Cloud migration for a Swiss trade association

Starting point

The association ran around ten servers at an external provider, in that provider's hosted on-premise cloud: Dynamics with SQL Server, plus a duplicate as a test environment, application servers, telephony servers and Exchange. The infrastructure was tied to that provider, with dedicated server hardware for almost every service, including printers running through their own print servers.

Approach

WORXSPACE migrated the workloads to Microsoft Azure. Exchange moved to Exchange Online, and Dynamics ran from then on with test and production environments on Azure, including SQL Server. The old print servers were replaced with Printix as cloud print management. That removed the need for dedicated server hardware for email, applications, telephony and printing. This modern foundation on Azure later became the basis for the association's identity platform and its AI projects.

Result

• Around ten servers at the previous hosting provider were retired
• Email runs in Exchange Online, with no servers of their own to maintain
• Dynamics runs with test and production environments on Azure, at predictable cost instead of hardware renewal