQL Server 2012 R2.
Reinvent financial services
Create intelligent banking experiences, modernise trading and personalise insurance software with Azure infrastructure, services and compliance offerings.
City National Bank embraces PaaS to accelerate innovation for evolving client needs
City National wanted to migrate its on-premises application to the cloud to offer its demanding customer base more features and services. Migrating to Azure increased adoption of City National’s new web-based app by 50 percent. The bank’s development team now has more time to focus on innovation and delivering a feature-rich customer experience.
AIA Singapore drives performance enhancements and cost savings by moving to Azure
With unpredictable spikes in traffic and under-utilised on-premises servers on its interactive point of sale (iPoS) system, AIA Singapore wanted cloud efficiencies and a more modern platform. Migrating to Azure gave the company a more cost-effective way to deliver innovation to its customers and transform and further enhance all of its platforms.
TD Bank innovates and personalises customer experiences with the cloud
TD Bank wanted to improve the customer experience for its 13 million digitally active customers. TD increased scalability, agility and flexibility by moving to the cloud, enabling the company to process massive data sets in real time to gain customer insights and design better customer experiences.
Swiss Re cuts insurance processing from days to minutes by moving underwriting to the cloud
To prepare for the future and boost innovation, Swiss Re moved its underwriting solution to the cloud, allowing the company to take advantage of modern risk assessment, deep analytics and intelligent automation. In Azure, Swiss Re found security, availability, reliability and cutting edge cloud-native services. With the cloud, the company can also make and deploy changes to client software in real time.
Clearent meets customer promises of trust, confidence and speed with Azure
Clearent wanted to improve the speed and costs of its payment processing platform, which handles more than 500 million payment transactions a year. By moving to Azure, Clearent was able to reduce infrastructure costs, streamline operations and gain the agility to meet sudden spikes in demand.
Embrace the promise of the fourth industrial revolution
Improve agility, reduce costs and increase resilience in your supply chain by migrating to Azure—and enable complex, intelligent industrial operations at a global scale.
Metinvest lays foundation for long-term growth by moving to Azure
Metinvest comprises more than 30 manufacturing enterprises, selling products to more than 100 countries. The migration and re-platforming of its IT infrastructure, along with moving a significant volume of data to the cloud, took less than a year and generated projected savings of USD3 million over the next 10 years.
Coats stays agile and responsive during COVID-19 conditions with Azure
Coats chose Azure to gain flexibility and agility to not only optimise existing processes, but also to accommodate unexpected changes in operations like those triggered by COVID-19. Coats maintained business continuity and even expanded some of its operations to help produce much-needed personal protective equipment.
Kennametal pushes manufacturing into the future with IoT and Microsoft cloud solutions
As part of Kennametal’s multiple-year modernisation strategy, the company migrated IT resources to Azure and invested heavily in factory upgrades. In certain areas of production, the first upgraded factory has improved machine setup times by almost 50 percent, increased press availability by 50 percent and yielded the most productive month ever in terms of pieces per day through certain departments.
Maersk modernised their dev practices and containerised with AKS
Maersk needed to streamline IT operations and optimise the value of its IT resources. The company adopted Azure, migrated key workloads to the cloud, and modernised its open-source software, which included the adoption of Kubernetes on Azure.
Transform the healthcare journey
Drive better health outcomes, improve security, scale faster and enhance data interoperability with Azure products and services—including hybrid cloud, mixed reality, AI and IoT.
Providence eases hospital overcrowding by modernising their data platform with Azure
One of the largest health systems in the US, Providence moved its on-premises data to a modern cloud-based data platform to enable continued innovation. This helped the company reduce overcrowding across emergency departments in real time and improve patient satisfaction.
Adaptive builds their new immune medicine platform on Azure
Adaptive turned to Azure for high-scale cloud computing and machine learning to run its immune medicine platform. Migrating to Azure allowed the company to process massive datasets at a faster speed, allowing it to run multiple tests in parallel and output lab results at a fraction of the time.
