Driving Business Agility: Seamless Azure Migration for a Leading Financial Services Company
The Financial Services Company faced increasing challenges with their current outsourced infrastructure. The legacy applications were costly to maintain, lacked scalability, and hindered business agility. To address these issues, the company commissioned Marbral Advisory, initiating a strategic migration of its legacy applications to Microsoft Azure. The objective was to modernise the IT landscape, reduce operational costs, and improve business continuity while adhering to stringent financial industry regulations.
The project involved a full-scale lift-and-shift migration as well as the re-architecting of key business-critical applications. The transition was carefully managed to ensure minimal downtime, seamless integration with existing systems, and compliance with industry standards.
The project deliverables were as follows:
Project Governance & Controls:
Established a robust governance framework to oversee the migration project, ensuring alignment with the company’s business objectives and compliance with financial regulations.
Implemented comprehensive project controls, including a Full Integrated Team meeting (internal and external), Project Management Controls (Integrated Plan, RAID Log, Communication planning) and regular reporting to facilitate decision-making, monitor progress, and manage risks.
Developed clear success metrics, focusing on minimising business disruption, achieving cost efficiencies, and ensuring data security.
Vendor Management:
Engaged with multiple third-party vendors, including managed service providers and Azure cloud experts, to leverage specialised skills and accelerate the migration process.
Defined clear roles and responsibilities for vendors, ensuring they were held accountable for their work.
Conducted regular vendor discussions, ensuring effective collaboration and prompt issue resolution throughout the project lifecycle.
Project Reporting:
Implemented a detailed reporting mechanism to provide transparency and keep stakeholders informed at every stage of the migration.
Weekly status reports and dashboards were shared with the Executive Team, highlighting key milestones, risks, and mitigation strategies.
Held regular progress review meetings with senior stakeholders, ensuring alignment and timely resolution of any challenges.
Compressed Timeline Execution:
The project was executed within a highly compressed timeline to meet critical business deadlines, including end-of-life dates for legacy systems and peak business periods.
Leveraged hybrid project management methodologies to expedite the migration process, enabling parallel execution of tasks and quick adaptation to unforeseen issues.
Conducted thorough testing and validation at each phase, minimising potential disruptions during the final cutover.
Results:
The comprehensive approach to governance, vendor management, and expedited execution ensured the project was completed on time and within budget, with tangible benefits for the business and its customers.
Successfully migrated all legacy applications to Microsoft Azure, achieving a 40% reduction in infrastructure costs.
Enhanced application performance and scalability, providing a robust platform for future business growth.
Ensured compliance with financial industry regulations, including data security and privacy standards.
Achieved zero unplanned downtime during the migration process, maintaining business continuity.
