16.2. Case Study: A Retail Company Moving to Azure
The transition of retail businesses into the digital domain has become not just a strategic move to capture a broader market, but a necessity for survival and growth. This transformation is powerfully illustrated by the case study of a hypothetical retail company we’ll call “GlobalMart,” which moved its operations to Microsoft Azure. The journey of GlobalMart’s migration to Azure encompasses several stages, from initial assessment to full-scale cloud integration, highlighting challenges, solutions, and outcomes that offer insights into the real-world application of Azure services.
Initial Situation and Challenges
GlobalMart is a multinational retail company with a wide range of products, from groceries to electronics. Their legacy systems were fragmented and struggled to keep pace with the increasing demand for online shopping. The company’s IT infrastructure was predominantly on-premises, leading to issues such as limited scalability, high operational costs, and complexity in managing global operations. Furthermore, the lack of a unified data platform led to siloed data and an inability to gain insights from customer behavior.
Decision to Move to Azure
Planning and Assessment
The initial phase involved a thorough assessment of GlobalMart’s existing infrastructure, applications, and data. This assessment helped in identifying the workloads that could be moved to Azure and those that needed to be re-architected for optimal cloud performance. The company employed Azure Migrate to assess on-premises workloads, evaluate the compatibility with Azure, and plan the migration without disrupting their operations.
Strategy and Migration
GlobalMart’s strategy was to employ a phased migration approach, prioritizing business-critical applications and data. They used Azure Site Recovery for a smooth transition of these applications and Azure SQL Database Managed Instance for lifting and shifting their SQL workloads.
In the first phase, they focused on creating a hybrid environment where their on-premises infrastructure worked in conjunction with Azure services. This allowed for a gradual migration and the opportunity to train their workforce to adapt to the new cloud-based processes.
Deployment and Execution
GlobalMart took advantage of Azure’s compute resources by deploying Azure Virtual Machines for their legacy applications that still required a virtualized environment. They used Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to modernize their applications into microservices, allowing for better scalability and resilience.
For their data, they implemented Azure Synapse Analytics, which enabled them to aggregate data from various sources, providing a holistic view of their operations and customer behaviors. This was complemented by Azure AI and Machine Learning services to refine customer recommendations and inventory forecasting.
Security and Compliance
To address security and compliance requirements, GlobalMart utilized Azure Active Directory for identity management and Azure Key Vault to protect encryption keys and other sensitive information. They adopted a Zero Trust security model, supported by Azure Security Center, ensuring end-to-end security across all cloud services.