Darnista boosts productivity and lowers infrastructure costs by migrating to Azure
Pharmaceutical company Darnista was looking for flexibility, sustainability, reliability and cost efficiency. Darnista was able to boost productivity and lower costs of storage by 60 percent and cost of ownership by 50 percent by migrating its on-premises SAP system to Azure.
Premera migrates to the cloud to deliver premium customer service, reduce costs
Premera's cloud migration is not just a timely and rewarding business decision. It is an easy path to the computing model that best suits the organisation, which prioritises security, performance and proactiveness. As Premera reduces infrastructure costs and matures its engineering discipline and offerings, it also boosts customer service.
American Cancer Society remains resilient, battles cancer through a digital-first strategy
The American Cancer Society transitioned 100 onsite apps to the Azure cloud platform, which allowed staff access to the tools they needed from anywhere. They also jettisoned the need (and cost) of the maintenance, hardware upgrades and security of the nearly 1,000 virtual machines in the onsite datacentre.
Reimagine the customer journey
See how retailers keep their supply chains agile and take advantage of new opportunities with predictive AI, machine learning and analytics. And find out how they are reimagining retail using mixed reality solutions, IoT, hybrid cloud and computer vision.
Albertsons enhances omnichannel experiences with more personalised customer marketing
When Albertsons decided to migrate its entire datacentre to Azure, it called on long-time collaborator Microsoft to help deliver a flexible omnichannel platform to support growth and innovation. The first step was to lay the foundational technology infrastructure needed to pave the way for a successful digital transformation across the entire business.
Walgreens Boots Alliance puts customers first in its digital transformation journey
Walgreens Boots Alliance is on a digital transformation journey that seeks to modernise IT operations and the workplace. The first step involves moving IT resources to the cloud and WBA chose Azure as its platform. With Azure, WBA is positioned for omnichannel innovation that delivers everything customers are looking for.
Pandora automates operations and boosts sales using Azure
To curb hardware costs, the retailer moved to the cloud—starting a full digital transformation journey with Azure data services. Thanks to stock and ordering automation, the company has seen a 2 percent direct increase in sales.
Build the future of government
Deliver services to citizens, anywhere and at any time by modernising your legacy infrastructure and scaling up and down as needed. And meet government cloud security and compliance standards while managing costs.
The Washington Health Benefits Exchange built a highly secure and compliant environment to protect citizens' data
Government agencies are highly regulated and demand the most current security and compliance measures to keep constituent data confidential. As these agencies evolve to keep up with technology, they must consider how best to update legacy systems and maintain security. The Washington Health Benefits Exchange turned to Azure Government to help build a highly secure, compliant environment to protect citizens’ data.
DC Water cut costs, streamlined processes and improved customer support with Azure and Microsoft PowerApps
Spurred by the pandemic, DC Water continued to migrate most of its applications and workforce systems to the cloud as the agency adjusted to working remotely while fulfilling utility customer requests. The agency now runs nearly 100 percent of its apps and IT systems in the cloud, minimising the need for paper tracking, in-person interaction and multiple inflexible technology systems.
Lillestrøm adopts digital solution to remotely monitor hydro utilities
To provide a sustainable environment for its 87,500 citizens, the Norwegian municipality of Lillestrøm implemented a digital smart city solution built on Azure to remotely monitor its hydro utilities—and to anchor a broad sustainability effort that supports people and wildlife alike.
Italian municipality uses Azure to help safeguard public data
To deliver services effectively to more than 1 million people, Comune di Catania manages public data and helps safeguard against security threats with a hybrid cloud solution that combines Azure with the municipality’s on-premises Microsoft SQL Server infrastructure—while complying with European data-handling regulations.
Find your solution on Azure
No matter what industry you are in or how large or small your business is, Azure will help you at every stage of your cloud journey with expert guidance, tools and support.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences relies on Azure to innovate
To streamline its IT development and better serve its membership, the Academy migrated its infrastructure to the cloud. Using Microsoft development tools on the Azure cloud platform, the Academy now delivers a rich, responsive online experience to its members across a range of devices.
Icertis automates scaling, reduces costs by 70%, and meets customer demand
Difficult-to-predict daily spikes in customer workload demand made it complex, expensive and time-consuming for Icertis to scale its database estate using a custom-built solution. By migrating to Azure, Icertis can now rely on automatic, near-instant rescaling of database compute resources to accommodate its customers’ changing and often unpredictable workload patterns.
