Microsoft’s Azure cloud service has soared to become the No. 2 cloud provider behind Amazon Web Services, and although Microsoft will tell you it’s because of the breadth of Azure’s offerings, an undeniable appeal of the service is that it makes migration from on-premises systems straightforward, from both Microsoft products as well as third-party products like Linux and open source databases.
Because Microsoft has had such a long and dominant position in the datacenter, its own Azure public cloud was designed to keep that dominance by being easy to migrate to for those Microsoft-based IT shops, such as by having the same services like Exchange available in both cloud and ion-premises versions. Such easy migration and dual cloud/on-premise services was an option Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform simply couldn’t offer because they had no legacy systems.
Microsoft’s migration story breaks down into three major categories:
- Site
- App
- Database migration
Something to keep in mind: This guide describes the services available from Microsoft. There are also plenty of third-party tools, from major software vendors and small boutique shops alike, and hundreds of Microsoft MVPs and consultants who offer migration services.
