A UAE government-linked holding entity managing diverse business units across logistics, real estate, and utilities completed its enterprise cloud transformation to Azure — achieving full data center exit, 38% cost reduction, and 99.99% uptime for all critical workloads.
The client — a diversified holding entity with 12 business units, 8,000+ employees, and operations spanning the UAE — had accumulated a complex on-premises infrastructure across three data centers in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. With hardware end-of-life approaching across 60% of the server estate, and the UAE Government's drive toward cloud adoption under the Smart Government initiative, leadership committed to a comprehensive cloud-first transformation.
The scale was significant: 800+ applications and workloads, including SAP S/4HANA running 15 business units, 4 legacy Oracle databases, and 300+ Windows Server workloads. UAE data residency requirements mandated that all data remain within UAE Azure regions — requiring careful landing zone design and sovereign cloud configuration.
The board set an 18-month target for full data center exit — with zero tolerance for data loss and a maximum of 4 hours downtime across all 800 workloads combined.
Azure landing zone deployment with UAE North as primary, UAE Central as DR. Hub-and-spoke network, Azure Policy, Defender for Cloud, PDPL compliance baseline. Enterprise Agreement negotiation and Savings Plan optimization securing 35% committed discount.
200 development, test, and non-production workloads migrated using Azure Migrate. Established migration factory approach — 3-4 week per-workload cycle with automated discovery, right-sizing, and cutover validation.
400+ business-critical applications migrated, including Oracle databases to Azure SQL Managed Instance, and critical Windows workloads to Azure VMs. SAP preliminary staging began on Azure M-series.
SAP S/4HANA migrated to Azure with RISE with SAP, using Azure Site Recovery for zero-downtime cutover. Final 200 workloads migrated. Data centers decommissioned. Transition to Anlage Managed Services for 24/7 operations.
Whether you have 50 or 5,000 workloads, our migration factory approach delivers faster, safer, and cheaper cloud migrations than traditional professional services firms.
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