Campbell’s modernised its SAP environments and migrated to SAP HANA on Azure
To improve reliability, availability, flexibility and scalability in its core SAP environments, Campbell’s modernised its SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC), Supply Chain Management (SAP SCM) and Process Orchestration (SAP PO) workloads and migrated them to Azure Virtual Machines certified for SAP.
Albertsons embraces digital transformation with help from Azure
When online orders increased 240 percent during the global pandemic, time was of the essence for Albertsons to migrate and modernise its e-commerce platform. Working with Microsoft, Albertsons quickly met its customers' needs—in the safest manner possible—with new shopping options like Drive-up and Go, Curbside Pickup and Home Delivery.
Explore guidance, programmes and tools to help you succeed on Azure
Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure
Plan and implement your migration to the cloud with best practices, documentation and tools for cloud architects, IT professionals and business decision makers.
Azure Migration and Modernisation Programme
Let's move forward together with confidence. Get the right mix of cloud modernisation resources and expert help at every stage of your cloud journey.
Microsoft FastTrack for Azure
Accelerate the deployment of your solutions on Azure with technical enablement help from Azure engineers and expert partners.
Frequently asked questions
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There are a lot of benefits with application and data modernisation, but most organisations are motivated by one or both of the following:
- Spend more time innovating and less time maintaining legacy infrastructure by using cloud-native technologies.
- Build applications that are resilient, highly scalable, independently deployable and able to evolve quickly by using microservices architecture.
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All workload cloud migrations—including databases—typically follow a six-step process. Factors such as the types of workloads, the complexity of the existing digital estate and industry or governmental compliance requirements might require special planning and tools, but the six steps are almost always the same:
- Define strategy: Define your business justification and expected outcomes.
- Plan: Align actionable adoption plans to business outcomes.
- Ready: Prepare your environment for your cloud migration strategy.
- Adopt: Move your workloads to the cloud environment.
- Govern: Benchmark and implement governance best practices for your environment and workloads.
- Manage: Use proven methodologies to manage your cloud and hybrid solutions.
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You can modernise your .NET or Java apps by using Azure App Service or Azure Spring Apps, and modernise your databases by using Azure managed databases like Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instances. Modernisation enables you to take advantage of Azure platform as a service (PaaS) capabilities such as built-in security, patching, high availability, and auto-scaling.
Also, you can also containerize your .NET and Java apps and run them in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) without needing to make any code changes.
Typical application and data modernisation projects include:
- Modernise on-premises .NET apps by using App Service and SQL Managed Instance
- Modernise on-premises .NET apps by using App Service and SQL Database
- Modernise Linux web apps by using App Service and Azure Database for MySQL
- Modernise on-premises .NET apps by containerizing them with AKS
- Modernise on-premises Java apps by containerizing them with AKS
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You can extend Azure management and services to hybrid, multicloud and edge environments using Azure Arc. Azure Arc simplifies governance and management by delivering a consistent multicloud and on-premises management platform, enabling you to manage your entire environment with a single pane of glass by projecting your existing resources into Azure Resource Manager. You can also manage virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, and databases as if they are running in Azure.
1 https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/azure-vs-aws/cost-savings/
2 GigaOm Report Sponsored by Microsoft - Costs and Benefits of .NET Application Migration to the Cloud
3 Calculations based on scenarios running 744 hours/month for 12 months at 3-year Reserved Capacity. Prices as of 24 October, 2018, subject to change. Savings based on eight vCore Azure SQL Database Managed Instance Business Critical in US West 2 running at Azure Hybrid Benefit rate. AWS calculations based on RDS for SQL EE for db.r4.2xlarge on US West (Oregon) in a multi AZ deployment for Reserved Instances under Standard 3-year term, all upfront payment. Actual regional pricing and program discounts may apply. Actual savings may vary based on region, instance size and performance tier. Savings exclude Software Assurance costs, which may vary based on Volume Licensing agreement. See https://azure.microsoft.com/pricing/reserved-vm-instances/