Customer story
A leading IT service provider in the USA, with 30+ years in the market and offices across California, New York, and Illinois, was running 300+ servers out of a Chicago colocation datacenter that had become slow, complicated, and unreliable. We planned and executed a full infrastructure migration to Microsoft Azure — workload by workload, with no end-user impact.
Engagement facts
Client
US IT service provider, 30+ years in the market, 700+ employees
Industry
Professional services / IT services
Region
California, New York, Illinois
Service
Cloud migration & infrastructure
Stack
Azure
Azure Site Recovery
Azure Active Directory
Azure DNS
servers migrated out of colocation
Zero
end-user impact during cutover
employees on the new estate
↓ Cost
lower maintenance and support spend
The client
A leading US IT service provider with 30+ years in the market
The client is a leading IT service provider in the USA with 30+ years of experience in the market and offices spread across California, New York, and Illinois. The company operates with more than 700 employees across the country.
The need
An aging colocation datacenter putting service reliability at risk
The client approached Star Knowledge with a requirement to migrate their on-premises IT infrastructure to the cloud. The client faced ongoing IT difficulties with their on-prem infrastructure, which were preventing consistent delivery of reliable services and customer support. The absence of effective IT speed and reliability had put client service in jeopardy, prompting the client to adopt a strategy of cloud migration and move their entire infrastructure to the cloud. The infrastructure was housed in a Chicago colocation datacenter and had become slower, complicated, and unreliable. The 300+ servers and on-premises systems suffered from several support issues, and their management had become a challenge — staff were constantly caught up resolving issues as they occurred, at high cost.
The challenge
Migrating 300+ outdated servers with no end-user impact
The on-prem IT infrastructure had become outdated, and the 300+ servers had to be entirely migrated without any end-user impact. Star Knowledge’s team of Microsoft cloud migration experts had to lay out a detailed migration plan and strategy to help the client successfully transition to the Azure cloud.
The solution
A phased Azure migration built on a full infrastructure assessment
Star Knowledge provides a full package of cloud solutions and cloud migration services, with expertise around Microsoft Azure and AWS consulting. As a reliable cloud service provider, Star Knowledge collaborated with the client on a successful Azure infrastructure migration. The team’s cloud migration consultants conducted a 360-degree infrastructure assessment and review, concluding that the on-prem infrastructure should be decommissioned and moved to the cloud — giving the client increased uptime, transforming the infrastructure into a key business differentiator, and reducing downtime and maintenance cost.
Migration planning & sequencing
Created a plan for sequencing, scheduling, and cutover of each workload.
Environment preparation
Prepared the migration environment using Azure Site Recovery (ASR), along with migration documentation and defined migration steps.
Assessment & migration execution
Conducted inventory assessments, then executed the migration to Azure.
Decommissioning & ongoing maintenance
Decommissioned the older infrastructure and servers, and put maintenance and patching processes in place going forward.
Benefits
What changed for the client
Faster, more reliable infrastructure
The client gained a faster and reliable infrastructure.
Lower maintenance cost
Reduced infrastructure maintenance cost.
Far fewer system issues
System issues were drastically reduced, with improved system performance.
Quicker client service
Quicker delivery of client service and customer support.
Technology
What we used
See how our Azure migration team scopes an infrastructure migration project.
Your migration
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