Central government
Legacy on-prem SQL to Azure Data Platform
Two decades of on-prem SQL and SSIS lifted, reshaped and rebuilt on Azure, with a 60% cost reduction.
2024·9 months·4 engineers, 1 architect
60% YoY
Cost reduction
42
Pipelines migrated
220 → 96
Reports rationalised
The challenge
A critical reporting estate ran on ageing on-prem SQL Server with SSIS pipelines nobody had documented. Patching was behind, cost was high, and the risk of a single point of failure was growing. A big-bang cutover was politically and technically off the table.
What we did
- Discovery and dependency mapping across 40+ pipelines and 200+ reports, with named owners.
- Sequenced migration: lift-and-shift what earned it, rebuild what didn't. Retired what nobody used.
- Terraform-managed Azure landing zone, aligned to NCSC Cloud Security Principles and department policy.
- Parallel-run for eight weeks with reconciled data on both estates before hard cutover.
Results
- 60% lower running cost year-on-year.
- Reporting refresh times cut by more than half.
- Security posture aligned to NCSC Cloud Security Principles.
- Legacy estate fully decommissioned within programme timeline.
“A migration is only successful if you can turn the old system off. We did, on schedule.”
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